Intergalactic Summit

Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

Blood on the sands, the squires part the gates and exit the arena to the jeers of prince and entourage. The night wind blows hot; there will be little sleep.

The hierophant tends the mourning blaze, thick smoke and heavy words sing the denouement of the scene of the fallen amidst the banners of escutcheon'd avians displayed.

"At the apex, stolid, is Hawk. Commanding fear and puissance, his eyes pierce the blue-green fog of the western heavens. Heaps of prey break under his thundering call, but the Detrital feast must wait for frenzied beak and talon to abate. The meat rots, and so Hawk becomes Vulture."

"On the emerald precipice is Dove, loving and fearful. Cowed by the thunder of their De Facto demigod, with their chorus they lament the Vultures' feast, but, in their frailty, do nothing."

"At the fringes of the firelight stalks mad Magpie, who hates and loves both Hawk and Dove. Pressed by despair of Darksome fortune, he chants a jesting dirge, ignoring Vulture to seek cold comfort in the sound of his own song."

"The cornucopia of the slaughter is the Ostriches' lot. Idly the Dastards do waste their precious hour on vain pursuit, learning naught, knowing naught. The prosopon of self-deceit shields their eyes from the Vulture's hungry leer, and so the hourglass marks the coming of their fate."

The squires weep, the hierophant tolls a bronze bell to a count of five. They call to him, "is this dire canto to be our doom as well?"

Turning away from fire and squire, marking nineteen paces into the dark, he intones, "be thou as the nightingale whose song will break the gloaming. Cloaked in the refrain of your brethren, in vigil stand, and voice your vision clear."

The hierophant is gone. The squires cast skyward eyes, taking grey wings high.

It's some kind of riddle, this is I think the third one by this man ? I don't remember what the reward for solving the previous riddles was. Or if there was a reward at all.

I do know what usually happens next in these threads though, a bunch of people post a whole lot of sarcastic comments, and no-one finds out what the answer was.

This one is Federal political parties, isn't it?

I like mad Magpie best. He sounds cool.

Did you know they steal shiny things? Adorable.

It would be an awsome name for an alliance, too. The Mad Magpies, most feared pirate coalition in the cluster....

Possibly, although if I were to agree entirely with your guess I'd note that Ostrich sounds more like the Caldari allying themselves with the Amarr, benefitting from the military and economic support that alliance grants them and all the while hoping that once all others have been reclaimed their own fate won't be of a similar nature. The Jove are largely irrelevant.

In this interpretation Magpie would be the Minmatar, hating and loving the Empire and the Federation alike for what both nations have given and taken from them. Only recently have they managed to find 'cold comfort' in a governing body that reflects the unique ideology and tribal leadership homegrown within the Republic - it's own song as it were.

All that said, a more reasonable answer might be that there is no answer - as is usual for the ramblings of the unstable.

They already have a name: Gurista.
However, these guys would unnail things that were nailed and steal them too

Prior to my last journey, I spilled the blood of a blackbird on the rocks of a moon in Everyshore. It was a clean cut, no hesitation in my stroke. I cleaned its body, laid it in its specially fashioned nest of trinkets and hand written wishes from my crew and set it afloat down the Lithium Wyre, the river at which I gave my prayer.

Perhaps it is superstition, but the journey was uneventful and our shipment was delivered as per our word.

[Insert cryptic/nonsensical message here]

This is a more lucid and coherent message than those previously posted, though I'm not sure what this signifies.

However, there is a pattern beginning to emerge now that there are three data points. The posting titles:

• Elaphebolion Seventh Rising
• Skirophron Eighth Descending

...both contain an obscure reference (or code word), a number, and a single-axis direction, while the second (chronological) title was more opaque. In addition, each posting contained the same pangram in the opening line, and each featured conspicuous capitalizations throughout the body.

I believe the title to be half of the two-part key which might resolve the message-inside-the-message.

How this relates to birds, if at all, I could not say.