[Fragment of Nicolas Vogel's laboratory notebook]
I've acquired the eggs. They cost a fortune and left me with barely enough funds to pay the rent for my laboratory, but now I can begin my work in earnest. I'll soon show those pea-brained admirals of ours that airborne armies are the future of warfare! And the first such army shall be my creation, and shall proudly bear the name of the Redanian Air Force!
They've hatched. Never seen harpies so tiny and – dare I say? – cute. They have no bosoms yet, but do have enormous heads and equally enormous appetites. Bird-like, through and through.
My first attempts at taming them have brought promising results. The young harpies eat out of our hands, and sometimes eat our hands as well – my assistant's already lost 2 fingers.
The ealdorman of Heddel came skittering into our tower, desperately bawling about spiders plaguing in his village, begging for our help, weeping for their picked-upon livestock and offspring, who suffer the most from the arachnoids' bites. Hmph. One swarm of mindless eating machines preying on another. How dare he interrupt my work on the Wunderwaffe for such banalities?! Instead of the arachnocide he requested, I gave him a bottle of arachnomorph pheromones. Won't he be in for a surprise. But do the peasants not say "spiders and snakes a happy home make"? I'm sure I've heard them say something of the sort.
Our funds are nearly exhausted. I shall be forced to take something from the rainy day stash I hid from Hubert in the top floor of the tower. The bulk of our outflow goes towards the purchase of pork, which the harpies devour in gargantuan quantities. Perhaps if we were to dress one up in Redanian armor now and present it at court, the king himself would become our patron?
No, no, no! The entire squadron must be present, else Radovid will deem the whole undertaking a farce!
It seems our harpies have grown tired of pork. I found the scraps of Hubert's overalls in one of their cages. No great loss. Hubert had already lost 8 fingers feeding them. Couldn't even grip a broom.
Catastrophe has struck! Someone opened all the cages and let out the harpies! I'm sure I'll find them wheezing their last in the grass outside the tower – after all, no one has fed them for a week...
