Akhemian Beacons

"Swifter than dragonflight."
~ Etched on a beacon near Emberhold

All travelers know the beacons. They stand like great broken towers on hills throughout the domain of the old Empire. No two are quite alike; some are of stone, others gleam with metals. Today that serve merely as landmarks, but once they were a vast communication network allowing messages to pass from one end of the Empire to the other in minutes, if our sources are to believed.

We know nothing of the process by which the beacons were made, nor precisely how they functioned. The ruinous hulks still dot hills throughout the old Imperial domain, serving as landmarks and sources of salvage. Few still stand at their full height - nature, war, and dragonfire have taken their toll. Imperial records give us clues to their use, however. Apparently the beacons were covered in arcane runes that served to illuminate symbols up and down the length of the towers, the pattern of which indicated certain messages. Whether the patterns indicated a specific word, letters, phrases, or some combination thereof is lost, as no code books have ever been found. This would allow messages to travel along the beacons as fast as the operators could repeat the signals, and allow the Empire to react with incredible speed to crises of all kinds, and the Emperors to be uniquely aware of all that went forward in their domain.

by MidJourney

Inventor(s)

Akhemya was the greatest mind of the Istragan Golden Age. Her name is attached to many of the technologies remembered as marvels of the Empire, and the ruins of which still stand as somber monuments to her brilliance long after her death.

Access & Availability

Questions abound among the scholars of Emberhold as to who was and was not allowed access to the Akhemian system. It seems impossible that the system was available to all, but some suggest that the wealthy could pay to use the system that was otherwise reserved for Imperial use.