The Claravian Order of Farspeakers were responsible for building and maintaining the yinrihs’ telecommunication infrastructure prior to the War of Dissolution, which ended the Bright Way’s monopoly on much of Focus’s economy.

The order can trace its roots back to before the space age, when research monasteries were first experimenting with aeronautics. It quickly became clear that they needed a better understanding of meteorology, and to do that they needed to establish a network of surface observation stations. These stations would need to send data in real time to a central location where the data could be plotted on a map to reveal the state of the atmosphere at the synoptic scale.

But before they could do that, they had to devise a way to send information beyond the direct line of sight in real time. Several methods were tried, none of which were satisfactory, though they had marginal success with a system of towers where signalmen would relay tail semaphore signals to one another. This system still relied on maintaining a clear line of sight between individual towers.

A few methods employing the recently discovered phenomenon of electromagnetism were attempted, but the monks were stuck on how to encode the information in a way that didn’t require costly and complex infrastructure such as multiple wires and intricate transmitting and receiving stations.

The answer came not from the monks but from a groundskeeper at a particular research monastery. He is known to history as Redclaw, though this may have been a playful pseudonym. Yinrih claws are naturally rust-colored, so the name isn’t much of a differentiator, akin to a human calling himself “two-arms”.

Redclaw was not educated in the mysteries of Creation like the research monks, but he was a chronic tinkerer, and took a special interest in wires and batteries and switches and the like. He eventually developed a simple circuit consisting of a switch, a battery, and a sounder that would click whenever the switch was closed. He showed his handiwork to the monks, who dismissed it as a mere toy.

The local hearthkeeper, however, saw potential in this system, and encouraged Redclaw to continue developing it. Eventually Redclaw hit upon a way in which he could encode information by varying the timing of switch closures, creating a distinct rhythm that could be made to represent words. Compared to the monks’ prior attempts, this system was almost too simple, requiring only a single wire and a ground return. To the monks’ credit, they swiftly adopted the system once it was proven that it could reliably transmit messages, and telegraph lines were built connecting distant monasteries.

A distinct order was spun off from the research monks whose sole duty was to build, maintain, and operate this new telecommunication infrastructure.

Just as hearthkeepers tended increasingly advanced hearths, the farspeakers built more and more complex networks as the yinrih climbed the tech tree. Simple telegraphs evolved into telephone and eventually digital networks, and wires gave way to radio waves, optical fiber, and ultimately to FTL ansible links.

Junior farspeakers are called seekers both because they seek the wisdom of more established members of the order and because they’re the ones who seek out and troubleshoot problems in the field. Senior farspeakers are called anchorites or anchoresses. They are so called because they tend to stay secluded in a central office, observing the overall network from afar. The order also tends to attract introverts who prefer to spend their time with machines rather than people.