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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RealAlHazred" data-source="post: 8866092" data-attributes="member: 25818">See, I liked the Aarakocra way before Wizards of the Coast had anything to do with the race. They stood out for me in the original Fiend Folio (1981) because they were plausible and weirdly different than the bog-standard humans and humans-with-funny-ears and short-humans-with-beards, which was how we were playing the other races at the time. Lawrence Schick created them for that book, and they were wonderfully illustrated by Jeff Dee; you can see the images at the beginning of <a href="https://dumpstatadventures.com/blog/deep-dive-the-aarakocra" target="_blank">this article</a>. I don't consider them in the same light as the later animal-people; even the <a href="https://dumpstatadventures.com/blog/deep-dive-the-tabaxi" target="_blank">tabaxi</a>, who originated in the same book, received a far less detailed treatment, with no real consideration of society or culture; they really were just cat-people out to eat your face and steal your stuff. The aarakocra were interesting. And the later article, "The Wings of Eagles" by J. E Keeping from Dragon #124 (August 1987), expanded on the stuff intelligently, providing an interesting group of NPCs to use, scenario hooks, PC options, and the like. Wizards of the Coast's only "contribution" was to cheapen the aarakocra by giving them an extra pair of arms...</blockquote>