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ec3c2af9e6
Having these in canon felt like a plot hole in other campaigns. If an apprentice mage could make these amulets circa 350 YW then every village and border-fort should have them, but Wesnoth's storylines work better if a messenger on horseback is the usual method of long-distance communication. For example, TSG is about a commander sent to discipline a lazy outpost, only to find that they should have brought reinforcements. When it's the enemy trying to communicate, DM S21 and UtBS S08 both involve stopping the messengers. This changes the intro to have a beacons for communicating with the trade caravans, I'm leaving it ambiguous whether it's a smoke signal or a fire signal. Fire beacons might make more sense if the village sees the caravan's campfires at night and, in normal usage, light the beacon to trade. While this adds beacons to canon, they're an ancient technology with a limited range and very limited bandwidth. There are easy plot reasons not to set beacons up, such as the costs of having people watch for and maintain them, there are easy plot reasons why they don't work on a given day, such as weather, and there are easy plot reasons for attempted communication to be ignored by assuming that it's a fire for a different purpose. Previously suggested in https://r.wesnoth.org/p669889 .