nightwyrm wrote:westrim wrote:You just brought up something that always bothered me about winged humanoids. Do they even sleep on their backs anyways? As for sex, maybe they just do doggie...the wings provide convienient handholds.
I'm not going to speak on the sex front, aside from pointing out that people can be very good at finding a way (and ways around major size differences too) but as for the sleeping, a lot comes down to how the wings are set up.
Given descriptions, they have a bat-like internal arrangement, so think of a second pair of arms (the shoulder setup will be complex) with shortish upper arms, probably quite long forearms, and very long fingers. The fingers are the wing-spars, with the forearm making up the other primary spar, kind of like a paper or fabric fan (one of the good quality types, with the paper or fabric supported spars that fan out). The skin of the wing is supported by the bone spars, and then the feathers attach to the skin.
Even with birds, they wrap their wings down their sides, and could lie on one side if they wanted to, and bats are quite a bit more flexible. If you've ever seen a bat moving on the ground, or though a tree, they tend to be using the wings as front legs (though it works better for them, they have little claws at the main wing joint (the thumb) and can grip onto thing, while the angels almost certainly lack such features, however that doesn't they don't have the full range of motion.
We've seen a comment about one of the female angels at Michael's club giving somebody (the Mason I think) a backrub with her wings (I can't be bothered tracking down the exact quote) which also implies bat levels of flexibility. So they can probably fold them fairly tightly against their back (though that may add another third to their height) or wrap them around their body. If anyone has seen the cartoon Gargoyles, that tendency for them to use their wings as a kind of cloak is probably fairly plausible for a bat (if the bat could balance on it's hind feet at least), though again it's a trick the angels can't quite match, again due to the lack of the 'wing claw' that the Gargoyles used as a 'clasp' for their 'cloak'. Though an angel could wrap their wings around themselves if they needed to, enough for a female angel to retain modesty when naked if she had to (though depending on where the wing shoulder joints are compared to the arm ones, her arms may be trapped under her 'feather dress').
One thing to keep in mind. An angel's (or a Harpy's for that matter) wings are probably their strongest limbs, quite a bit more so than their arms, and probably stronger than their legs. An angel lashing out with a wing is probably one of the more dangerous attacks they can do while unarmed (though a sword, especially if charged, will be better ... though may have less reach). If you've disarmed an angel, don't worry about what they are doing with their hands, worry about what they are doing with their wings.
Their muscular/skeletal setup is going to be something odd. Even with the extra lift from the gas pockets, the wings shouldn't be able to move them the way they do, not without a decent keel-bone to attach the kind of muscles a flyer needs (the reason that birds always look like they have big chests, that's what makes the wings work) and one of those would leave them not looking nearly as human as they are described. Then you get the complex mess that's going to be the double set of shoulders. Frankly, while you can make the physics for a loosely humanoid flyer work, even a six limbed one, you can't do it and have them still looking human, unless the wings are purely their for steering and something else is providing both the bulk of the lift, and most of the propulsion (they may, in theory have the lift covered, but even then, they shouldn't have close to the thrust to be able to catch up with even a slow moving chopper). Though given
that, then the classic anime image of them floating in the air, the wings slowly flapping, becomes quite plausible. The physics don't work, frankly I don't care myself, Rule of Cool. Also given Satan's tendency to splat people by looking at them, their is probably some way to use their 'magic' for what amounts to telekineses, and an unconscious telekinetic 'drive' would cover things quite nicely. (myself I would have gone for that rather then the 'lift sacks' but it does raise a bunch of other complications in the setting design, so I can see why things are the way they are)
One thing that's would be interesting to know is does the skin of the wings attach to the back (like pretty much any bird, bat, or similar does) or does it only go as far as the elbow joint, leaving the upper arm bare (well, covered in feathers most likely, but you get the idea) like a lot of dragon and demon images tend to go, along with some angel images. Having it link all the way to the back is going to give better flight performance (which is why everything does it that way) but is going to complicate clothing and armor options, meaning anything they wear will have to be backless to quite a degree (expect a lot of their clothing to have either shoulder straps, or a strap that goes behind the neck). The other option is less efficient for flight (but they are already having to cheat anyway) but will make the wings a lot more mobile on the ground (almost like having another pair of arms, just without useful hands) and mean they can have outfits that go most of the way up the back.
One defense/weapon I'd expect to see from both sides would be armor strips worn along the front of the wings (though attaching them would be tricky) to reinforce the wing against somebody trying to break it. An extension of that would be to have blades along the strips, so you could cut somebody in half with your wings ... would have better reach then any standard sword you can carry (though not a pole-arm) and may well hit harder, though not nearly as precise. However having anything attached there may well render the wing useless for flight purposes (which still doesn't rule it out for inside use, if you have a way of attaching and detaching it quickly ... I can think of a couple of options, though they are messy and painful).
-- Brett, who will admit to spending way too much time thinking about things like this.
