Voorxel (vôrk-sŭl)
Are you saying if I try to take this scroll, which is not intended for me, from that creature, it will try to take my hand? How does it know? What if it makes a mistake?
It was around 63 years ago when the command came down to Lords of the Elven Empire: Destroy the Rysbecht Stations. Like most things arcane, the Elves considered those stations a carefully and jealously guarded secret which could not be allowed to fall into the hands of the murderous, despicable Kynekin armies. And so it was the primary means of rapid, near-realtime communication between Elven cities went dark. The knowledge needed to rebuild those arcane inventions was lost to the fires of the Great War, and the passing of information fell back to older, hand-carried methods. These methods were slow and significantly more susceptible to interception and disruption by enemies of the Empire.
But Elven leaders had acquired a taste for rapid communications. The newly declared Emperor from his seat in Al'Jymoor sought a less rigid, less complex, more direct, more scalable, and less cumbersome means to share information than what had been offered by the messaging stations and so directed his advisors to find a solution. With their strong connection to the animals of the land, the Mages of Al'Jymoor would settle on creating a new breed of creature specifically meant to reliably carry information. This was the birth of the modern "Voorxel".
For nearly five years the best and brightest Elven animal handlers, woodsmen, and mages worked side-by-side, pouring time and effort into breeding, training, and magically augmenting obedient, resilient, aggressive wyverns roughly the size of a large hawk.
Their augmentations grant them an incredible range of unique features such as resistance to the elements, to the burning sun, and the freezing snow. They have incredible stamina and their metabolisms are extremely efficient, allowing them to exist for extended periods of time in the harshest environments with minimal sustenance. They are completely devoted to the Elves, and rigorously trained to use their razor sharp teeth and long talons to viciously attack any non-Elf standing between them and the delivery of their message.
To address the concern of the capture or killing of a voorxel, simple and easy-to-remember arcane rituals were developed around the use of wax seals and naming of the recipients which protect against the opening of a message by anyone who was not authorized. The voorxel are magically attuned to these seals and rituals. They can sense via smell the general direction where the closest recipient can be found. Some combination of distance and intent causes the wax-seal ritual to agitate the voorxel in the presence of someone other than the intended recipient(s), sending the beasts into a murderous frenzy. Be wary if you approach a voorxel bearing a message not intended for you. Many a finger have been lost.
While not as fast as the rysbecht stations' magical methods of communication, these "Voorxel" have proven exceptionally reliable for securely delivering hand-written and magically-sealed messages throughout what remains of Elven lands.
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