"If you hear a crunch under your foot, it's already too late." — Lorekeeper Aeron
If people of Avalonia could vote and choose the most boring uninteresting animal that is more of a nuisance than anything good, snails would make for a good contender - especially if it is cabbage season and farmers have trouble chasing them out of their fields everywhere. But these little slimy fragile creatures are even more sinister than they look. Why else would there be so many manuscripts depicting them embroiled in an epic battles against heavily armoured knights?
Snails, it is rumoured, are able to link their fluids in the heat of snaily fashion and thus create a telepathic link that is completely unique to this species. Think of it like an initiation lightbulb goes off in their little animal brains, as they get off, and they suddenly... know. They just know how to do send messages to their one true snail love. And then their other subsequent snail loves. Fascinating, really, especially if you are a witch or a magician.
Many people have wondered where their communication powers come from and the current theory is that because they eat whatever is tasty, they probably also feast on many alchemical and magical plants and herbs that are out there. Despite snails being so slow, it seems to be almost impossible to prevent them from anything they want to.
Many magicians also tried to harvest their capabilities for telepathic links, and create new weird devices that would help with secure private communications between people, but these experiments haven't proven fruitful just yet - and if they did, the wizard in question is keeping it a highly guarded secret for strategic reasons.
If you are lucky enough that you do know how to read and snails and magical books do not bring you nightmares (yet), you might stumble upon some instructions how to make your own pasilalinic-sympathetic compass out of snails as it is a popular theory that this should really work.
