A Raven's Journey Pt. 1: Introduction

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It is dawn in the city of Doskvol, or Duskwall if you’re trying to impress the imperials, or North Hook if you’re one of those crazy enough to board one of the titanics and hunt Leviathans. The day is beginning, and a faint light washes over the dilapidated roofs of the tenements of Charhollow, the parapets of the mansions of Whitecrown, and the belching stacks of the factories of Coalridge. There’s professors at Doskvol Academy that say it used to stay bright all day, but since the Cataclysm, this is as bright as it gets. Just an hour of grey at dawn and twilight, and black the rest of the time. Up into that slate sky flies a lone raven, having just launched itself from the rookery of Bellweather Crematorium, home of the Spirit Wardens, and the deathseeker crows.

Lots of folks die in Doskvol. That wouldn’t really be a problem if they didn’t have a nasty habit of coming back as vengeful ghosts. The lightning fences keep out the ghosts from outside, otherwise Doskvol wouldn’t really be a city at all, but they can’t keep out those folks that die inside. That’s where the Wardens and the crows come in. Those crows are bred to find the recently deceased, and they’re experts at it. When they find someone, the Spirit Wardens come in and take the body back to the Crematorium, and they do whatever they do and there’s no more ghost.


Like I said, though, there’s lots of folks that die here. That raven looks like she’s spotted a corpse in the Crow’s Foot, and she swoops down, against a darkening backdrop, towards an ancient, crumbling spire. The tallest landmark in the district, its stone countenance is covered in a layer of soot. It used to house an observatory, but that fell off during the Cataclysm, and now it’s just a long, straight stone shaft, with a ramshackle thatched roof that is thoroughly out of keeping with the rest of the old tower. It’s been many things over its long lifetime; the aforementioned observatory, a Bluecoat watch post, a ritual sanctum, but now it’s the headquarters of the district’s chief gang, the Crows. Plenty of folks die in there, of course, as the Crows fight at the drop of a hat, or a glove, or really at the drop of anything, but this seems important. I don’t know why, I just get that feeling…

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