Echo Chimes

The Echo Chimes are an ingenious magical communication system developed by Air Keeper Vaelin Cloudchaser. These delicate chimes are etched with glyphs and tuned to harmonic tones. To activate a chime, the user speaks their message while dripping water over its metal rods as a conductive agent to imprint the vibrations. The echo chimes can encode up to 20 seconds of speech, so complex messages may need to be broken into multiple parts. Sets of chimes are positioned high atop watchtowers and hilltops, propagating spoken information from one station to the next across miles. Skilled tenders meticulously maintain the network.
Origin and Creation Here is the origin and creation information for the Echo Chimes rewritten in paragraph format:
It was nearly fifty years after the cataclysmic Collapse when Air Keeper Vaelin Cloudchaser first pioneered the ingenious Echo Chimes to address a pressing communication need. With Alyeria's population fragmented and spread thin across the ravaged lands, rapid long-distance communication was imperative, yet messengers took weeks on foot and carrier pigeons were frustratingly unreliable. Vaelin dedicated decades to experimenting with imbuing metalwork with air-aspected enchantments, seeking to transmit messages instantly.
Finally, after meticulous sigil crafting and metallurgy techniques rediscovered from scrolls in the Great Library, the first functional Echo Chimes were born. Each delicate chime was smelted from purified ores in air-aligned forges and etched with glyphs channeling the domains of Sound, Wind and Word. When activated by speaking into the central metal rod while dripping water as conductive agent, messages could be encoded into the chimes' harmonic tones and propagated from one relay point to the next at astonishing speeds.
These revolutionary chimes connected the scattered settlements once more, allowing strategic coordination through instantly relayed information. For the first time in a century, knowledge could spread rapidly, outposts could warn of impending threats, and Keepers could deliberate urgent matters across vast distances. The Echo Chimes gave humanity hope of reunion after the isolating silence of the Collapse.
Prince Galestrom, however, has banned their use in his kingdom, fearing uncontrolled communication. Without the echo chimes to spread word, his lands rely on foot and horseback messengers for decrees from the throne.