The Rookery

Book Text
The Rookery The story of Stormfeather's Pride

We, the Goahmari, have lived within the high mountain peaks of Velious' Great Divide for centuries, undisturbed and undiscovered by greedy adventurers or warring parties below. One fateful day the mighty griffin, Stormfeather, crashed down into our village, near death. We took in the unconscious griffin and put him up in the nearby cave, providing for him and healing his wounds. Days later, when he flew off completely restored, to return to his pride, we assumed that would be the last we would see of the great griffin.

We were shocked to see him return after another battle in need of healing, once more. And this time he was conscious the entire time, cooperative and willing to be led by us. The next time he returned it was not he that was injured, it was one of his mates. We cared for her, just as we had for him, binding her broken wing and nursing her back to health. Soon thereafter she returned and made a nest in the nearby cave.

We enjoyed caring for the griffin and would often pet her feathers and listen to her purr. It was not rare to find a group of us meditating around the griffin's nest as she sat on her eggs. When the griffawns hatched we continued to care for both mother and fawns. We would watch the fawns while she hunted and ensure that they did not wander out of the cave.

Stormfeather would often visit, sometimes injured from another battle, sometimes in perfect health. By the time the great griffin died many of his pride had been born and raised amongst us within the Rookery.

One fateful day a griffin like no other landed amongst us, screaming. It was in great pain, but carried no wound we recognized! By meditating with it while caring for it within the Rookery, some of our most advanced seers learned that it had been created through arcane experimentation, somewhere within the mountain! It seemed that whoever was doing this had chosen Stormfeather's Pride intentionally.

We never sought this place of nightmares, but we saw enough of its creations. More and more of the griffins returning to the Rookery were different, and we began to call these different creatures as gryphons. Some would be colored sickly. Others would have scale where feather should be. Though they were able to change their physical body and augment their talents, but they were never able to change their homing instinct. Whenever one would escape it would find its way to our village and our healing hands.

The cave, now called the Rookery, is the pride's ancestral nesting ground. Many of the fawns born within this cave, watched by me and my brethren, have returned later to nest and hatch their own fawns. It has become our heart and the center of our beliefs.

"One day," it is said, "a good-touched traveler will walk amongst us in our hour of need. They will be carried by a gryphon into the sky to save us all from the battleground upon the precipice." I don't know when this day will come, but we care for these majestic creatures as if it were our only reason for life and am glad that they may well return the favor to all of us.