Avishraa Reloaded

This page is read only. You can view the source, but not change it. Ask your administrator if you think this is wrong.
====== Glyphic teleportation ======
**Glyphic teleportation** is the general term for the use of [[concept:enchantment|enchanted objects]] to instantaneously travel from one location to another, most commonly in the form of [[#linking_books|linking books]]. While the production of such objects, centered mostly in the [[geography:sekhaa:region:brightness]], is relatively limited due to the need for particular skill sets, individual examples have made their way across [[geography:sekhaa:start]] and can be found in use in unanticipated places.

===== Mechanism =====
The ability to transport matter via an enchanted object, in and of itself, is surprisingly straightforward. Though the array of glyphs required is somewhat complicated and can consume considerable space and time to inscribe, completing it in a matter of a few [[concept:timekeeping#vigil|vigils]] is very feasible for skilled artisans who are familiar with the process. Once completed, the touching of an object to a designated area on the enchantment will cause it to vanish.

There are however, two points of difficulty. The first is that an object enchanted to allow glyphic teleportation will //only// send objects; it cannot call them back. Reliable two-way transportation, therefore, requires two enchanted objects: one at destination A made to send objects to destination B, and one at B made to send to A.

The second point of difficulty is that a plain teleportation enchantment, such as that described above, is undirected; that is to say, for an observer there is no knowing where the teleported object has gone to, whether a mile away or the other side of the world or the depths of space. In order to be useful for reliable transportation of any sort, therefore, there must be a way of specifying a destination, a fact that can greatly complicate the enchantment.

==== Symbolic referents ====
For this purpose, a teleportation enchantment must be designed to accept a **referent**: a unique marker that also exists at the destination, so that the enchantment can be "told" to send objects using it to that place. However, unless one is using text for this purpose (see [[#textual_referents|further below]]), there are restrictions to keep in mind:
  - //The referent should be unique.// In other words, it should not be used at more than one destination. Confronted with two equally possible destinations to send to, a teleportation enchantment is entirely capable of attempting to send to both simultaneously - if the thing being sent is alive, this is almost certainly a fatal process.
  - //The referent must be reproduced accurately at the destination.// Useful teleportation cannot occur until a destination is already appropriately marked, and therefore one must travel to an intended destination at least once through conventional means - either to bring a prefabricated referent marker that can be placed there, or to deliver a representation of the referent that can be used to reproduce it onsite in a suitable medium. Once there, the referent must be maintained and protected to keep its shape, lest it become different enough from the copy in the enchantment that it ceases to be a valid destination.
  - //The referent may not itself be an enchantment glyph.// It is not only recommended, but vital, that the symbol or design used as a referent is not, and does not contain, a glyph with a use in enchanting objects. Doing so will, at best, render the teleportation enchantment ineffective, if not result in other unintended effects.

The second restriction, in particular, means that while this method of defining a destination can be used to quickly return to places one has already been, it cannot be used to help find new destinations, except in the very indirect sense of shortening lines of supply and communication to a hub location.

==== Textual referents ====
It was not until relatively recent times that it was determined how to alter an enchantment such that the referent inscribed in the enchantment could be in the form of text - a description in words of the intended destination. In rather sharp contrast to enchantments relying on symbolic referents, which have an fairly exactly defined form, an enchantment based around textual referents will direct one to any one (but only one) of the entire set of locations which fits the description provided, with no way of knowing in advance which one one will get.

The very nature of this technique circumvents two of the restrictions on symbolic referents. Firstly, the text does not need to be unique; unless a given textual description is so extremely and infeasibly specific that it can refer to only one possible location, two enchantments with identical texts will point to two different locations. Secondly, as the referent is essentially tied to the nature of the destination itself, rather than a symbol placed there, there is no need to be able to travel to the destination by conventional means beforehand. While it is almost useless for traveling to a predetermined location, a textual referent is therefore nonetheless ideal for those who wish to travel to a particular //kind// of place without caring much about where it is in relation to other locations. Because the entire set of destinations matching the description may be huge, and does not appear to be limited by distance, the destination eventually reached may be a continent away - or on another world entirely - or, for all anyone knows, in an entirely different universe.

