Medieval & Fantasy Minecraft Roleplaying

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Use of Messenger Birds

Faelin

The Court Jester
Retired Staff
Messenger birds are nothing more than birds trained to go back home from wherever they are released. Notable for having higher bandwidth than your average rural state, a carrier pigeon is able to carry small items and scrolls with text written upon them. The parcel the bird carries must be sufficiently light for it to comfortably travel with it, or the bird might peck it off (unless also trained to ignore it). The parcel generally shouldn't exceed 75g.

Messenger birds are trained to return to a single point from where they are released. Different pigeons can have different homing points, but they must be trained to return to those points specifically. A pigeon can travel up to 160km in a day, so one can assume that a pigeon would be able to clear Altera inside of a day. A pigeon has to be sent by more mundane means (boat, cart, etc) to the location it will reside before taking a message back home.

Pigeons must be trained by an experienced individual. That means one requires an aviarist keeping an aviary to train the birds. Aviaries have specific requirements in their infrastructure, and so must be custom built as well as have justification for being where they are. A small town has no reason for an aviary, while a major city or political center will require one or more in order to remain in contact with the rest of the world. For simplicity's sake, messenger birds are most often trained to return to their home aviary.

Because of the expense of sending messenger birds out to various locales, along with the expense of training them (aviarist is a dedicated job, with apprenticing) and the small cargo capacity, messenger birds aren't used for everyday mail but for high urgency messages and emergency notifications. A coronation, a flood, the death of an important noble, and so on.

Cut down to simple IC stuff:

1. Messenger birds can only go to one location, the location they were trained to return to by an aviarist. They cannot seek out specific people or towns, and can only go to where they originally came from.

2. Messenger birds will only go to towns with aviaries. To send a bird to a specific town, it must have been raised in that town's aviary.

3. Birds can't be magicked into existence. A bird must be purchased from a town that keeps an aviary, and that town should have a dedicated aviarist taking care of the aviary.

4. Birds aren't powerlifters, and their cargo can't exceed around 75g. That means they can carry small jewelry and concise messages (a book of up to 2 pages), but can't carry a stack of emeralds or the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Be reasonable with what you're giving a bird.


Credits:
Baron for content and writing.
 
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