The Raven is a combined Rook and Nightrider. It is primarily a Chess problem
piece, however, it does appear in Ralph Betza's game The
Way of the Knight as a possible promotion. On Jérôme Grimbert's webpage on Fairy Chess pieces, this combination piece is called a Varan (another name for a Monitor Lizard).
The Raven combines the moves of the Rook and the
Nightrider:
As Rook, it may slide any number of squares in an orthogonal direction, as
long as all but possibly the last square is empty.
As a Nightrider it may make one or more leaps as a Knight in the same direction,
as long all but possibly the last square lept to is empty.
Movement diagram
In the diagram below, the raven can slide to all the squares marked with
a black circle, and leap to those squares marked with a white circle.
This is an item in the Piececlopedia: an overview of
different (fairy) chess pieces.
Written by Sergey Sirotkin (edited by Peter Aronson). Additional information
from Ivan A. Derzhanski. AI image added by Fergus Duniho.
WWW page created: October 3rd, 2001.
WWW page updated: April 11th, 2025.