===== Linking books =====
The term **linking book** is a catch-all term for a class of objects enchanted to allow glyphic teleportation. They are, as the term suggests, books, on the pages of which the glyphs of the enchantment and its referent are written; though often large and heavy and not nearly as durable as stone or metal, they are among the most portable formats for a type of enchantment that ordinarily takes up considerable space.

Linking books may be based around either a symbolic or a textual referent, and therefore serve different purposes. Textual linking books are used to establish an initial connection to an unknown location of particular properties; the first arrival on a particular world is invariably of this type. The lengthy descriptions contained in this kind of book mean that they are usually thick, heavy tomes. By contrast, symbolic linking books are usually much lighter, but may only be used to travel to locations that are marked and predefined.

==== Structure ====
Linking books are, in purely physical terms, generally made from materials and through processes that fall within the same scope as other books. The main differences are a thin bar of metal embedded in the spine, on which are incised "connective" enchantments that allow those on individual pages to work together; as well as a requirement for relatively stiff paper (if the glyphs on each page "bend" too much, they lose potency until straightened). As with any enchanted object, a durable medium is preferable; the best books are those with sturdy covers and pages of high-quality paper or parchment. That said, the relatively recent growth of Writing (as the process of creating linking books shall be referred to) means that it has been only in the last cycle or two that Writers, faced with the degradation of older works, have begun to pay attention to the problem of keeping books preserved. A traditionally more important consideration has been the qualities of the ink used to write, and the pen with which it is employed. Enchantment, of any sort, requires clear, sharp glyph-forms in order to function, and this demands ink that does not easily fade and an avoidance of smudging or blotting.

The writing of the book is also an act of enchantment, and therefore requires a mixture of good artistic skill as well as good penmanship. The first portion of the book, usually at least fifty pages depending on the length and width of the book, are filled with enchantment glyphs, which produce the effect of teleportation and targeting to the described location; these are effectively the same in each book, though they must be modified slightly to fit the size of the pages they occupy. (For this reason, most Writers adopt a preferred paper size for their books, to avoid the inconvenience of varying their enchantment placement from books to book.)

The second portion of the book contains the description of the location being linked to; the pages containing the referent are bordered with glyphs that serve a function similar to that of parentheses or brackets in mathematics, indicating a complex grouping that is being fed into the enchantment as input. If the referent is a symbol, this section need only be one page, and the contents of the input area need only be accurately drawn; if the referent is a text, the nature of the description is at the discretion of the Writer, and so long as it is legible and comprehensible in the language being used, will form a successful link to a location. This does not, however, mean that how the description is written is not extremely important, and the factors to be considered will be detailed below.

{{ :thuban:linking_book_linking_page_example_abstraction_thuban_.gif|Swirly!}}
The last element of the book to consider is the linking page, the one to be touched in order to achieve actual teleportation. By convention, this is either on the first page or on the inside of the front cover. Like the descriptive pages, it is bordered by an array of glyphs, though of a different appearance and function. While traditionally nothing is drawn in the center, the nature of the enchantment nonetheless tends to cause a "picture" of the destination to appear in the middle, seemingly drawn of ink in abstracted swirls, but constantly moving and undulating and shifting colors. While the image is of the destination, in a sense, it is not so much a literal one as an impression; it depicts the general shape of the land and kinds of features found at the destination rather than a realistic, accurate replication. That said, the image is still a useful guide for what the traveler can expect on the other side, and many a Writer has been warned that something has gone wrong with their destination by the appearance of violent, chaotic swirling, or of unchanging white dots on a black background.

==== Considerations in writing ====
In order to successfully establish a link, a textual description must fulfill several requirements:

  * It, like the enchantments in the book, must be written legibly and preferably not smudged or blotted;
  * The words and their arrangement must be comprehensible and grammatical in the language in which they are written;
  * It must describe a place.

