Map of the Winged Messengers

Amhir was brought before the city's council, chained and muzzled like a wild creature. The seventeen members of the council of the city of Garnalìresh were arrayed before him, their ceremonial robes dragging silently across the floor of the audience chamber.
He had been born in this city, many years before. The date of his birth, a great windstorm had rattled the mighty city, requiring the services of his mother's cabal of Stormwardens to rectify. But the arrival of a terrible storm on the night of a lizardkin's birth casts a foreboding shadow over their life, as the Map decrees...
Perhaps this was what the starseer had been warning against all those years before, Amhir thought as the councillors looked over him with eyes of judgement...

— Amhir, or the Trial of a Life

The Map of the Winged Messengers is a document found anywhere where Lizardkin live. Whether they be a small mining camp or a mighty city, the Lizardkin constantly look to the stars for guidance and aid. The Map helps specially-selected mages, known as "starseers", decipher the position of the stars in order to divine the path of the future.

Not Just A Star Chart

While the Map of the Winged Messengers does contain information about the movements of the stars of Dreandril, celestial bodies are not the only metric used by the Map. When using the Map to determine the future prospects of a newborn, for instance, a starseer will use the following information to make their prediction:

• The scale colour of the newborn child, especially if their colour is not a solid colour like green or blue but rather a mixture of colours;
• The position of the fifteen major constellations, as those born in winter tend to have more dire fate than those born in the spring, and the constellations also have their own meanings and interpretations;
• The weather on the night of the birth. If the starseer is not present the night of the birth, the family will report the conditions to them; and
• The birth information of the parents, as certain destinies or fates can affect their children as well.

Other kinds of predictions might use more esoteric measurements, such as the patron god of the asker's clan, whether they have travelled to certain religious sites in the recent decade, and what elemental magics are present in their blood.

Type

Manual, Magical / Occult

Medium

Paper

Location

Dreandril

Criticisms

Many progressive lizardkin do not like or trust the information contained in the Map for a variety of reasons. Some notice that certain scale colours (especially purples and violets) always tend to have negative fates, leading to them being rather rare due to banishment, crime, and general ideas of "disposability". Others find the whole system rather hard to follow, leading to beliefs that starseers make up their predictions on the spot or are inconsistent. Still others think that the stars are hardly a good basis for determining a child's future, and it should be the child's adulthood and their actions that should determine their worth.