The Bestiary: The Ba-Birds

http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Post/1202942

The Ba-Birds are the spirit forms of the perfected dead who have returned to reside among us. It is said that after their deaths they flew to the very boundary of the Deep Horizon and gazed into the shining void beyond it. Rather that wing their way through into chaos and oblivion, their reflection in the void stopped them and spoke to them, commanding them to return to the land of the living.

A few of these embodied spirits return to the Multitude of Worlds to take-up a home in the City of Otherway. Not a single Ba-Bird was born in this realm, but somehow they make their way to reside in Otherway's avian city-within-a-city, the The Towers of the Wise. There they keep company with other winged creatures such as Jaculus, or javelin serpent which lurks in trees awaiting passers-by, and the Syrens, white winged snakes "whose venom is so fierce that you will die before you feel the pain of their bite."*

Only the bravest of wisdom-seekers and those who crave to learn the mysteries of the Deep Horizon dare to seek an interview with the Ba-Birds. Those few who are fortunate or skilled enough to evade the Towers' winged serpentine guardians will be granted an audience with one of the Ba-Birds.

*T.H. White's The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts, pp.180-181