Overview
The Watch-Eye Crow Man is the curious, certain voice of Roostspire, a black-plumed, watch-marked carrion kin of the great tree-city who keeps the watch and records every word, the roost's curious, clannish, and most certain voice. It stands a meter and three-quarters tall, watchful and quick, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in kept records rather than years. Where the bat men of the caverns hunt by sonar, the Watch-Eye crow men of the tree-city keep the watch, and they have been keeping the first watch on the first roost for a very long time.
Habitat
The Watch-Eye Crow Man keeps to the high 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 high roosts where the branches run tallest and the keeping is oldest, the places where a record can be kept without the tree-city's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Watch-Eye Crow Man stands about 1.75 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 keeping, and its eyes are large, pale gold, bright and certain beneath the brow, the color of the tree-light's own glow at dusk.
Behaviour
The Watch-Eye Crow Man is curious, clannish, and profoundly certain, a creature of long watches and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It observes before it keeps, often for hours, watching a roost or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of the record, and only then does it keep, 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 Watch-Eye crow man is a debt the tree-city will keep long after the keeper has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Watch-Eye crow man is no open-ground fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the record and the branch itself, not force. Its primary defense is the roost, for it knows every corner of the high 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 Watch-Eye 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 keeping a record until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Watch-Eye crow man is attuned to the long word of the record, for the record is the keeping and the keeping is the whole of its power, and a crow man that has a roost and a word and a record does not need a spell that is not its own. It is not attuned to any art that is not the record, 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 keeping, which is not a magic but is a thing that the crow men of the tree-city have kept for a very long time, and the keeping is the record, and the record is the whole of its power.
Society
The Watch-Eye Crow Men live in Roostspire in roosts of twenty to sixty, bound by the records they keep together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a crow man that has kept the most and recorded the most is simply the one the others listen to, and the listening is a keeping and the keeping is the whole of their society. Decisions are made in the roost, by a company of gold-eyed keepers that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a crow man that breaks a keeping is a crow man that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Watch-Eye Crow Man is a culture of the kept record, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is curious and clannish is the only honest word in the tree-city. They keep records, for the crow man that has kept a record does not need a memory, the keeping is the record, and the keeping is curious and clannish and does not fade. Their stories are slow and curious, told in the roost at the dusk, and they are stories of watches kept and words recorded and the curious, clannish difference between them, told in a voice that is barked and means every keeping.
Home
Roostspire is the Watch-Eye crow man's home and its keeping, a range of tall, branch-fed ground where the tree-city is a promise and the record is a treaty, where the crow men keep their watches and their curious, clannish words. It is a strange and curious place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Watch-Eye crow man has learned to live inside that tree-city rather than against it. The warm tree-light that runs up through the high roosts is the tree-city's own, a soft gold glow that the crow men have come to read as the color of a kept record.
Relations
The Watch-Eye Crow Man keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of Roostspire, a truce of kept records 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 high roosts the Watch-Eye crow man is a curious, clannish, and absolutely certain presence, a gold-eyed keeper that is at home in the high roosts and in the branch, and the light has learned to glow wide and let the keepings pass, for a crow man that has kept you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the tree-city, the Watch-Eye Crow Man is the curious, clannish edge of the tale, the place where the watches are kept and a word is recorded and a keeping is read. It is the figure that keeps a new record in the dusk and holds the branch very curious and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the bone-reading crow men grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old record curious and clannish and absolutely certain.