Selmara's Ravens
When fast, long distance communication is required it is done through the obsidian messengers of Selmara—ravens of unnatural intelligence whose glossy feathers seem to absorb light rather than reflect it. For example, for students of Oathwatch Academy, these creatures serve as the sole conduit of communication between the academy's inhabitants and their distant families, delivering message scrolls through means that defy conventional understanding of avian behavior or magical transportation.
Scholars have long documented disturbing patterns in these corvid messengers. The ravens are never seen en-route, though they are seen leaving and approaching. At times, rather than fly to their destination, they instead appear suddenly at window ledges or perched upon bedposts when no one is watching. They brook no interference with their duties; attempts to intercept messages not intended for the interceptor have resulted in consequences ranging from minor injuries to inexplicable nightmares that persist for weeks. Most troubling, the birds sometimes deliver messages that were never sent, bearing news that could not possibly have been known by the purported sender at the time of dispatch.
Scholars debate the true nature of these ravens endlessly in heated debates at Academies across the world, including Oathwatch Academy. Some maintain they are merely well-trained familiar spirits bound to Selmara's service. Others suggest more disquieting possibilities—that each raven contains a fragment of the death goddess herself, or that they do not truly exist in the material plane at all, merely projecting their forms from the realm of Death momentarily to complete their mysterious errands.
Some people have developed elaborate superstitions around these messengers. They leave offerings of polished stones or bread crusts on windowsills to curry favor. Others carefully compose their messages according to rigid structures, believing certain patterns of words are more likely to reach their destination unaltered. A particularly persistent myth claims that a raven will appear three days before someone faces life-threatening danger—not to deliver a warning, but merely to mark them as one who walks close to Selmara's realm.
The ravens will not deliver messages to The Valtareth Imperium. Nor will they deliver messages to Nythrathis. Distance, however, is not an issue for these ravens either. It is well known that they regularly carry messages between the Elven kingdom of Vaelthwyn in Sylvaris and House Syltharis in Eldoria, for example. Not all messages sent by these ravens reach their destinations for reasons that no one understands. Interestingly though, the ravens will at times, deliver the exact message a person needs, regardless of who it was originally intended for. Legend tells of a maiden that was once rescued because she sent a message for help by one of these ravens and it delivered it to a knight nearby that was able to ride to her rescue before it was too late.
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