The key issue with the so-called Ravenfolk is that they are no longer
seen by anyone. For whatever reasons, they have been consigned to
legends, folklore and some vague artistic renderings of what their
appearance might have been. Known in legends as the ravenfolk or
corvidfolk (and ravenmen and corvidmen), if they ever existed, they were
the only known avian sapients of Aporue.
What little is known about the ravenfolk or corvidfolk indicates that
they were incapable of human-like speech, their language more akin to
that of various birds, corvid birds in particular. They were also
less-advanced in terms of technology, but certainly had knowledge of
tool use and did have at least a rudimentary culture, one with some
degree of artistic expression.
The ravenfolk's mysterious, apocryphal nature has proven a major draw
for the rising numbers of Aporuean professional naturalists, interested
in studying the wildlife of the continent and the more curious trappings
of its biology and social structures. Many Aporueans with a passing
interest in the natural sciences think these scholars and researchers
are wasting their time, and they won't find any traces of living
ravenfolk, nor any substantial traces of their material culture.
Nevertheless, several locations have been found throughout Aporue,
especially in caves in the isolated wilderness, which included odd cave
art and some unusually shaped primitive tools. Both seemed like they
were made by different hands than those of humans or any other
beastfolk. Perhaps the clawed, thin-fingered, feathered and wing-like
hands of the ravenmen ? Currently, it remains an open question.
A possible reflection of the ravenfolk's existence occurs in some very
old Aporuean folk tales and fairytales. One in particular, about a young
commoner woman (her social standing and personal background vary based
on the telling) finding a haunted semi-ruin, tells of her encounter with
one of the only occupants of the strange place: A bird-like man. He
gradually reveals he used to be a human like her, but was cursed into
this form. In some tellings of the story, he is corvid-like, though in
others, he is said to resemble an eagle or other bird of prey in human
form. Most historians, ethnographers and naturalists of Aporue dismiss
this tale as ultimately unrelated, or at most, loosely inspired by the
possible existence of ravenmen. A small minority treat it as "containing
a grain of truth", or in more extreme cases, even treat it as objective
proof (sidestepping the reasonable point of many that the tale might be
merely the product of a vivid imagination of humans and the other
species).
Some Aporueans, humans and beastfolk alike, even claim that the ravenmen
once existed, but have since receded (essentially, "de-evolved") into
ordinary-looking ravens. They are indistinguishable from regular ravens
(as animals), but their ancestry was more humanoid. However, even those
willing to believe all manner of scientifically and magically
implausible things, find this suggestion far-fetched. As Jussi "Norir"
Savru, a Metsämaan immigree to Melza and now a naturalised citizen,
likes to joke towards his pet raven: "If I didn't know any better, dear
Korppi, I'd be tempted to believe some of those stories and assume
you're a ravenman who's become a regular bird again..."
Whatever the case, the corvidfolk are one of those aspects of Aporuean
nature, history and culture that make for a good, thought-provoking,
imagination-stimulating mystery. Are they still alive somewhere, as some
isolated tribe, talking in their crowing language ? Are they long gone ?
Did they ever exist in the first place ? Maybe time will tell, maybe
research will reveal more... And maybe a tantalizing mystery will remain
a tantalizing mystery... Exactly the way that people like it the
most...
The (largelly hypothetical) native language of the ravenfolk is referred to as Ravenscaw.
It is little understood and little researched, with the few certain
things about it being that it is of an entirely different nature than
those of the mammalian sapients of Aporue.
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Author's note
If I do have a mental image for these thinking beings, the one thing
that serves as inspiration besides the appearance of European ravens
would be some theoretical illustrations of... small, feathered,
predatory dinosaurs that evolved near-human or human-like intelligence.
Unlike what some 1970s theoreticians might have told you, smaller
dinosaurs evolving into "humanoid" forms, with human-like intelligence,
would not look like cartoony green-skinned lizardmen. Instead, most of
the paleontologists, biologists and paleoartists of today agree that
they would be a very avian form of humanoid, not a mammalian or
reptilian one. That form means they would have a very bird-like body
plan and bird-like posture, and would be covered in feathers (or
feather-like fuzz, at least), instead of being furless or covered in
mammal-like fur or hair. A reconstruction like this one or like this one
is close to my mental image of these creatures. If you'd combine their
outer appearance with that of an ordinary raven, that would be pretty
much how they should look.
Mind you, aside from speculative illustrations of such smart little
feathered dinos, the ravens (and other corvids) of our present day real
world are very smart birds. In Europe alone, if you'd exclude all
mammals aside from humans, ravens and magpies would be the most
intelligent beings after us. It's estimated that ravens can be potentially as smart as pre-schoolers or pupils in their first few years of school. They're curious, have an interest in imitating natural sounds, as well as human voices and speech...
