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Siren Race
🕑 Added 2020-07-14 16:05:42 +0000 UTCIt's been a while since I tackled making a race, so I thought I'd try D&Difying a popular mythological creature: the siren. Sirens are most famous for their appearance in Greek mythology, where they attempt to lure famous characters like Odysseus and Orpheus with their singing. There's a lot of debate about what sirens are "supposed" to look like: in some stories, sirens look like ordinary people, while in others they have the features of animals, usually birds or fish. However, since D&D already has plenty of those sorts of creatures (looking at you, harpies and merfolk), I decided to make my sirens completely humanoid- although for their lore, I also tried to incorporate as many aspects as I could from different historical depictions of the creatures.
My portrayal of the siren depicts them as a creature that was once celestial (since there is a lot of evidence of them being referred to throughout history as divine creatures) but that chose to abandon the upper planes and live instead in the mortal world. They are found living on islands (as they do in the stories of Odysseus and Orpheus) or amongst ordinary people, living virtuous lives. They do good out of obligation, however, as they live in constant fear that the gods will turn them into a harpy should they turn to a life of evil. In paintings and in the canonical lore of D&D, the siren and the harpy are often mixed together to become one creature, despite the fact that they are explicitly different. For that reason, I felt I had to include harpies in the lore of these sirens, but I made sure to incorporate them in a way that kept the two creatures distinctly separated.
For the high quality PDF version of this race, hop on over to the patron dropbox. Also, I see that Patreon has been making some changes lately with the tax they're charging people, so I really appreciate all of my current patrons sticking around despite that. Thank you guys!