This sounds deceptively simple, as well it should. It might occur to one to ask whether, by these criteria, one could simply write the sentence "there is a hill" in a linking book and get a working link. But the truth is that, all else being done correctly, it //would// work; place one's hand on the linking page, and one would be taken to a hill. It really would work. But of course, there is indeed a catch: it could be //any// hill, in any kind of place that a hill could conceivably exist. It could be a hill in the middle of a rolling green field, or a hill in a desert, or a hill on an airless asteroid. So while any description of a place will create a link to a place fitting that description, it may not prove to be the place one wants or expects.

For this reason, a certain amount of specificity is required in any good description. At the very least, it must include provisions for the habitability of the destination: that it have a breathable atmosphere at a suitable pressure. (It is not impossible to create atmospheric containment structures that can be linked through a book, but these are generally not feasible at the current levels of technological and economic development available to the takmar.) The more detail that is added, the more constrained and predictable the destination becomes. Many Writers, therefore, prefer rich detail in their descriptions, wanting not to receive nasty surprises when they arrive at their destinations.

There is, however, also danger in this tendency; the more detailed the description, the more care that must be taken with those details. To specify that there is a moon in the sky might seem innocent enough; but suppose one wanted it to appear of a certain size? Very well, but to do so it must be of a certain diameter and at a certain distance, and each is going to have implications for the world it orbits. Write in lots of dramatic volcanoes? The outgassing and particulates might render the planet inhospitable in fairly short order.

Left unspecified, world-ruining features and events may happen by themselves; but this is still less likely to occur than when a Writer unintentionall puts them in a linking book's description. Good Writers, therefore, must have a sufficient understanding of the principles that underlie a safe world to avoid pitfalls - and must know how to Write with an appropriate level of vagueness when they encounter a field in which their knowledge is lacking.

With the spread of the art of Writing among the [[Chosen:]], a difference in style between [[chosen:#Srians|Srian]] and [[chosen:#Kaeans|Kaean]] Writers has become notable. The description in a Srian book will tend to attempt to rest more on underlying rules and processes - describing the composition and movements of plates, for example - and letting consequences arise from then, while that in a Kaean book tends to shy away from processes in favor of describing effects and impressions. While both approaches can lead to useable worlds, they have their own pitfalls, and a careful mix of both is best employed.

==== Careful use ====
The use of linking books, especially when exploring, requires a certain amount of caution and forethought in order to avoid being trapped far from home or in a dangerous situation - or both.

One of the most common causes of disappearance among young Writers is the forgetting of the basic but essential step of taking with them, on their first trip to a newly-Written world, of some means of returning. Unless a traveler has the ability to manufacture books and ink on site, one must, at a minimum, bring some with them - as well as a reproduction of a referent symbol associated with a familiar place.

It is, however, more common and more efficient to go through the following steps:
  - Determine a "hub" location to which one will wish to return. This should be a relatively secure location, and one in which a referent marker has been placed so that books may use it as a destination. Many Writers will use their own homes for this purpose, but others, if they have the resources, may construct a library of linking books at a separate location, as a sort of travel nexus.
  - Create and maintain a stock of both symbolic linking books based around the referent for the hub.
  - When writing a textual linking book to a new world, determine in advance at least one symbolic referent that will be used there, and create a marker bearing it.
  - Before traveling to the new world, take along at least one of the books pointing to the hub, as well as the marker intended to be used in the new world.
  - Upon arrival, place the marker in a location that (if not where one already is) is suitable as an arrival point, so that it can be returned to later via book. The hub book should be left on the new world, preferably in a place protected from wind, weather, or animals, so that one has a path to return to the hub. (Designs of self-closing containers are available to protect linking books, so that once a user has linked away, the book does not need to be manually covered over.)

