Overview
The Bone-Read Crow Man is the curious, certain eye of Roostspire, a black-plumed, watch-marked carrion kin of the great tree-city who reads the bones and keeps the low roosts, the roosts' curious, clannish, and most certain eye. It stands a meter and three-quarters tall, watchful and quick, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in read bones rather than years. Where the Watch-Eye crow men keep the watch, the Bone-Read crow men of the tree-city read the bone, and they have been reading the first bone in the first low roost for a very long time.
Habitat
The Bone-Read Crow Man keeps to the low roosts of Roostspire, a range of tall, branch-fed ground where the tree-city is a promise and the record is a treaty. Its dwellings are coaxed into the faces of the roost-walls, hollows of laid branch and coaxed leaf that catch the warm tree-light on their inner face and the shelter of the roost on their outer. It favors the older low roosts where the bones run oldest and the reading is oldest, the places where a bone can be read without the tree-city's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Bone-Read Crow Man stands about 1.72 m tall, watchful and quick, with dense glossy black, bone-white-tipped plumage that reads as bright in the warm tree-light. Its right shoulder bears the watch-knot, a deliberate mark worn as a record of the long art of the reading, and its eyes are large, pale gold, brighter and more certain than any other crow man's, the color of the tree-light's own glow at dusk.
Behaviour
The Bone-Read Crow Man is curious, clannish, and profoundly certain, a creature of long readings and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It observes before it reads, often for hours, watching a low roost or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of the bone, and only then does it read, and then with an exactness that feels rehearsed over years. It is not unkind, but it is not easily moved, and a debt named by a Bone-Read crow man is a debt the tree-city will keep long after the reader has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Bone-Read crow man is no open-ground fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the bone and the branch itself, not force. Its primary defense is the low roost, for it knows every corner of the low roosts and can lead a pursuer through Roostspire for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its balance. Should it be forced to act, a Bone-Read crow man is quick and precise, 7 m/s over the branches and low, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a branch, dimming a light, or reading a bone until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Bone-Read crow man is attuned to the long word of the bone, for the bone is the reading and the reading is the whole of its power, and a crow man that has a low roost and a word and a bone does not need a spell that is not its own. It is not attuned to any art that is not the bone, and it is not bound by any word that is not its own, and the not being bound is the whole of its way of being free. Its one signature thing is the reading, which is not a magic but is a thing that the crow men of the tree-city have read for a very long time, and the reading is the bone, and the bone is the whole of its power.
Society
The Bone-Read Crow Men live in Roostspire in roosts of twenty to sixty, bound by the bones they read together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a crow man that has read the most and kept the most is simply the one the others listen to, and the listening is a reading and the reading is the whole of their society. Decisions are made in the low roost, by a company of gold-eyed readers that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a crow man that breaks a reading is a crow man that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Bone-Read Crow Man is a culture of the read bone, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is curious and certain is the only honest word in the tree-city. They keep records, for the crow man that has read a bone does not need a memory, the reading is the record, and the reading is curious and certain and does not fade. Their stories are slow and curious, told in the low roost at the dusk, and they are stories of bones read and dead remembered and the curious, certain difference between them, told in a voice that is barked and means every reading.
Home
Roostspire is the Bone-Read crow man's home and its reading, a range of tall, branch-fed ground where the tree-city is a promise and the record is a treaty, where the crow men read their bones and their curious, certain words. It is a strange and curious place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Bone-Read crow man has learned to live inside that tree-city rather than against it. The warm tree-light that runs up through the low roosts is the tree-city's own, a soft gold glow that the crow men have come to read as the color of a read bone.
Relations
The Bone-Read Crow Man keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of Roostspire, a truce of read bones that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the tree-city. To the warm tree-light of the low roosts the Bone-Read crow man is a curious, certain, and absolutely certain presence, a gold-eyed reader that is at home in the low roosts and in the bone, and the light has learned to glow wide and let the readings pass, for a crow man that has read you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the tree-city, the Bone-Read Crow Man is the curious, certain edge of the tale, the place where the bones are read and a dead is remembered and a reading is read. It is the figure that reads a new bone in the dusk and holds the low roost very curious and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the watch-keeping crow men grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old bone curious and certain and absolutely certain.