Soarer

The sky over Lockeport glows with marsh-mist at dawn, low cloud drifting like breath across rotting boards and flooded roots. A Soarer, riding a winged gryphon of the Wild Men, launches from a marshy perch atop driftwood ruins, claws spread into damp air. Its feathers are streaked with salt and dawn, its cry a trumpet against fog.   Mounted high in its saddle, the Soarer scans the horizon: the distant peaks where Outrider wyvern riders circle like vultures, the waterways choked by reeds, the wavering treeline where swamp meets forest. Below, the gryphon’s shadow skims over shallow pools, startling frogs, sending watery ripples like whispered warnings.   When war comes, the Soarers rise first. Their wings beat back the mist, their talons ink-dark in the early light. Against the Wyverns of the Outriders, they fly with purpose: harrying shadows, cutting off flight paths, diving through storms of wings and scale. In peace, they guard Lockeport’s skies—watchers of trade ships, protectors of villages drowned in marsh water, riders whose eyes see across swampspill horizons.