Quickening

See Also: Quickener (Adimus Classification) | Quickener (Profession)

As a transportation method, quickening is the newest form of travel. Like translifs, quickening is a type of teleportation but it can be performed almost anywhere under specific conditions. Only a quickener can use the mentus required for quickening and it requires them to use a special instrument known as a quickener staff. Though extremely complex, quickening has many advantages over translifts including flexibility and availability.

Origins

In 1814 TS Samuel Ferimit, a well-known elvish mentant engineer, introduced the initial principles behind quickening. However, he did not come up with this amazing breakthrough on his own. Not only did it take years of research, but he also had divine inspiration.
He became interested in the concept of teleportation after seeing the epouranal, Cassandra Wendigo, perform the feat on Wendigo Family Day in 1810 TS. Intrigued at how it was possible, he tracked down the epouranal and pleaded with her for insight, which she was all too happy to give. She told him that the ability was available to be used, it was just up to the right person to unlock the ability, and apparently, he was that right person. Cassandra, gave him deep spiritual insight into an area of mentus that had yet to be discovered and he spent months soaking up her wisdom.
Using Cassendra’s spiritual guidance as a foundation, Ferimit was able to extrapolate the scientific principles of dimensional movement, which he dubbed “quickening.” His research was made possible because Ferimit was a quickener, though he didn’t know it at the time. The concept of adimus classifications beyond mentant and mandant had not yet been discovered or explored. Because of this, Ferimit’s research was hampered because other mentant engineers couldn’t reproduce the results.
It took almost two years of trial and error before Ferimit was able to determine that only a very small subset of mentants actually had the requisite abilities necessary to use quickener mentus and perform dimensional movement. Surprisingly all of the people who had these abilities were mentant-nons. At the time, mentant-non was a much-maligned pseudo-subclassification of mentant used to describe people who could never become mind mages due to what was perceived as an adimus abnormality. The term mentant-non was ust a social construct and nothing more.
However, it was quickly determined that not all mentant-nons had the ability to use quickener mentus. Though all mentant-nons shared the trait of having a fluctuation in their adimus energy, Ferimit, and his fellow engineers determined that it took a specific type of fluctuation to use quickener mentus. This was the beginning of research into the different types of mentant-nons. Ferimit was able to use his own adimus as a reference for finding others who matched the exact criteria and he named this new adimus classification quickeners.
Once Ferimit was able to determine who had the ability to use quickener mentus, he began various tests to determine how quickening was possible. He soon realized that epouranals, with their immense power and near unlimited adimus energy pools could accomplish the feat on their own without problem. Normal quickeners, however, would need some way to amplify their innate abilities and the quickener staff was invented to solve this problem. It took years for Ferimit to perfect the design of the quickener staff as well as refine the complex mentus needed to quicken.
In 1814 TS Ferimit presented his findings to the mentant engineering community at large and proved his quickening principles with multiple demonstrations. After this, dozens of mentant engineers around the world began further studying quickener mentus using Ferimit’s principles as a springboard. However, since only those with the quickener adimus classification could accurately study quickening concepts, research in the field became its own independent branch of study separate from mentant engineering.
Over the next few centuries, quickening grew by leaps and bounds. This was largely because most people who discovered that they had the quickener classification immediately dove into the field either to do research or to learn the skills necessary to use the remarkable new ability. In addition, quartzsmiths who discovered they had the classification started tackling the difficult task of creating quickener staffs. These specialized quartzsmiths were called quavers. Because the field was so new, even impoverished people who discovered they had the quickener classification benefited since researchers needed people who could learn and try out the skills.
Quickeners soon gained a high level of social standing. Being able to transport people anywhere in the world with ease was a skillset that was in the highest demand and skilled quickeners and quavers were able to amass great wealth and influence. Over time, more people became quickeners through apprenticeship with an already skilled quickener. However, many quickeners would only pass their knowledge down to members of their own family, ensuring that their lineage alone would be able to reap the benefits. This brought on a wave of unskilled quickeners desperately trying to learn the ability through trial and error resulting in a rise in quickener related accidents and even deaths.
In 2614 TS, part as a response to this problem, Simon Wincraft along with several other scholars and researchers opened the first masters school, Wincraft Masters School. This was a place where people could learn specialized skills, including quickening, in a more formal settings and from people esteemed in their various fields. As masters schools became more ubiquitous, apprentices became less common for both quickeners and other fields such as quartzsmiths. However, due to the expense of masters school, many people still couldn’t learn quickening formally and thus quickener related accidents were still prevalent.
It wasn’t until 3057 TS that the Fantasmal Government finally stepped in and started regulating and licensing quickeners, creating a global standard. This significantly reduced quickener accidents and deaths until they became an extremely rare occurrence and paved the way for universal trust and confidence in quickeners.
In 3527 TS, a famed quaver, Matilda Ghovan, developed a revolutionary new way to make quickener staffs using a cheaper and more readily accessible wood. Up until then, all staffs were made of rockwood, but Ghovan discovered a way to make staffs from vornwood. Though less powerful, they could be made for a fraction of the cost and opened the door for more people to be able to afford them. However, rockwood would continue to be the preferred wood for staffs for another five hundred years.
It's only been since the beginning of the TA era that quickening has moved away from being a skill that was mostly passed down through elite quickener families. A combination of cheaper staffs and more opportunities for those with the adimus classification to be qualified has created a growing pool of licensed quickeners. Quickeners remain highly regarded for their gifts and skills and the profession continues to be extremely lucrative.

