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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4854006" data-attributes="member: 54707">The Call HouseI kinda like some of Nifft's suggestions. I've always liked the homunculus and thought that a great means of communications in a fantasy setting. And to be serious about it I can see that communications would be an urgent matter in any world where magic really existed, because of some of the points you cite, along with others. I can see a lot of clandestine means of communications developing as a sort of sub-branch of magic, and conversely methods of interfering with communications being developed through magic.As for more mundane means of communications one thing I could picture developing would be "communications establishments." Places where communications are stored along with information and could be visited in any large enough population center. they would be like mini-libraries combined with posting offices, but the user would go to them rather than those places being exclusively information and communication distribution centers. (Though they could also be distribution centers.)Everyone would know basically where these centers are, and the sender would pay to leave a message there, the more secure the message, the higher the price for storage, and the receiver would then go pick up the message when they could get to it, and they would pay a retrieval fee. The place would profit from both ends of the deal. And everyone would basically know where the information centers were, though they wouldn't be called that of course. Another fee and you can use their research library and records hall.  It would just basically be the reverse of our mail and communications system. Instead of the mail coming to you, you go to the mail.It would centralize information and still make it widely (or privately) available and the time elements of delivery of information could proceed as the sender and receiver can best work it. Of course it would probably be more secure and safer than a mail system, assuming the house was pretty safe.It could be called something like a Call House or a Posting Hall. Or maybe a Call Hall or a Posting House.I could also see places like that attracting spies, sages, librarians and researchers, guides and scouts, and merchants, travelers, men looking for work, prostitutes, and undercover men, and such "houses"  developing attached boarding houses and inns and general meeting and social halls.I can also see competitive halls developing in large cities in such settings. It would be an alternative to the hit or miss rumor mill of the typical fantasy tavern or mead hall or beer house.Information would be a valuable commodity in such a place and competition for it, including the accuracy of it, would be at a premium.</blockquote>

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