The Ravens

Because of my great-grandfather's awesome life story (which I really don't know a lot of) and his sick last name, I have decided to appropriate that name for me own fictional family. However, that means that I need a reason for such a badass last name (Ravenhill). The second part of the name is really easy, just have them live on a hill. Then the question becomes why this specific hill was known for having Ravens on it? In doing some research into ravens (biologically and in folklore) I found a few useful pieces of information about them. It turns out that unlike crows, ravens tend to come in pairs (known as an unkindness). They are also known for being noticeably smarter than crows, and truly obsessed with shiny things. They have three main associations in mythology: death, tricksters, and knowledge. Having all of these facts put together, I decided to put a tree with two ravens on it on top of this hill. This unkindness of ravens won't be minor gods or weird spirits or anything though. Instead I want to pull some cards from the decks of Rachel Aaron, Malaz, and Robert Jordan each. The realms (or Reflections) and the ways in which they strangely intersect have already been introduced elsewhere. And it has been established that, under the right circumstances, travel can be possible from one realm to the other, if they are aligned closely enough. So now we need a way to get avatars of death and trickery onto a hilltop situated by a river and in the foothills of a mountain range. Therefore, we will put an ancient, forgotten battlefield here (because that sounds like a strategically significant spot, and thanks Jordan). Instead of an actually doomed last stand however, this is only going to be an APPARENTLY doomed last stand, that gets reversed on the attackers. In other words, there will be both a massive number of people being tricked all at the same time, and a massive amount of people dying at the same time. What else could a pair of trickster-death-avatars ask for? Therefore, this highly inquisitive pair comes through the new hole in reality and immediately starts to investigate this new playground. Unfortunately they stay a bit too long, and stray a bit too far. Since the conflux of events which allowed them to enter closes before they can get back to it, and because their home is too divorced from the nature of The Funhouse, they become stuck in an ever-shrinking circle around this hilltop. Eventually a village is founded just to the south side of the river they are to the north of, but their power remains bounded by this river. The village is small, and just barely produces enough death for them to survive off of. Unfortunately, playing pranks isn't really a thing one can do on the average woodland animals, and on the rare occasion that a bumpkin ventures to the hill to explore, they let loose with all of the built mischief they have in their blood. Being an uneducated, superstitious lot, the peasants become convinced that these seemingly immortal birds are possessed or something, leading them to label the place Raven Hill, and stay far away from it.

Summary

Nobody seems to really know about the origins of these strange birds, and nobody really cares about them other than the villagers of Brackish. Historians are aware of the events of the battle which led up to this, and even its location, however none of the political entities involved exist anymore, so nobody really cares other than these academic types. None of the official stories include anything about the birds though, and the villagers don't know about the battle, so the two halves of legend have very little probability of being linked. Even if they were linked, the people who understand enough about the nature of the relationship of how The Reflections relate to their parallel realms is incredibly small however, so nobody really even has this third piece required to make sense of the other parts. It is extremely esoteric knowledge, which is not very useful to the less civilized, not academically focused Reflection that is The Corner.

Date of Setting

Probably about 500ish years previous

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