Elpan Eyries

A fluttering of birds in the west and we knew that the Valyeans were on the march. And they knew our weakness.

— Commander Albert, 277 RB

The Elpan Eyries are a system of communication buildings stationed along the southern foothills of the Elpan Mountains. They were erected during the later fifteenth century of the Age of the Third Clans, and originally were built as pigeon roosts to house messenger pigeons. They were managed by a collective known as the Lamércian Royal Fanciers, or LRF, who looked after and transported the pigeons.
As time went on, due to the reasonably high altitudes of their eyries, the LRF began building signalling towers. Originally, the signally towers were built with simple lanterns, but then they were expanded upon to be able to change the colour of the lantern. A further change in 92 RB by Magi Timmas allowed the lantern to flash, giving rise to the Telephotic Code, a system of flashes of a lantern to convey meaning. Magi Timmas wrote a paper describing how to translate the Mercian Alphabet and a few general concepts such as 'danger' or 'weather warning'.
Although the beacons meant messages could travel as fast as the speed of light in good weather, the pigeons still remained as the more common method of passing information quickly through the foothills.

Utility

The messages that could be sent through the beacons were originally a simple colour-code; red referred to danger coming, blue referred to an important event, green indicated bad weather was approaching, white indicated that there was a victory, purple that there was a defeat, and yellow that help was requested.
However, the towers were improved with the introduction of flaps that allowed the lanterns to flash. Magi Timmas developed both the mechanism and the language of the Telephotic Code, and was instrumental in the upgrades to the Eyries.
Meanwhile, the pigeons were homing pigeons; raised in one of the Eyries and sent to each of the others. Each was equipped with the ability to look after close to sixty pigeons at any one time, and incubation nests to raise new pigeons. Messages were attached to the legs by means of a scroll of paper.
In the modern century, the LRF have opened to receiving and sending messages, assisting the Royal and Common Messengers in being able to send messages over long distances quickly, expanding their communication network to the Norlands and far into Eastern Lamércia.