The Ram's Riders

Entry into the Ram’s Riders requires both endurance and fearlessness. Recruits are drawn from the likes of scouts, condemned soldiers, and wanderers with nowhere else to go, willing to swear away their names to the Crown. Before induction, each must complete a trial called The Run Between, a ten-day courier relay through danger-ridden roads where bandits, beasts, and worse test their resolve. Most perish, those who survive are blood-sworn to the order and given their first mount, whether that be a horse or a horse-sized beetle. A Rider must know how to read, fight, navigate, and pray in equal measure, for there is no difference between them when the sun dies and the road begins to whisper.

All members begin as Horns, nameless couriers sent on minor runs between settlements. With time and survival, they rise to the rank of Courier, those trusted with valuable private packages, state decrees, military messages, any documents sealed under royal wax. The most experienced become Bleak Horns, veterans who live and die on the road, their names scratched from all rolls save the order’s own. As legend serves each Bleak Horn knows every path across the realm and can smell magick on the wind; They are regarded as living legends. Above them stands the Marshal of Mail, the unseen hand of the Riders’ network, appointed directly by the Monarchy and shrouded in rumor. Some say there are several Marshals, each unaware of the others, ensuring loyalty through ignorance.

The Riders are paid directly from the royal tithe, their wages substantial for the risk they endure. They receive room and board at all Crown Relay Houses, right of passage through tollgates, and protection from local law. In return, their loyalty is absolute, failure to deliver a parcel, or disclosure of its contents, is punishable by death or worse, for each carries their life in trust of the Crown. Some supplement their income through less reputable means, accepting coin from smugglers or syndicates to transport parcels “incidentally” along official routes, or to see certain letters misplaced, forged, or lost entirely.

To the Riders, privilege is measured not in wealth but survival. A Rider may cross frontiers where armies fear to tread and is owed aid by all loyal subjects of Everwealth. They are granted provisional legal immunity during service and can commandeer beasts, wagons, or ferries in pursuit of duty. But the truest benefit is reputation, among folk and fiend alike, a Rider is respected as a creature of purpose, relentless, incorruptible… Though, that last claim seems to falter quite often.

The Ram’s Riders serve as the kingdom’s messengers, arbiters, and couriers of decree. They ensure the Crown’s word reaches even the most forsaken corners of Everwealth, bridging the realm through parchment and blood alike. Their routes deliver trade ledgers, military summons, tax records, royal proclamations, and private contracts, often in the same pouch. In war, they serve as scouts and witnesses; in plague, they are both bearers of medicine and the final priests of the dying. In some towns, their visit precedes salvation; in others, it heralds ruin. They do not question the weight of what they carry, they simply deliver it.

Among nobles and officials, the Riders are held in reverence and suspicion. Their charter predates the current monarchy, making them answerable only to the Crown itself. City watchmen salute them; Governors dread them. Commonfolk treat them as folk heroes, riders who brave forests that eat travelers and roads haunted by ancient magick, but also as omens of misfortune. To receive a Rider’s horn at dawn is to know Everwealth has found you. They are essential, respected, and quietly distrusted.

Predominantly Human and Dwarfish as these are their lands, but The Riders do not recruit by lineage or creed. Those with magickal talent are discouraged to join as to not cause delays born of Coalition scrutiny, but they are not outright forbidden. Their beasts of burden too come in many shapes, a recurring relationship with The Saddleborn Guild, animal trainers who keep them supplied like a dealer does a man with a nasty habit. These supplies depending on the Courier could be in the form of a pale horse or a feathered lion with an eagle's wings.

The Ram’s Riders were founded during the uncertain opening years of The Civil Age; A time of scarcity and danger not-so-different than today, when dozens of miles of unprotected roads overrun by bandits, beasts, and blighted lands left even the kingdom’s own orders scarcely able to find their destination without being ransacked in-case they were food. The monarchy, desperate to combat this, conscripted condemned men, scouts, and remnants of old border-guards to carry messages through what no sane man would cross. Their oath was carved into their saddles, “Deliver, or Die.” Enough survived to form a permanent corps, later granted royal sanction and a network of fortified Relay Houses spanning Everwealth. Over the centuries, they evolved from desperate couriers into something closer to legend. Riders became folk heroes, the veins that keep the kingdom's heart beating. They have ridden through dragon-fire, across magickal wastelands, and into towns already consumed by plague. Some say they ride roads only they can know exist, or that their oldest mounts find paths through dreams. Yet with the kingdom’s small sum of peace, as one here would be smart to expect, had rotted into something dubious. Their ranks grew fat with pay and privilege; Corruption took root. Riders began carrying more than letters, contraband, assassins, hexed gifts, and, occasionally, the severed heads of those who crossed the wrong noble. But the Crown turns a blind eye. Without the Riders, the realm would fall silent.

Every Rider carries a Satchel of Office, a waxed leather pouch branded with the royal ram’s sigil and sealed by enchantment. Should it be opened unlawfully, the curse within burns the thief’s name from all census rolls, rendering them “officially dead.” Their arms consist of light mail, pistols, short sabres, and the signature letter-spear, a curved stabbing blade used to sign messages in blood when ink fails. Each carries a black-lacquered helm adorned with ram horns and a small warded torch for night travel.

The Riders’ satchels are lined with parchment treated in witchwax to preserve against magickal interference. Relay Houses stock salt rations, spare horseshoes, and sealed lantern oil that burns through mist and illusion alike. In darker corridors, Riders use bones of the first generation’s mounts as fetishes, believing their ghosts keep the road clear.

The Riders operate from a vast web of Relay Houses, waystations positioned roughly a day’s ride apart. These fortified posts double as inns, stables, and sometimes small garrisons. In larger cities, they maintain grand Posthalls marked by the carved ram’s head, where letters, coin, and contracts flow like lifeblood. In the wilds, they rely on hidden shrines, known only to Riders, where water and hay are left by unseen hands.

The Riders transport correspondence for the Monarchy, nobility, guilds, and commonfolk alike. Their duties range from mundane courier work to the delivery of state decrees, death warrants, and battlefield orders. In addition, they act as royal witnesses, scouts, and in certain cases, sanctioned executioners. There are whispers of “black routes,” unofficial paths where Riders deliver assassins, poisons, or cursed gifts. No one knows how many such routes exist, only that none are written down.

Every mile of road in Everwealth is haunted by something, bandits, beasts, the restless Undead, or worse. Riders face not only these threats but the temptation of corruption; bribes, blackmail, and blood money are constant companions. The cursed mail itself is often deadlier than the road, letters sealed with witchfire, parcels containing venomous serpents, or scrolls whose words whisper until read aloud. Some Riders succumb to paranoia or madness, muttering to the satchels they carry for months. Others never reach their destinations but are found later,alive, still riding, faces blank as the letters they guard.