Teleportation

Teleportation is a common type of enchantment in the Locus. However, it is also one that is, in most cases, severely limited in what it can actually do.

Locus teleportation is restricted in where things can teleport to or from. The ability to teleport without such restrictions is highly sought after, and forms the basis of a variety of legends and investment scams. However, no practical teleporter of this type has yet been developed, although there are rumors of some Granter cults having powers that resemble such an ability.

There are four major types of economically important teleport enchantments:

Seed teleportation is a form of teleportation based on exploitation of pre-existing magical anomalies. Whether these anomalies are natural or a product of some ancient and powerful civilization is a matter of some debate. What is known is that once such an anomaly is found, it can be exploited to create a stable teleport gate between the location of that anomaly and the location of its matching pair. The anomalies are known as teleport seeds, and the resulting portals as seed teleporters.

Seed teleportation is the most economical means of interplanetary travel. It is also important because other means of interplanetary travel (i.e. astral televation) require that special devices be placed on the destination world. Since this means the planet must have already been reached by some other means, such methods can reach a known planet, but not explore new worlds. Seed teleportation is thus the only way to extend the frontiers of the Locus.

Most teleport seeds are located deep underground and in remote locations. As a result, while seed teleportation makes for an easy way to travel across interplanetary distances, travel to and from the teleport gate can be cumbersome, requiring extensive overland travel. Thus, instead of replacing overland travel, this type of teleportation actually increases demand for it.

The greatest drawback to seed teleporters is that they are few in number and easy to control. A country with a seed teleporter on its territory will usually charge a toll for its use, and will not allow non-allied armies to pass through it. For very lucrative trade routes, the toll charged can be quite steep. For those seeking to bypass such tolls, those seeking freedom of travel without interference from any government, or those seeking to pursue wars of conquest, another means of interplanetary travel is required.

Conduit teleportation is a form of teleportation based on a fixed magical infrastructure. Conduit teleport gates must be linked by continuous chains of specially enchanted devices, known as teleport conduits, in order to function. The teleport "conduits" rarely resemble actual pipes, and in most cases are more like beads on a string. However, the outsides of teleport conduits are rarely seen because they are buried underground, so they are named instead from resemblance to a "pipe" carrying people and goods across long distances.

Conduit teleporters are expensive to build and maintain, so long-distance conduit teleporters tend to be restricted to major trade routes. However, because the cost of the conduit is proportional to distance, they are economical in any place with sufficiently high traffic density. As a result, they are commonly found in large cities and form an essential public transportation system. In some cases, intercity and intracity teleport networks are linked together, resulting in networks of cities that function politically and economically as a single entity.

Televation is a form of teleportation that operates only in a vertical direction. Unlike conduit and seed teleportation, this can be used anywhere without any special site preparation. However, the restriction on the direction of travel makes it nearly useless for overland journeys.

The main advantage of this type of teleporter is that it is the easiest to construct of any teleporter type, making it cheap and thus ubiquitous. The reason for its low cost lies in the simplicity of its guidance mechanism. Rather than having to specify the range and direction of its destination point like any other type of teleporter, a televator needs only specify a difference in gravitational potential and then selects the nearest point satisfying that condition.

In some cases it is not even very precise in selecting the nearest point. Such televators are known as summoning gates, and are unsuitable for transporting people or finished goods. They are useful for transporting energy and raw materials, and because of their low cost are commonly found in household appliances. Examples of this include arc lanterns and magma lanterns. Most plumbing fixtures use televators, as they are more reliable than pipes. They are also used to summon core steel.

Televators are constrained by conservation of energy; in order to transport anything uphill, they must have a source of mechanical power. One of the more common ways to do this is to operate them in linked pairs, so that the power needed to move one object or substance up is provided by moving another object or substance down.

Astral televation is a variant on televation capable of spanning the distance between star systems. In this case, the point of origin must be such that the destination world is directly overhead, and the destination point will be such that the world of origin is directly overhead.

Because of the cost of the equipment involved and the precise calibration required to target a specific destination planet, astral televators comprise fixed structures on their worlds of origin. Usually this takes the form of a small pyramid or monolith. This device can be activated exactly once per day, with the time of day varying throughout the year. However, no such structure is required on the destination world. Because of differences in the day and year lengths of different worlds, an astral televator will have a different destination each time it is used.

Unlike normal televators, astral televators draw power from celestial movements, and therefore do not need a source of mechanical power. Were this not the case, interplanetary teleportation would be profoundly impractical due to the immense amounts of energy required.

An astral televator must be calibrated to a specific destination world to operate. This is because in any small window around vertical there are far more uninhabitable planets, stars, or other non-habitable surfaces than habitable worlds. Also, the televator must be able to trigger when the target world is directly overhead, not before or after. As a result, astral televation cannot be used to extend the frontiers of the Locus.

Like seed teleporters, astral televators tend to increase rather than replace overland travel. Astral televators can only be placed at specific latitudes, so travel between those latitudes is necessary to make any trip involving more than one teleport jump. As astral televators have limited range, multiple-jump trips are common.

Only levitating vehicles can use an astral televator. This is because, once opened, the resulting teleport gate sweeps across the land at high speed, so anything in contact with the ground will either disrupt the gate or be disrupted by it (i.e. sliced apart). Of course, being in a levitating vehicle when using astral televation is a good idea anyways, because most of the time the destination of the televation gate will be over water.