When exploring a new world outward from the initial linking-in point, it is similarly wise to carry a new marker (to allow one to return to a found location) and a book pointing to a desired return point (either directly to one's hub or to a central location on the world being explored). Many Writers have adopted a design of book cover that allows a marker to be attached directly to the outside of the book, making it both destination and teleporter; upon reaching a place to which one wants to return, one simply deposits the book in a suitably safe spot.

===== History =====
The rise of glyphic teleportation came about in the early [[history:Cloud Era:]] among the [[xtauh:]] of the towns of the northern Brightness as a very specialized outgrowth of the development of enchantment in general.

Enchantment was, and historically has been among the xtauh, considered a form of interaction with the divine; the discovery of a glyph capable of performing a useful function was considered a sign that the propagation of the symbol was meaningful and appreciated by the gods. As a result, extensive knowledge of enchantment came to be, by and large, the province of holy men and women and of priesthoods. It is no surprise, then, that the earliest glyphic teleportation enchantments came about at the shrines and holy places near xtauh settlements - usually upon walls, as the enchantments required considerable space and wide, flat surfaces.

As the earliest such enchantments included no method for directing the teleportation effect, objects touched to walls simply disappeared, and it was generally assumed that they had been transported into a spirit realm or afterlife. These "spirit-walls" became a regular feature of urban religious life as a means of directing offerings - food, valuables, or people - to gods and spirits. That the other side was unknowable and nothing came back from it was entirely expected, and indeed generally approved of, the alternative being rather unsettling.

The late 20s Cloud saw the invention of referent glyphs, which allowed the effects of enchantments to be directed to a particular location without anything passing through the intervening space, provided that both source and destination were marked with some identical referent. Because of the sacral nature of the spirit-walls, there was a certain amount of timidity surrounding the idea of combining them with referent glyphs for the mundane purpose of transportation, but the increasing importance of long-distance trade networks for the xtauh settlements of the north provided motivation to investigate ways of easing the journeys of their merchants. The result, beginning in 43 Cloud, was the creation of the first Gates.

The building of a Gate was a difficult and expensive undertaking. It required a trained priest to direct the work, and skilled stonemasons to perform it. It required care and precision to carry out correctly, as an errant carving could ruin it. It required that the Gate's intended destination have a known and duplicable referent that could be placed on the Gate - which required, at a minimum, long-distance cooperation from, and coordination with, the destination. And building a two-way transportation system also required the construction of a second Gate, and the permission of the destination to build one on their land.

The arrival of the Gates therefore fueled an intense competition among the northern xtauh cities for influence over distant markets. Many destinations found it difficult to support more than one Gate, and therefore might receive visitors from many places but might have only one path of return, and if it was a good place to trade - which, if it had a Gate at all, it likely was - another city might well have a certain interest in seeing that the destination of the Gate was itself.

The resulting geopolitical changes eventually culminated in the outbreak of the [[history:cloud_era:Gate Wars]] from 48 to 50 Cloud. The pyrrhic victory of the Breaker faction ensured that many of the Gates and nearly all of the referents were damaged beyond use, putting an end to the general use of the Gate network for travel.

Progress in the field remained stagnant until a 66 Cloud takma raid on the xtauh village of Rukhiltik, a former protectorate of [[geopolitical:Ivridan]] that retained an intact Gate still pointing to a valid destination referent. The invaders, witnessing the xtauh fleeing through the Gate, realized its import; although the takmar had theorized the existence of gates, they had never built any, deeming it uneconomic. The Gate was destroyed shortly thereafter to discourage attempts by the local xtauh to take it back, but not before rubbings of the glyphs were taken and brought back to the takma sphere along with other spoils.

