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Feathered Serpents Seen Writhing Above Sharn
 SHARN—Two feathered serpent-creatures known as couatls put on an extensive aerial display over Sharn’s Clifftop district, sometimes intertwining as they dove under bridges and around city towers on Zor.
Eyewitnesses saw the creatures shortly afternoon in the vicinity of Zellek’s Spire, the long-abandoned home of a former court wizard who entered the Mournland shortly after the Day of Mourning in search of his daughter. Neither has been seen since.
With their brilliant wing plumage, the two couatls quickly attracted a crowd. Over the course of the next three hours, they flew above the Clifftop streets, sometimes too fast for the eye to follow, sometimes hovering in midair.
“It made me wish I had wings,” said Looran Prallovek, a fruit cart vendor on Kuresh Street. “I just couldn’t take my eyes off them—it was if the air was solid like the ground.”
Morgrave University professor of xenoanthropology Guriam Jenn said that the couatls were likely undertaking the Ritual of Gav-Hauranazh, a complex social ritual that confers elder status on a particularly noteworthy couatl. While Jenn was not a witness to the display on Zol, he saw a Ritual of Gav-Hauranazh performed in Qbarra that matches eyewitness descriptions.
But noted Xen’drik explorer Mallan Yorna, a witness to the couatls, offered a different explanation. “A social ritual? Maybe,” he said. “But what I saw had a recreational component to it, if you catch my drift.”
About the Author
David Noonan is a designer/developer for Wizards of the Coast. Before coming to Wizards, he was a daily newspaper reporter in Washington state. Apparently the city hall beat is good practice for an Eberron campaign.
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