What would a society of flight capable humanoids be like? assume

>>53995767
>30-40 foot wingspans
Well there go 'buildings'

your advanced questions are highly variable.

architecture: Floating or tall structures.

politics: the same as the rest of that world I guess.

trade: thriving due to the speed and lack of terrain issues.

war: aerial.

Very open cities, very expansive. Can build up and down but probably still prefer to build out.

Probs prefer building on mountains, canyons, and hard-to reach places because good luck reaching them.

Politics is whatever, pick something or mash shit together.

Same with trade and buildings. maybe a focus on tools and machines to build stuff. Not a lot of heavy things.

War waging is probably out of the question. They'd hire mercenaries or just be incredibly troll with their combat. Since their homes will be fuck-hard to get to not much for them to fight about. Probably war engines or traps and other awful things to make attacking their home an even bigger pain in the ass.

>>53995767
As >>53995780 said, wingspans that large make indoor spaces tricky. It also depends a lot on if they also have arms with normal hands or if they have to rely on talons to do work with.

Otherwise, I could see the most common preference being to build very wide platforms around the middle height of trees, and then hang tarps overhead in the upper branches to block out rain. That should offer relative shelter while still giving them room to fly, but they'd also need some pretty large thin trees for that to be feasible.

Politics depends on a lot of other factors as well, but I feel as though they'd lean more towards being communal, democratic, or otherwise have a more shared power structure, rather than something based on harsher competition or being set up as having castes of any kind. Flight requires a lot of energy, but also gives them a lot of freedom and range for territory. That makes hunting and gathering more viable, and makes them less likely to form agriculture. This in turn leads to a lack of ideas like stockpiling grain or taxing things and forming any sort of monarchy. It'd be hard for any single bird to declare something as theirs as well, since even basic construction would be a pretty big community effort to get platforms and tarps above the forest floor.

Warfare, again, depends on if they have just talons or arms as well. If they have arms, then the use of long spears, javelins, slings, bows, and other distance weaponry is obviously far favorable. If they merely have talons, then javelins are probably all they could really function with.

Trade would probably be shed feathers not used for ritual purposes, skins from any animals they hunt, and lumber from their wooded surroundings. In return, they'd probably like lightweight metal for use in hunting tools.

>>53995767

First, reduce the wingspan and put the wings where their arms are. By having them smaller with bird-like hollow bones, you can get away with smaller wings.

>what kind of architecture would they have?

Tree-houses, with big open platforms to land on.

>what would their politics be like?

Completely depends.

>what would they trade with other races?

Things from far off lands, because flying long distances is easier than travelling by road. They'd probably be better used for services, like sending messages, spying, or transporting goods.

>how would they wage war, etc?

Aerial, obviously. They could carry heavy stones in their feet and drop them from high above over targets. It would also be highly impractical to try to siege a birdman city, since they could all just fly away, or get supplies in easily.

>>53995767
Depends on what sort of building materials these dudes have access to and what sort of climate and environment they live in.

If these creatures are humanoid, their structures would likely appear similar to ours, with the exception being that it's likely made out of lighter and less enduring building materials (flying a wooden beam doesn't sound practical). Leather teepees come to mind. Native american society in general would be a good example of how this race would develop.

This wouldn't be a species that could toil for very long, things like blacksmithing and mining would be an impossibility for them. The treasures of their people would be beads, fine leathers and trophies of their kills. A written language wouldn't be possible for them to develop (how would they without tablets, or even hard and flat surfaces to write on?) but this would be circumvented with long oral traditions in a vein similar to native americans and celtic tribes.

This species wouldn't be able to wear armor, but they would be highly mobile instead. pointed wooden spears and bows would be enough to hunt and defend themselves with. Expect less in the way of long campaigns of warfare and more in the way of skirmishes and territory disputes. Really, the native americans provide the best blueprint to an avian society.

For starters they would need to live in zones with rising currents of warm air because with those wing spans they wouldn't be able to lift themselves up.

Their buildings would be like enormous gazebos, a ceiling and columns, no walls. I imagine they need some closer rooms to keep the important stuff (documents, technology that doesn't work well with open spaces, etc).

Man, imagine a hospital with people with those wings running around.