The Soul Sirens
Locations: Abyss / Grand Abyss; the Plains of Gallenshu; shores of the Scalding Sea; Torremor [wandering]
Picture, if you dare, a cabal of beings that exist in that shadowlands between fiend and fey—half-fiend harpies who’ve mastered both the ranger’s art of hunting and the bard’s gift of song. But these aren’t your regular blood-hungry hunters or wandering minstrels, mind you. The Soul Sirens are something far more profound and terrible.
Each Siren, I’m told, begins as one of Ardat’s chosen—a harpy who’s shown particular talent for both cruelty and beauty. Through rituals that would make a Blood War veteran’s stomach turn, they’re transformed, and infused with fiendish essence until they become something altogether worse. Their voices, already deadly, become instruments of metaphysical corruption.
But here’s the real dark of it, cutter—what makes them truly dangerous isn’t their physical prowess or even their supernatural abilities. It’s their philosophy. See, the Soul Sirens believe that every being has a song of suffering waiting to be released. They don’t just torture—they “conduct,” as they put it. Each victim’s screams become part of what they call the Grand Cacophony, a growing symphony of pain that they believe will eventually reveal some fundamental truth about the nature of existence.
I once witnessed their handiwork in the twisted spires of Vorganund. They had this celestial trapped—some poor sod who’d gotten lost in the wrong layer. Three Sirens circled him, each singing a different harmony. The first sang of his past glories, the second of his current failures, and the third of the peace he could find in surrender. By the third day of this, he wasn’t just broken—he was transformed. Upped and joined their bloody choir, so he did!
Their current leader of the Sirens , a particularly nasty piece of work called Melodia the Dissonant (planar half-fiend harpy [she/her] / CE), has composed seven Songs of Unmaking—each one designed to strip away a different layer of a being’s identity until all that’s left is raw potential for Ardat to reshape or consume. Right cerebral for inhabitants of the Abyss, wouldn’t you say? Taking something pure and corrupting it into something new, but doing it with such artistic flair that the victim almost thanks you for it.
The Soul Sirens are organised in what they call Verses (but I’d call covens); small groups of three to five harpies who work in discordant harmony. Each Verse specialises in a different approach to corruption: some focus on physical torture, others on psychological manipulation, and the most dangerous specialise in spiritual corruption. The most elite among them are handpicked by Ardat to form her personal guard, the Chorus Immortal.
Current chant is that Ardat and the Soul Sirens have been developing new songs—ones that can turn betrayal itself into a weapon. Imagine that, cutter—music that can make a demon lord’s own treachery poison them from within. That’s the kind of dark innovation that keeps tanar’ri awake at night, it does.
Canonical Sources:
Dragon Magazine #359 (Ardat, mention of the Soul Sirens)
Source: Jon Winter-Holt