Coefin

The Coefin.

What about them, Valkut?

They're curious little buggers. Bit like the harpies that terrorize the northern farmsteads up by the Weeping Crags. They're just smaller and...cuter?

Well Harpies aren't exactly anything to look at so you could argue that, yes. Hideous beaks, chunks of feathers missing from their various skirmishes, and that harsh screech of a voice. Compare them to the Coefin and they're like peregrines and pigeons.

How did they come about? I'm expecting to deal with one soon, and he was about the shiftiest bloke I've met in my life.

Untrustworthy?

More like paranoid. I doubt he trusts the words out his own mouth, he's so nervous.

They are a naturally curious folk, but given their small size, also a naturally wary one. They're also synthetic.

What?

They aren't a naturally occurring species. They were made. Tinkered with, actually. A group of fleshmages banded together and began studying Harpies to report the information back to the Gilded Summit so we could better combat them. One of those mages got it into his head that perhaps they could do something to the Harpies to make them less aggressive and more personable. They could perhaps even change them so much that they become a race we could trade with and have communication with and what not.

That's tantamount to hubris isn't it?

They're fleshmages, Valkut, hubris is their line of work. Anyway, one of the fleshmages became a tad too invested in the project. He began to shape the Harpies beyond simply their brains. He did so with a private stock he had wrest from the colony they were studying and performed all of this completely in secret.

Barking mad.

Hah. Hardly, he was simply an exceptionally lonely man who found himself rather attracted to the lithe form of the harpies but found their lack of breasts, beaks and bestial legs a tad bit beyond the depths of degeneracy he was willing to sink to. He poked, prodded and twisted the Harpies he had until he succeeded at reducing their size so they fit more easily into his ideal of a proper woman.

Eidric, most Coefin are hardly taller than a teenager.

It was quite some time ago. Ephebophilia was in vogue. That and life expectancy was at an all-time low. These times were the death throes of the Second Kingdom of Ruin. Most women weren't expected to see beyond thirty years. Shack up the boys and girls at sixteen and get them between the sheets as fast as you could because we needed every child they were going to produce in the precious few years they had left on Ekondria. Continuing along, this fleshmage gave this new race human faces albeit with distinctly shaped eyes. Rounder, inherited from the avian blood that ran within them, and sharper than most humans. The beaks fell away, replaced instead with a proper mouth and nose, and gone were the feathers that covered their face, sculpted away so that the plumage enhanced the eyes, the cheekbones, and the mouth.

Figure he didn't like the tickles on his bollocks?

Perhaps. Gave them breasts as well. Or something close to it – some Coefin don't have nipples. Harkens back to the experiments having different effects on each Harpy he modified. Some females have them, some don't. Same goes for the males. Dominant trait to, so it's passed on to the children. Changed around their bone structure as well; accentuated their hips, increased the density of their skeletal structure, overall made them sturdier despite their smaller stature. Also adjusted their arms so that they had proper human hands, just finely feathered. Removed their ability to fly in the process however – he shortened their wings.

If this man wasn't a complete nutter he may have made a better race than what he started with.

He technically did. The Coefin are outstanding allies. But then he let his libido run away with him again and stuffed enough fat into their asses that they wouldn't need feathers to cushion them if it came to it. Completely reworked their sex organs as well, so now the Coefin give birth to live young instead of laying eggs as Harpies do. Kept the feathers for some reason. Last thing he changed was their leg structure, adjusting the plumage so it went down to the knee instead of stopping just below the pelvis. Kept the bird feet and talons. Word is he liked the prospect of scratching. Finally he gave them all a once over and varied their plumage wildly. Too wildly in fact – the magic in their veins means that parents don't know what kind of feathers their young will have until they're born.

And...did he get his wish? Did he wind up with a Coefin wife?

He did, for a time. She gave birth to three of his children.

Were they mutants?

Surprisingly, no. They were Coefin still but the finer workings of their biology had varied somewhat. Bit too detailed to bother going into, and honestly, it isn't something to worry about. Our understanding of Coefin/Human hybrids is that unless there are several thousand generations of it, the impact on their genetics is minimal. You can thank the magic in them for that.

And this mad mage?

Executed after he fled with his wife. The Summit was kind enough to spare her and his children. The Summit considers his execution to be the most short-sighed and idiotic thing they've done in the past three hundred years.

Why the bloody hell do they think that?

Because they put to death a man that could change the very flow of nature if he was sufficiently invested. He was brilliant – a bit mad, yes, but Chronomages have said themselves that if they could manipulate time to move backwards and not simply forward they would save him from his execution in a heartbeat. Whispers from the Grand Hall of Confluence say that the research into time reversal that is done is largely fueled by a desire to see him saved.

But most people would think he's a madman!

Most people are uninformed and woefully close-minded. He could help us uncover the secrets to the magic of racial genetics. At the moment, we simply understand how our genetics do what they do. He would help us manipulate them. This knowledge that has been lost to the ages, Valkut. He could bring about an age where every last human transcends his own limitations by being transformed into something that is more than human. No one since has been born with this man's brilliance and we killed him and burned his research! If being capable of completely changing a race makes you a madman then have me sectioned because sanity is worth that cost.

You fleshmages are off your rockers.

It's part of your post. They called me the levelheaded one at the academy.

I'm sure they did, Eidric.