Hence the legends about them "talking", even though they're only
imitating our speech and other sounds for their own peculiar needs and
reasons. Besides some parrot species, ravens and magpies are some of the smartest birds in the world and some of the smartest creatures in general.
Concerning behind the scenes info on these, back in the early days of
creating the setting as a consistent place, one thing I was tempted to
include among the thinking species would be a species of avian
humanoids. However, both the advice of others and my own pondering ultimately led me to the decision to excise them from my planned roster of sapient species for the continent of Aporue. That wasn't the end of the story, though.
In more recent times, after thinking about the whole thing more deeply,
I realised I could still feature them as an idea in my setting, albeit
less overtly.
So, in the end, I'm doing a compromise. The ravenmen might be extinct,
either through natural causes, or being crowded out or wiped out by
humans or others, at some point in the more distant past. They might be
still around. They might not be. Are they around, are they not ? Will
they ever appear in some story ? I honestly don't know. :-) I would like to think it's for the best that they remain an
enigmatic element of the setting. A good fantastical setting needs
plenty of mysteries. The ravenfolk's existence, past or continued, and
the origins of the beastpeoples in general, are just some examples of
such mysteries in my Orbis Furum setting.
The reference to what sounds like a variation on The Beauty and
the Beast folk tale isn't accidental on my part. In central European
variations of this folk tale (they seem to stem from the same folkloric
origins, albeit diverged from western European ones long ago), the
titular Beast, a nobleman cursed into an animalistic form, is depicted a
bit differently than in the French variations. There, he was usually
depicted as a lion, or a lion-like beast, often with elements of other
mammalian creatures. But in the central European version, he is often
depicted as either a big anthropomorphized bear (a were-bear, perhaps, a
bit like Tolkien's Beorn) - see the Slovak variation, from the
fairytale Trojruža
- or, even more extremely, as a feathered, bird-like humanoid. The
Czech and German variants of the tale tend to depict him as such. When
director Juraj Herz made his rather horror-esque film adaptation of the fairytale
in the 1970s, he chose the bird-like appearance for the character of
the Beast, one similar to a falcon or a hawk, if he had become a man. As
old as the prosthetic effects are, the look is still pretty striking
and eerie, and makes for a Beauty and the Beast adaptation unlike any
other.
Another, more inherently central European fairytale (in the
German-speaking countries, the Czech lands and Slovakia), is the tale of
The Seven Raven Brothers.
About said group of brothers cursed into the form of ravens, and their
sister, who has to help break the curse. So there's certainly more than
one mythic and folkloric connection there.
Aside from real world ravens, and potentially sapient
dromaeosaurs/maniraptors, and some of those references to old folktales
and fairytales, I've thought about the ravenmen as one of my New
Weird-ish elements of the setting. Miéville had the Garuda in his
Bas-Lag setting, a race of avian people who looked like birds of prey,
had a name inspired by a mythological Indian bird, and had a fairly
alien psychology (including ethics) when compared with humans or other
intelligent beings from that setting. My own ravenmen are my own take on
this "avian humanoid as a weird fantasy element" concept.
- | - | - | -
This now fully concludes my extensive overview of each of the sapient
species from the continent of Aporue in my Orbis Furum fantasy world.
Please bear in mind, Aporue is just one continent. Variations on some of
its beastpeoples might occur on other continents as well (the otterfolk
being one possible example), but even more importantly, the other
continents have their own unique beastfolk sapients. While the details
are still fuzzy when it comes to my authorial perspective, Akirfa
(Africa, essentially) might have "baboonmen" and "hyenamen" in addition
to humans, and Aisa/Aiza (Asia) might have de facto yetis roaming its
tallest mountain ranges and the forests below them. And those are just
preliminary ideas. Will I share the other sapients of other continents,
if I ever complete them in the future ? Certainly.
- | - | - | -
Other overviews of the Thick as Thieves sapient species
- Humans (Manfolk) overview
- Newtmen (Newtfolk) overview
- Hedgehogmen (Hedgefolk) overview
- Martenmen (Martenfolk) overview
- Wolverinemen (Wolverfolk) overview
- Ottermen (Otterfolk) overview
- Stoatmen (Stoatfolk) overview
- Lobstermen and Crabmen (Crustfolk) overview
- | - | - | -
Copyrights
(C) 2014, 2021 P. Molnár & Knight-Errant Studios - Concepts/ideas, writing
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