Your party encounters a harpy. You know three things about them:

>beat harpy down to -1 HP
>Stabilize through healing
>Take to Elves
>"Hey, we killed this, we demand a reward!"
>If they say no, heal it to positives and toss it at the elves
>If they say yes, take the reward then heal it and toss it at the elves anyway
>In either case, take anything the elves still have on their person

We can't lose here.

>Beat the snot out of it.
>Keep it just alive enough so that it can be captured.
>Get her to be less of a picky eater, she can eat rations and cattle meat, complaining will be punished.
>Make her into a loyal servant.
>Oh, and use her as a sex slave, I guess.

Without hesitation, my character engages the harpy in combat to save the commoners. The Righteous must always take a stand against the Wicked!
He'll begin by slinging stones, and switch to javelins if the slattern gets closer.

I've got some meat for that slut right here

*unfastens ye olde dick*

Our party captures rare and exotic animals to sell to private zoos and collectors.

We're capturing that harpy and caging her.
Or at least clipping her wings and trimming her claws before chaining her up.

Should we fail to find a buyer then she'll be kept for our own personal collection.

We might also go an collect one of the elves also.

Pull back, warn the elves, maybe set a trap for the monster if we can afford the delay to whatever quest we're on.

Keyword here is that it 'seems' to be alone. With something that can fly, has a distinctive screech, and has bird-like vision, that's not a guarantee.

Once there was a pathetic, stupid, flea-bitten harpy that REALLY annoyed the wrong person. He killed it, ate its heart, and put its rotting carcass on display as a warning to the rest. The end.

Rolled 3 (1d20)

I roll to seduce.

>The gods have enough free time to give a shit if I roast one harpy for dinner.
Sounds to me like the gods are pussy ass half deities who can barely be arsed to receive proper faith. So fuck 'em, eat it anyways. My curses in death will drag them from their thrones and poison the minds of their flock, and the Elves shall deify my memory to give me immortality as their savior from the sky menace.

Break out my elf cologne that I use to seduce all the ladies (cause everyone knows elves are hawt) and spray it on a nearby bunny or something similarly innocent and harmless, but capable of running away at high speeds. A cheetah would be ideal but they are uncommon.
The harpie is deceived and goes for the scented animal while me and my crew sneak past

But gods don't care if the harpy eats someone? Double standards!

>that pic
>imagining those huge-ass talons on dick
This is gonna be extremely painful.

She's a big girl.

...

1) ask harpy how much can she offer for 20 elves
2) go to elves and ask how much can they offer for harpy's head
3) take elves money and murder them
4) Feed harpy, take her money and kill her when she can't fly from pvereating

For you she is at least.

Do they ONLY eat the flesh of humanoids, not, like, any normal food? Like, is there literally nothing else that won't make them horribly ill and die?

Because if so, then ho boy, we've got a logistical problem on our hands. Now, the easiest solution I'm seeing is get some of our citizens (elves primarily) to agree to monthly/daily flesh donations- we'll have our healers there to repair damage and reduce suffering to a minimum. However, even to feed a single harpy that would require either one exceptionally giving person or several above-average citizens just to feed a single harpy. It's a barely workable short-term solution.

If we ever want to truly integrate the harpies into our empire, then, it will be an arduous endeavor. Increasing the kingdom's population through the usual means of course would help, as the more people there are in general the more people willing to donate flesh there will be. It is probably also wise to promote religions that focus on giving freely to others and cultivating a narrative for the kingdom that paints the average citizen as one willing to help others in order to increase the proportion of people willing to go through with voluntary flesh donations. We should strongly consider options that may result in more alchemists and healers in the kingdom as well, as the latter is neccesary for flesh donations and the former could make pain-numbing salves to make the process more palatable.

While mandatory donations are off the table, it may be acceptable to the general populace to require prisoners to undergo flesh donation- this would ease the burden on voluntary donators and perhaps dissuade crime as well.

The most viable long-run plan is to hire a great alchemist to look into the creation of soulless elf-flesh homunculi that could be grown and eaten without ethical concerns.

Or just kill the harpies.

Dick bitten off.

People who can fly natively would be really valuable though. Probably worth the investment.

>Killing a potential population center you can instead incorporate into your empire
You really gotta look at the big picture, man

Farm trolls. Develop a variant on Flesh to Stone, Flesh to Tastier Flesh. (If you seared it into a troll steak, could you simply use the cantrip that makes meager meals taste amazing?)

If the gods are that petty, then I'm going to start a goddamn KFC out of harpy genocide. I fucking dare them.

An excellent idea. You're hired. Be at the king's counsel room tomorrow after breakfast.

>Wat do?
That question assumes that my party and common sense and/or instinct of self preservation exist at least in some proximity to each other. Which is not the case. Like completely.

Someone will probably again drop bleeding and there is a decent possibility that halfling will try to play a game of bulldog bit with harpy.

Harpies can thrive on a diet high in any kind of meat. In fact, harpies in the wild mostly subsist on mundane birds and game animals. It's just that elf-flesh is like crack to them.

>Even if you're an LG paladin, the GM won't penalize you for slaying a harpy this close to an elven settlement

Why would they penalize him. Why would that even be a possibility.

That's the opposite of the situation presented in OP, though.

"They only eat other humanoids if desperate." Doesn't say anything about them eating non-humanoids.

I'm the OP, I would know

Then you need to get a whole lot better at writing so people can understand what you're asking.

Honestly? I do, yeah.

I don't think it's bad. Just from the text in the OP I assumed it would be something along the lines of and was about to post something about using whatever non-humanoid food it eats to get close enough to it to farther investigate the situation.