Communicating in Terra (Patreon)

Communications. When we hear that word, we think of things like phone calls, text messages, emails, maybe even regular old mail. Things so common in our day to day lives that we almost take them for granted. And for the people of Terra, due to the lack of widespread electrical infrastructure (there are a handful of cities only just beginning to experiment with the technology), most of them don’t exist at all. Of course, where technology is lacking, magic will step in to compensate.

The most basic way of communicating is, of course, your standard mail. It is widespread enough that most major cities have their own post offices, doing their best to remain interconnected to facilitate easy delivery between them, even across the ocean. It also takes the longest, and comes with the highest rate of messages being lost, as it relies on individual people handling it at every step of the way. Magic can be used to alleviate many of these issues, attaching tracking spells to letters or parcels, or helping a person, horse, or even boat to move faster.

After people-delivered mail, comes animal-delivered mail. I know that sounds like it should actually be a step down, but as with snail-mail, magic steps in to pick up the slack. In a world where people can actually communicate with them, animals become even more reliable than people. Natural casters in particular excel in this area, with some of them raising entire flocks of carrier pigeons. Over shorter distances, a message can even be magically “imprinted” onto the animal’s mind, which can then be passed along to the recipient, allowing even non-spellcasters to understand the imparted information. As with standard mail, the longer the distance your message travels, the greater the risk involved.

If you’ve noticed a theme yet, it’s that magic has many uses in enhancing and fortifying the ways people deliver mail and packages on Terra. It also has led to some entirely new ways of communicating. For example, arcane casters have been able to craft spells that mimic the psionic ability of telepathy, allowing the casters to communicate silent messages to each other over short distances. The further apart the casters are, the more difficult it is to maintain the connection. However, if the casters are aware of each other’s geographical locations, communication is still possible, though it acts more like a short-wave radio, utilizing a call-and-response system. Over time, a name was coined for this method of communication: the spell-o-gram. Several major cities now house an official office of the United Spell-o-gram Union of Terra, with more being built every year.

Of course, if you are not a spellcaster, that does not leave you with many options when it comes to the more rapid means of communication. You can of course pay someone else for their services (which is the entire reason the USUT exists), but that does not allow for much privacy, as at least two spellcasters will be responsible for sending and receiving your message to another. Well magic has stepped in to provide another option: enchanted vellum. Enchanted vellum is made from the wood pulp of the Piceoideae Copicea, or Copycat Pine. Found only in remote regions of the northern hemisphere, this plant has several interesting magical properties. Not only is it an excellent spell conductor, but also seemingly a mimic: any damage done to one part of the tree would be copied on another. A combined team of wizards, enchanters, and sorcerers were able to isolate this ability, splitting the paper formed from the tree’s wood between two books. What was written in one, would appear on the other. This means that each tree can only produce two journals, and given the tree’s rarity, leads to a rather hefty price tag.

Not available and largely unknown to most of the general public are other magical means of communication. The ancient elven civilization had seemingly discovered a way to facilitate almost instantaneous communication complete with full sound and visuals connection. These ancient cities were built atop leylines, and the elves were able to utilize a series of magically charged crystals and prisms to link these leylines to create connections that allowed for the passing of audio and video information, even holographic projections. There are less than a dozen of these systems still working today, though gnome scientists are hard at work attempting to replicate the technology.

Still, magic cannot solve everything, and not everyone can use it. To that effect, all across the world people are developing new technological solutions. With the advent of electricity, some have begun experimenting with radio waves, while others look into ways of using it to store and retrieve information. Even spellcasters have looked into ways of using enchantments to “record” messages, which could then be played back later by the intended recipient, some even with a full visual provided by an illusion. Whether it be your friends, family, or worst enemy, communicating is important, and people will always be finding new ways to talk to each other.