Harpy Project

Harpy Project

Name	Harpy Project
Type	Covert weapons program / conditioning pipeline
Status	Active
Headquarters	Nebu (restricted facilities)
Leader	Doctor Polezah (modern program lead)
Parent	Tribal authority / Alpha’s inner structure
Affiliation	Harpies
First	Tribal: Bloody Beginnings

This article contains plot details for Tribal: Bloody Beginnings and related adaptations.

The Harpy Project is a covert weapons program in the Tribal universe responsible for creating the Harpies, an engineered line of elite female operatives designed for assassination, infiltration, and direct protection of Nebu’s leadership.

Within the narrative, the program is treated as both a military asset and a moral horror: a long-running institutional pipeline that selects children, erases identity, and conditions survivors into obedient tools.

Overview

The Harpy Project is described as an old system—treated as something the Tribe has been running for so long that it feels like tradition rather than invention. In the modern era, it is linked to Doctor Polezah, whose involvement is framed as “improvement” and refinement rather than creation.

The Project’s output—Harpy operatives—are used for:

• protection of high-ranking figures (especially Alpha)
• missions considered too sensitive for standard wolves
• infiltration and assassination, regardless of target gender

Purpose

The Project’s primary purpose is to manufacture a category of operative who can be trusted with tasks requiring:

• absolute obedience
• psychological coldness under command
• surgical violence without hesitation
• a public persona that can move through social spaces without raising suspicion

In-setting, Harpies represent a “final solution” class of asset: deployed when failure is not tolerated and cleanup must be total.

Recruitment and selection

Candidates are selected in early childhood, typically between ages four and seven. Selection criteria include physical promise, pain tolerance, and—critically—lack of family connections that could create competing loyalty. Names are recorded once and then erased. From that point forward, candidates are treated as property rather than citizens.

Conditioning pipeline

Although exact procedures are intentionally obscured in-world, the narrative outlines a staged development model that functions like a production pipeline.

Stage 1: Erasure

The first stage is identity destruction: name removal, isolation from origin, elimination of external attachment, and replacement of selfhood with function.

Stage 2: Lethality training

By around age ten, candidates are trained to kill unarmed; by fourteen, they are proficient in blades, poison, and advanced hand-to-hand combat. By seventeen, they are tested in mission-like scenarios to validate readiness.

Stage 3: Integration

The “integration” phase (around ages 17–18) is described as the turning point where the system completes the psychological conversion: obedience becomes instinct, and emotional autonomy is replaced with programmed loyalty.

Completion

By around age twenty-one, surviving candidates are considered “complete” and fully deployable.

Program oversight

The Project is explicitly associated with Doctor Polezah in the modern era. His leadership is described as increasing survival rates compared to earlier cycles, implying that the program has a history of high fatality and disposal.

Doctrine and control mechanisms

The Harpy Project is supported by institutional doctrine designed to ensure compliance. These mechanisms include:

• Total dependence — candidates are raised so the system is the only “family” they have.
• Bond control — attachment is framed as weakness or redirected into mission loyalty.
• Punishment culture — failure is met with correction rather than rehabilitation.
• Disposable framing — even success is treated as replaceable; the line matters more than the individual.

Role in the wider Tribal Universe

The Harpy Project intersects with other major systems in the setting:

Relationship to Deathwave

While Deathwave represents a parallel engineered-weapon line, the Harpy Project is framed differently in tone: Harpies are often deployed as both killers and presence-tools (guards, infiltrators, close proximity assets), while Deathwave units are pure assassination instruments. Both represent institutional transformation of people into weapons.

Relationship to Alpha

Harpies are tied to Alpha’s power directly, serving as both shield and silent enforcement. The Project’s existence reinforces the theme that Nebu’s rule is built on engineered violence rather than loyalty earned naturally.

Notable outcomes

The most important Harpy Project outcomes shown in the narrative include:

• The existence of elite Harpy triads deployed in coordinated formations.
• Harpy survival “exceptions,” such as Zinetha, whose actions suggest that even engineered obedience can fracture under the right conditions.

In Tribal Comics

The Harpy line appears prominently in the comic adaptations, including sequences where Harpy units are used as tests, guards, or assassination responses.

• Tribal Comics Issue 3: The Rise of a Conqueror depicts Harpies being defeated and broken as part of Khalembo’s public dominance demonstration.

See also

• Harpies
• Zinetha
• Doctor Polezah
• Deathwave
• The Dark Alpha
• Nebu
• Tribal: Bloody Beginnings
• Tribal Comics