The prize of a working glyph-set for teleportation resulted in the construction of a few test Gates by the takmar, but although they worked, further attempts were redirected in the face of a new development: variable-geometry enchantment. Before this point, each glyph was constrained by its three-dimensional geometry: one glyph inscribed on a flat surface, for example, would not work on a curved surface. Usually equivalent glyphs existed for various geometries, but discovering them had been a lengthy and tortuous process; and it meant that enchantments could not be placed on items that were flexible enough to be light, unless their shape was held with frames. The discovery of a method to derive glyphs capable of functioning over a range of surface shapes allowed enchantments, for the first time, to be drawn on flexible surfaces without losing their function; although less durable than stone or metal, it allowed a reduction in both the size and the weight of the objects housing complicated enchantments. The translation of the huge teleportation glyph-set to a variable geometry took time, but when it happened, it allowed it to be written into books: the first linking books.

Like the Gates, these books relied on marking destinations with referent glyphs in order to successfully link to them. Unlike the Gates, however, the books, though still expensive, were far cheaper and easier to create than stone edifices, and as they multiplied across the river valleys of the southern Brightness, so too did the number of places claiming conflicting destination glyphs. The brief flowering of instantaneous travel between towns was abruptly curbed by a disturbing outbreak of messy accidents and the resulting cold wars over which locales had the right to claim which marks. Lingering distrust of the books discouraged large numbers of takmar from learning the art of writing them, but those that persisted searched tirelessly for ways to improve them.

The latest development, in 75 Cloud, involved an elaboration of the idea of referent glyphs. The scholar [[person:Kreith of Oraa]], pondering the nature of the referent, reasoned that if a non-magical symbol could be given meaning in an enchantment through its placement among certain other glyphs, surely there was no reason to suppose that said symbol had to have no meaning in itself. Traditionally, a destination was marked with a referent that was complicated by abstract: but why, she thought, could it not be expressed in written words instead, and achieve much more specific results? She set out to test her theory by creating a book that relied on representing a destination with words rather than by an arbitrary symbol.

Kreith decided, for her first attempt, to aim for a high hill that had been near her childhood home in the [[geography:sekhaa:region:cerulean_tangle]]; she had immigrated to the Brightness as a youth, but still had fond, clear memories of the view from the hilltop. Her home had been an isolated farmstead without any particular name, but had not been far from a named village; it would have been possible (as was later realized) to simply write the name of the village into the book, and, assuming no other villages of that name were confusing the book, could have gone there and walked the rest of the way to her hilltop. But so intent was she on teleporting directly to her hilltop that what she did instead was to write into the book a detailed and vivid description of the hill and its environs. This proved to be a momentous choice.

When Kreith used the finished book, she was indeed transported to a hilltop. And while it clearly bore a resemblance to her intended destination - indeed, it was so similar as to be uncanny - it also clearly was not the place from her childhood. The details were not quite right, but as she spent time exploring her surroundings, larger issues revealed themselves. The vegetation was strange, the leaves the wrong color. Such animals as she saw were utterly unfamiliar. And she realized, with fascinated horror, that not only was [[universe:mikurmiya:Kastun]] not in the sky, but that the sun was moving across it far too quickly; where the sun had just dawned when she arrived, it had reached its zenith barely ten rests later!

She had brought a linking book back to [[geopolitical:Oraa]] with her, since she had had no intention of going to her hilltop, however beloved, only to travel back thousands of miles. Siting that book in a rocky crevice for protection from the weather, she used it to return home, and over the following turns traveled again and again to her unknown destination to study it. From the absence of Kastun to the dizzyingly fast sky to the flora, fauna, and even stars being unfamiliar, it became evident to Kreith that she had accidentally linked to a world that was not [[universe:mikurmiya:avishraa]].

While Kreith was sufficiently respected that people were willing to entertain the idea that she was not crazy, they did perhaps regard her in the fashion that a beloved grandmother gets when she's had too much to drink. But she was able to demonstrate her new world upon request, and eagerly described her methods to other Writers she knew. Over the past generation, a new type of linking book has been developing - not widespread yet, but promising a new era of exploration. The technique has even received some interest from the [[Chosen:]]; it was brought to the Citadel by Jennith, the escaped Chosen scribe of one of Kreith's pupils. Jennith has attracted a small following of new Writers there, including her daughter [[person:Enneth]].

{{tag>wip}}