Courier's Mark
The Kendari Couriers operate throughout the Great Ring, delivering news, messages, and items that are essential to healthy commerce and even international relations. Their missions regularly take them to dangerous locations such as war zones, pirate dens, and royal courts, and killing the messenger is a tradition with a long history. To deter this, the Kendari Couriers have made a practice of retaliating with extreme prejudice against anyone known to attack or injure one of their agents; some say that their "Empty Office", the branch of the Couriers that provides intelligence services for hire, was originally founded explicitly to carry out these retaliations.
In order to benefit from the protection offered by this implicit threat, the individual couriers must be rapidly and immediately recognizable as agents of the company. To ensure this, the Couriers each carry a token known as the "Courier's Mark". It is a piece of jewelry, most often a pin or a brooch, that can be worn to indicate someone is under the protection of the Kendari Couriers. It is a simple design - a circle of gold, surrounding a single pearl. The gold is engraved with a pattern of interlocked seashells which is distinctive and only used by the Couriers. Stealing or counterfeiting a Courier's Mark is a dangerous endeavor; if the company discovers it, they treat it as seriously as an attack upon one of their agents. However, if someone finds a lost Mark and returns to a courier outpost, they are entitled to a hefty reward. A few people have tried to steal or manufacture Marks in order to claim this reward, only to discover that the Couriers follow up on such incidents and usually discover the truth about how the Mark was acquired.
Comments