News in Skyrim travels at the speed of a courier and a nailed-up sheet of paper. Every hold has a post office and a notice board, and both of them are how a letter or a rumour reaches somebody you cannot shout at. The province has a mail service and a public wall, and neither of them carries your name unless you write it there yourself.
How it works
Aurbis Post. Every hold's notice board is also its post office, so standing at a board is standing at a counter. You open an account in person at whichever office you reach first, and it issues you a five-digit postal number that is yours for life and is the same number at every office in the province.
Mail is addressed to a number and an office, never to a name. There is no directory: you learn somebody's number because they told it to you. Posting a letter costs fifty septims and a Roll of Paper, or a hundred and fifty if you want it to leave without a return number on the envelope. A letter's title runs to sixty characters and its body to four thousand. A letter written at the counter rides between the holds at a courier's pace, three to fifteen minutes depending on the distance, and then waits at the office it was addressed to until somebody collects it. A letter sent to a number nobody holds comes back to you unopened one return trip later, and the postage stays spent because the coach still rode.
Nothing is minted until it is collected. When you take a waiting letter it becomes a real letter in your pack and opens like any other book (see Literacy, Scribes, and Written Works). There is no unread badge and no nagging. You find out you have mail by going to the post.
The boards. Every hold has its own notice board with its own feed, and the walled capitals have two, one inside the gates and one outside them. What is pinned there is public for seven days, and then it fades.
A written notice costs fifty septims and a Roll of Paper. A poster costs a hundred and is an image, at one of three sizes. A notice's title runs to sixty characters and its body to eight hundred. A board holds twenty-four notices at a time and one person may hold five of them, and that is the only thing standing between a board and a wall of shouting.
Nothing on a board carries a name. There is no signature line anywhere: not on the board, not on the mirror on this site, not in the hold's channel on the Commons. What you pin is what everybody sees and nothing more. That is deliberate, because a notice board is a place where a rumour should be able to be posted without a face on it.
Commands (/help mail)
/mail shows your postal number and what is waiting for you at this office./mail open opens a postal account in person. Your first office issues your five-digit number, and it is yours for life at every office in the province./mail send opens the counter's compose sheet, where you address a letter to an office and a postal number./mail collect <number> takes a waiting letter. It becomes a real letter in your pack./mail letters lists the letters you are carrying, by title. A letter opens from your inventory, like any other book.
Commands (/help board)
/board shows the hold's notice board. Away from one, it names the nearest board./board remove <number> takes a notice down. Yours, or anyone's if you are staff.
