I am not sure what those guys realy are or how on earth i came up with the concept...
But i used them from time to time in a sort of a RPG platform (i think it can be translatet to "The kingdom of birds" or something like that, it is populated by an humanoid like ornitoid race, the main protaginists looks pretty much like the Japanses Tengu, but i came up with them long before i did knew about the Tengus, i just can't describe how excited i was to find out that those birdmen where an actual and genuine part of the mythologic history somewhere in this world as well!) me and my brother made very long time ago.
Later we did add in more humaniod reces, like moutain elves, an improved more human like elf race which cooperated with the native tall and muscular ornit men (i desigend the ornit men with a larger mass of upperbody musculature compared to humans, since about 2/4 of their planet is a giant unfriendly jungle like wilderness populated with all sorts of monsters that fit in there i taught they kept most of their former wing musculature; in order to defend them self evolution made them extremly taugh and they lost their ability to fly long time ago when their ancestors became too bulky, but develope a human like intelligence). Those snail-octopus like being creatures i attempted to draw here, despite i realy can't draw, where among the protagnists they originaly came from the wilderness but turned out to posess a very high intelligence well in class with the birds and the humanoids and ability to comunicate well enugh to be understood and sided by the mountain elves and the Bird men. They dig out tunnels underground where they live in order to keep them self warm in the winter and create a cold humid climate in the summer since i suppose they don't like if they skin is drying out too much. There are many different species of them, but they all share the common biology shown here, they just vary in size, shell patterns and some time living habitats since a few of them are semi aquatric races, they breath air and i suppose they need to hawe some stype of inerna support structure made of bone i in order to be able to use humanioid weapons i guess.
