In 1876, I deemed it necessary to build a rookery on my lands. There were fell creatures prowling the backroads of Cross, waiting until nightfall to prey upon the aged and the infirm, many of whom I had known since their birth.
Try as I might, I could not be everywhere at once, and so I looked to the past for some sort of answer. It came to me as I was reading the works of Snorri Sturluson one evening, and there, as I read of Odin once more, I recalled Huninn and Muninn, his ravens. The birds would return to him each evening and report what it was they had learned.
I had no need for ravens to tell me the events of the day, only to warn my friends of danger, should it be near.
With the help of some rather recalcitrant dwarves, I built the rookery. From Denmark, a distant relation of mine sent me several mated pairs of ravens, and soon the birds and I were getting along quite well. It took me some time to learn to hear what they were saying, and they very patiently refrained from tearing out my eyes during that time.
By February of 1877, the ravens called the Blood Rookery home and flew out to keep an eye on the roads. It wasn’t until April that they laid their first clutches, and it was October before we placed the first bird with an old friend of mine. This was the start of a pattern that would continue until 1927 when I had hunted the last of the creatures and tossed its rotting carcass back into Gods’ Hollow.
For fifty years, though, the ravens and I worked together, and over the next few weeks, I do believe I shall record both our success and our failures.
The reason for this is simple: I found a man hanging from my Gallows Tree today, and I wasn’t the one who put him there.
The ravens are upset as I am, though, for a different reason. Whoever put him up kept the soft bits for themselves.
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