Duke Oswin Ravenscar

Head of House Ravenscar, the Storm Wings, whose oldest reputation belongs to exposed heights, storm stations, northern approaches and difficult signals, and whose patronage has moved naturally into aerial observation.

House Ravenscar’s oldest reputation belongs to exposed heights, storm stations, the northern approaches, difficult signals, and the men who keep watch where the weather is itself a strategic enemy. From there its patronage has moved naturally into aerial observation and high-ground communications. Duke Oswin Ravenscar is its present head. The house is less entangled in the capital’s paper wars than Harcourt or Bellamy; its standing rests on usefulness, since where weather decides whether a message arrives or a vessel returns, a Ravenscar station is often the first to know.

He is adventurous by ducal standards and has personally survived enough bad-weather inspections that professional officers forgive him a taste for dramatic speeches. He is said to prefer arriving at his stations unannounced, and to judge a keeper by the state of his log rather than the state of his coat.

Companies meet Ravenscar interests on the high ground: relieving an isolated station, carrying instruments or dispatches to an exposed post, or finding out why a signal has fallen silent. The Duke pays for such work, and has been known to go along.

In person

Duke Oswin is a tall, lean man of about fifty with dark auburn hair swept back and marked by a single silver streak, and a short, trimmed beard. His angular, weather-beaten face has a crooked nose and grey-green eyes, and a scar like a lightning stroke marks one temple. He wears a dark high-country coat bearing the Storm Wings heraldry and is most himself among brass weather instruments and signal relays.