Quickener

See Also: Quickening (Transportation Method) | Quickener (Profession)

Quickener is both an adimus classification and a profession. It refers to someone with quickener sense and the ability to use a branch of mentus known as quickener mentus. The most well-known and widely used ability within quickener mentus is quickening: the ability to teleport from one location to another with the aid of a special tool known as a quickener staff.
Quickener mentus is extremely complex and one of the most difficult types of mentus to learn. It’s also extremely versatile. Although quickening is a highly coveted skill, quickener mentus can be used for many other things and is one of the most studied branches of mentus, with new discoveries and breakthroughs every few centuries.
Due to the complexity of their mentus and the highly useful nature of their skill set, quickeners share a similar level of respect and prestige as mind mages.  This was further codified when the position of Fantasmal Quickener was added to the highest level of the Fantasmal Government alongside the Fantasmal Mind Mage, making it only one of a few government positions that report directly to the Fantasma.

Abilities

Though most people are only familiar with quickening, quickeners have an entire branch of mentus that they can utilize. It allows them to do things that no other adimus classification can do, with the exception of the epouranal mages. Even guardians cannot use quickener mentus.
Though quickener mentus is powerful and versatile it usually requires a special apparatus to amplify it to a useful level. This is known as a quickener staff. In addition, quickener mentus uses a large amount of adimus energy, meaning that quickeners must be mindful of how often they quicken in a short period of time.

Quickener Sense

Quickeners have a different way of perceiving the mentant realm, separate from what anyone else can see, even mind mages and guardians. This is known as quickener sense. This allows them to perceive far off places, even those surrounded by quartz, if they can maintain a link there. Once that is accomplished, they can see these linked locations mentantly as easy as they can see the area around them. If the location is surrounded by quartz, they won’t be able to perceive it clearly in the mentant realm, but they can still maintain the link and understand where it is relative to their own location.
Because of this, quickeners have a stronger connection to the people and places they are connected to. This can be an odd sensation, especially for novice quickeners because in a sense, their mind perceives them to be in multiple locations at all times.
Quickener sense also allows quickeners to perceive fluctuations in temporal and dimensional energies. However only those with a more specialized type of quickener sense, known as dimensional sense, can manipulate these energies.

Quickener Connections

A quickener connection is a type of adimus marker that can only be placed by quickener mentus. As long as a quickener has a quickener staff, a quickener connection is permanent unless forcibly removed by either party, or if the quickener staff runs out of connections and starts removing the oldest ones. A quickener connection is a type of dimensional bond, so it is visible to the quickener even if the target is far away or within a quartz barrier. Though they won't be able to communicate or quicken to someone behind a barrier, in almost all cases they’ll still be able to sense them, no matter how far away the target is. This is due to their quickener sense.
A quickener connection can be active or dormant. An active connection is one that has been used in the past several minutes, though it can last up to an hour. When the connection is active, the quickener can usually quicken and communicate with the target without their explicit consent. A dormant connection allows the quickener to see the target, quicken to their location (if they are not behind a quartz barrier), or briefly communicate with them (known as a reverse call), but they can’t quicken or communicate fully with the target until the connection is made active. This can be done by the quickener if the target is within their local mentant range, or by quickener call if the target is not in range.

Quartz Tuning

Like all mentant-nons, quickeners have the channeling trait, but they can also use a separate branch of channeling called tuning. Whereas channeling embeds a specific type of mentus into quartz, tuning allows the quickener to continuously manipulate quartz with their mentus, adjusting it as needed to create different and far more complex results. Tuning can be used to enhance or repress certain attributes of quartz as well as emulate and synthesize quartz.
Quartz tuning is one of the most studied branches of quickener mentus as there are endless possibilities. However, like channeling, tuning has its limitations as it cannot remove the universal barrier-like properties of quartz that prevent vision and quickening in the mentant realm. The sole exception to this is travel quartz, due to its dimensional properties. A skilled quickener can use this quartz to significantly enhance their quickener mentus and vision in the mentant realm.
Quartz tuning is also how quavers create quickener staffs.

Education & Careers

Quickeners are required to be fully-qualified and licensed in order to persue any career in their field and this can be extremely costly. Quickeners must learn their skills in masters school which usually takes around three to four years of training. Not only are masters schools expensive but they have high barriers of entry. A person must have had two years of some form of advanced mentus education or job training before they can enter.
After being qualified by a masters school, they must then be licensed by the Fantasmal Government. The cost for a quickening license is also extremely high and the license must be renewed yearly. Only licensed quickeners are allowed to purchase quickening staffs and operate as quickeners for hire. Fully qualified quickeners are the only ones who wear blue-robes and purple belts, unqualified quickeners wear the robes of mentants.
With the cost of school, licensing and buying and maintain a quickener staff, it can be very cost prohibitive for a person with the quickener trait to become a fully qualified quickener, especially if they come from a poor family. Even those who come from families with moderate resources can struggle with these costs.
However, once a quickener reaches the point where they are qualified and licensed, the demand for their services is extremely high. They can receive top salaries as a resident or government quickener or get paid as a commercial quickener. Notably, Fantasmal Government quickeners receive free lodging and their license fees are waived (or rather, paid for by the government itself). So despite the long and arduous road, it is still a beneficial and lucrative skill set with many job opportunities and several different career paths.

