AN EXPERIMENT IN DIVINATION AND DECISION

The Augur’s Sky ✦

Roman augury · A playable field guide

Ask about a course of action, interpret a bird you saw, or prove your skill in the augural trials. The birds are real; the decisions are yours.

Historical rules + clearly labeled imaginative play

The celestial templum

Facing south · East = left · West = right
EASTSOUTHEASTSOUTHSOUTHWESTWESTHIGHER SKYLOWER SKY EAST · LEFTSOUTH · AHEADWEST · RIGHT
Left / eastRight / westNot a fixed good/bad map
The sky is still. Make your first observation.
Mode I · The consul’s choice

What shall you undertake?

Write your proposed courses of action, one per line. Each receives a separate simulated bird omen; the birds do not know the future.

1–4 choices. Separate them with a line break.
Offer a question to the sky. Fortuna handles the rest.
An open-air aviary

Hear the birds

These are actual bird recordings, not synthesized calls. Tap to play. All six recordings are included in this file and play offline. Start with a bird button; use the player below to pause, seek, or adjust the volume.

Ready offline. Tap a bird, interpret a sighting, or cast an omen to hear a recording.
No sound?

Make sure Sound is on at the top, the player volume is above zero, and your browser tab and device are not muted. Tap Replay recording. If a chat or file preview blocks audio, download this HTML and open it directly in your browser. No internet connection is needed for playback.

Record of the auspices

Your augural journal

No signs have been recorded yet.
Historical basis. Cicero, On Divination, I.39 and I.53, describes raven-right and crow-left conventions; Book II discusses chicken-feeding auspices and augural skepticism. See also Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, “Augurium.” Game scenarios are imagined exercises, not authenticated ancient predictions. Recordings: American crow (USGS, public domain), common raven (G. McGrane, public domain), bald eagle (US National Park Service, public domain), chicken (alys, public domain), blue jay (Jonathon Jongsma, CC BY-SA 3.0), and short-eared owl (Jamescandless, CC BY-SA 3.0), with full links in the Field Guide. Some recordings represent modern species rather than Roman birds. All six recordings are bundled below as MP3 and Ogg audio, with source and license credits. The MP3 files are Wikimedia transcodes; Ogg files are unchanged. No recordings were trimmed, mixed, or synthesized. The blue jay and owl recordings remain licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Bundled recordings · sources and licenses