(Excerpt from “Whispers in the Snow,” an anonymous chronicle carved into whalebone and inked with soot and oil, the writing is jagged, as though the hand that etched it trembled in the cold.)
They are not owls as the rest of Faerûn knows them.
Their wings carry no sound.
Their eyes are pale disks, milk-white and unblinking, that reflect no firelight. Those who have met their gaze speak of a creeping cold that lingers long after, as though part of the night itself had followed them home.
The hunters of Midgard say an Iceblind Owl circles above the frozen fields when storms gather. To the Duergar they are harbingers of hunger, for their shadow upon the mountain means game will vanish. To the Alfar they are testers of courage, watching from the treeline to see which wanderers falter in the dark.
But among the Goliath tribes, the whispers are different. The owls are said to be the watchers of the Frostmaiden. Their blind eyes do not see this world, but the one where she is bound. Through them she peers into the realm she has lost, seeking cracks through which to return.
The cult of the Frostmaiden reveres them as her messengers.
They hang white feathers around their shrines, and it is told they blind themselves with frostbite salves to imitate her servants’ sightless gaze. In their rites, the scream of the owl is taken as her voice.
Beware, then, the silence of wings in the storm.
For where the Iceblind Owl lingers, the Frostmaiden listens.