Commercial Quickener

A commercial quickener is a quickener for hire by anyone who can pay their fee. Many commercial quickeners work in certain areas or specialize in certain types of transports. Commercial quickening can be a highly competitive market and thus there is very little collaboration between commercial quickeners, although occasionally small commercial quickener networks will form.
Many cities will allow commercial quickeners to either place their own marker at the designated marker post or connect to publicly accessible quickener markers. This is almost always done for a fee that must be paid periodically according to that domain’s rules and most domains have strict punishments for quickeners who try to bypass their fees and post their own markers. Violators can even lose their quickener license for a set period of time or even permanently.
Commercial quickener fees are not regulated and are instead subject to the whims of the free market. In addition, all cities and nations accredited by the Fantasmal Government must allow commercial quickeners to operate freely within their domains or pay a hefty tax that is related to their domain’s size. This does not mean they must provide them a marker, only that they cannot bar them from operating in their area. Notably Acumen, Glorandor and Ellenon are the largest domains that do not allow commercial quickening.
Commercial quickening can be highly lucrative, since they are few and far between, but there is also a high barrier of entry since there are steep costs to connect to area markers.

Resident Quickener

A resident quickener is an individual quickener who serves a specific person, family, company, or organization. Though almost always referring to one individual quickener, a very small quickener network of two to three quickeners may also be referred to as resident quickeners.
Resident quickeners are usually much higher paid because they are the sole quickener for the person(s) they serve and must be able to transport them anywhere they need. This includes predefined locations that are constantly needed as well as one off locations. In these instances, the resident quickener may need to employ a link with another quickener in order to accomplish the transport.
Resident quickeners typically have other duties related to their quickening duties such as managing supply chains for a trade organization, diplomatic duties for a nation-state, or hospitality duties for a wealthy family. Each case is different and require different skill sets.

Network Quickener

A quickener network is a group of quickeners that all connected to the same set of markers and/or people. The advantage being that multiple quickeners can always be called upon at any given time creating an extensive, fast, and flexible transport network. The defining trait of a quickener network is that all members must be connected to all of the points and people within that network at all times. Peer links are usually used to help accomplish this. In many cases, the quickeners are restricted from connecting to any other quartz markers and must continuously renew their connections. Types of networks include:
Military Networks: Where a quickener the quickeners are typically assigned to various platoons and are connected to one or more military officers and several key locations.
Government Networks: Where the quickeners are specifically assigned to one or more officials and several key locations.
National Networks: Where the quickeners are connected to several or all key markers within a specific nation and residents are able to contact quickeners via marker to transport them to specific places within the country. This can come with either restrictions on who can use these markers or require people to pay a fee.

Broadcaster

Quickeners are not only capable of moving people from place to place, but also information. A quickener who specializes in the exchange of information is known as a broadcaster. These quickeners have visual storage and visual communication abilities in their staffs and can use them to record, transfer, and show plays, sports matches, news, and other programming made by the various communication, news, and production organizations around the world.
Entertainment companies can use broadcaster networks to show their content live in various predefined places, or they can have a broadcaster record the production in order to transfer it to one of the many melnet operations that buy content for their service.
Though most broadcasters work for production or melnet companies, some work privately delivering messages from one location to another as a service. However, usually this would not be the only job a quickener does and it would just be one of many services provided by a commercial quickener.

Quaver

A quaver is a person who creates and repairs quickener staffs and quickener markers. They are the most skilled and specialized of quartzsmiths and it requires an additional three to five years of masters school and typically apprenticeship under an existing quaver is also highly encouraged. Like all quartzsmiths, quavers must be licensed by the Fantasmal Government and must prove their abilities in order to achieve that license. Not only must it be renewed periodically, but a quaver is the only quartzsmith that must be reapproved each time their license comes up for renewal to make sure their skills have not waned. It only takes three times for a quaver to create a faulty staff for their license to be permanently revoked.
Quavers are such a specialized and niche skillset that there are usually less than one hundred active at any given time.

Researcher

Many quickeners go into the field of research, these people are often also professors in masters school. Because quickener mentus is such a complicated subset of adimus abilities, new discoveries are often being found which push the filed forward and allow for advances in quickening. Quickener mentus can be used for many other things beyond quickening, however, almost all of these things require a quickener staff so therefore one must be qualified in order to take advantage of these additional skills.
The filed of quickener research is the second most prestigious field of science behind mentant engineering. Many large and prestigious masters schools have a few quickener researchers on staff who double as professors. Almost all quickener researchers and even some extremely skilled quickeners are members of the Worldwide Quickener Conference which is a group of prestigious researchers who share and collaborate on quickener research study.

Adimus Classification

Subcategory	Mentant-Non
Avg. Lifespan	150-175 Years
Official Robe	Blue w/ Purple Belt
Population %	< 1%

Related Professions

• Quickener

Understanding The Adimus

Terminology & Abilities

Adimus Classifications (Main Article)