A Conspiracy of Ravens

In every city and most towns, there is a tall wooden building. The walls are studded with holes, and offer little protection from the weather. Countless birds can be seen flying to and fro, day and night, navigating around each other with effortless ease. Regardless of the climate, the birds in questions are abnormally large ravens, without fail.

The wooden structures lack a door - in fact, the entire lower third is simple a solid support from the rest of the towering building. The function is to act as another stop in the Conspiracy - the finest and fastest messaging service in all the land - or so the rumour goes. There are no human handlers to these birds, for they are not any beast - some ancient happening gifted them twice over - both the ability to speak in the tongues of humanoids and the intelligence to use it. Combining this with their natural gift of flight, they established themselves as a de-facto postal service, either physically carrying the message or relaying it by word-of-beak. This service is offered at decent rates, affordable to those who would have need of such a service, as well as rumours of the truly destitute being given free service when it matters most. Governments and armies throughout the land use the Conspiracy, as the fees are substantially less than hiring magical help.

However, the service is not as benign as it seems. The ravens are privy to much knowledge best kept in secret, and are all too willing to sell the information on to parties they can trust. If one were to discover the truth and attempt to spread it, the Conspiracy would quickly utilize their considerable monetary wealth to hire a 'trouble-shooter' before the damage became too great.

The birds themselves are about as varied as any race in temperament, bar that they are all fiercely loyal. General trends include protecting their less-intelligent kin and looking down their beaks at the bird-familiars of magic users. Furthermore, they do not get along with druids, finding their naturalist outlook haughty, boring and backwards. They are far more in-tune with the industrious races and cultures.

Prices should be left to DM discretion, with costs increasing as distance increases. Physical mail should be roughly 1.5x more than word-of-beak services, with maximum weights being no more than could be carried by two ravens holding a piece of string attached to the object.

Orphaned Characters

I was looking through my characters folder when I realised that few of them have games any more. I figured I'd post the character details here, and if people are interested I'll put the stats and the such up. If you use any of them as NPCs I'd love to hear about it.

Ancis Tane, Reluctant Skeleton

Ancis was born to a pair of retired adventurers, and was inspired by their tales to follow the family tradition. He trained relentlessly as a dungeoneering rogue, and finally set out on his 19th birthday to seek fame and fortune.

Sadly, this ended in disaster. The crew had been hired to take out a necromancer who had infested a local tomb. They had reached the villans lair, only to be absolutely slaughtered by the magical onslaught. And so it was the necromancer set about his rituals to raise them as fresh minions. As fate would have it, the groups Paladin had barely survived, and struck down the necromancer mid-incantation before expiring himself. The result of this was an incomplete raise dead spell - a skeleton with free will.

Ancis couldn't bear to go back home, having failed at the first hurdle. He knew his parents would be disappointed with his new found status, and so he resolved to fix the issue himself - get filthy rich to afford a resurrection spell that would still function on him.

He was forced to wear a metal mask, which went oddly unquestioned. He also had to find convenient excuses to avoid healing from the groups cleric, instead performing battle-field repairs with the bones of fallen enemies.

Balen Ralacio, Errant Bard

Balen was born to better things. The son of a knight of considerable standing, he was trained well in the arts of chivalry and war, or so his father thought. In actual fact, he was usually chasing the women around the castle grounds and sneaking into the attached town. His father increasingly despaired of him, until the final straw - Balen was discovered mid-coitus with a noblewoman from a rivalling family. He jumped before he was pushed, entering into self-exile and wandering the world, picking up useful skills as he went.

He thought of himself as hot shit, basically put. Rather than sing tales of other heroes to inspire his allies, he would sing about his own greatness and the shortcomings of the enemies. His main pursuit was carnal pleasure, especially when he could bed a noblewoman. He was a pig of a man, and pretty thoroughly horrific if jovial about it.

Biraeg the Scythian, Warlord in Waiting

A friend was planning a game set in the murky times of Greek myth. Rather than playing a civilized welp, I rolled up a bastard-hard horse archer nomad. Biraeg the Scythian was covered head-to-foot in tattoos, took the heads of his enemies as they fell before him and smoked copious amounts of marijuana. He had abysmal people skills owing to his complete disregard of Greek culture and customs, but could not be matched in speed or archery prowess.

Something we were looking forwards to was his mirth at the Greek pantheon interfering with his destiny - to lead his people in a glorious war/migration, which would have ran parallel to the actual migration of the Scythian peoples.

Abdullah, Desert-Dwelling-Dwarf

Rather than playing a straight dwarf from the mountains, I decided to try something a bit more left-of-field, hence Abdullah the Arabic-influenced Dwarf Wizard, who made his money as a merchant. He was a complete bastard, playing LE to the letter and somehow steering the party towards his chosen goals.

Notable achievements include using the groups rogue to test a trap, (leading to his death) as well as murdering the party's paladin later on - though arguably this was in self defence. Despite his horrific inclinations, he ended up being the party negotiator due to his mercantile inclinations.

This campaign was notable for pocket-sand being thrown at every god-damn opportunity, leaving many enemies unable to fight back as our rag-tag band of escaped prisoners beat them down.