Mechanics

Though quickening is viewed as quick and easy transportation that requires little effort, the mechanisms behind quickening are extremely complex and require a lot of study and training. However, the basics of quickening are similar to that of translifts.
Using their staffs as amplifiers, a quickener can dimensionally move—basically teleport—to any person they have a connection with as long as that person is not surrounded by quartz. In addition, with the aid of their staff, they can teleport any person they have a connection with along with any person or object within their mentant range. Effectively this means:

• Quickeners can teleport to someone they’re connected to
• Quickeners can teleport a connected person to them
• Quickeners can teleport a group of people and objects within their mentant range to another connected person
• Quickeners can teleport one connected person to another connected person even if neither person is in their local mentant realm.

However, a quickener is not limited to only connecting to a person. They also have the ability to connect to special markers known a quickener markers, thus expanding where they are able to teleport.

Limitations

Quickeners are hampered by quartz: Quickeners cannot transport large quantities of quartz, especially unprocessed quartz or ustus fabric. The more quartz in the clothing or objects they are transporting, the fewer people they can move.
In addition, quickeners cannot transport to places surrounded or blocked by quartz. This usually means that quickening to, from, or within the various large mountain ranges are always problematic, and it’s impossible in certain areas like the Crystal Sands Desert, White Desert, Lost Plains, and other places with high concentrations of quartz, even if it’s just in the ground. For this reason, most buildings are built with quartz stone to keep quickeners out, and most cities are surrounded by a quartz wall or other quartz based barrier.
The one exception to this is traveler quartz, which has only recently been discovered within the second half of the TA era. Travel quartz has special dimensional properties that enhance both quickening and vision in the mentant realm. If a quickener is in area with high concentrations of quartz but they surround themselves with traveler quartz, they will still be able to quicken to anywhere they normally would, despite the quartz interference. Conversely, a quickener can transport to a marker or person surrounded by traveler quartz, even if that connection point is within a quartz barrier.
A quickener can only transport a set amount of people or objects. Unlike translifts which are limited only by size, quickeners are limited by their skill and staffs. They can only quicken a set amount of people or independent objects. The typical max is around ten, but especially talented quickeners with powerful staffs can do up to twenty.
A quickener cannot transport someone against their will. The quickener connection requires passive consent. A person can feel the connection and easily resist it as long as they are not unconscious. For this reason, quickeners are almost never used for prisoner transport as even a mentantly restrained person can resist a quickener.
Quickener connections can become dormant: 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 communicate and quicken the target without their explicit consent. A dormant connection allows the quickener to see the target and reach out to them through their staff (through a technique known as a reverse call), but they can’t quicken or communicate fully until the target establishes an active connection. This is usually done by a quickener call.

Quickener Markers

A quickener marker is an intricately designed quartz apparatus that functions like a pseudo-adimus, allowing quickeners the ability to connect to it. Like most things related to quickening and quickener mentus, quickener markers can only be created by quickeners, specifically high skilled quickener quartzsmiths known as quavers. Though quickener markers function almost identically to an adimus, there are some differences and limitations:

• Unlike people, markers have a set limit of quickeners that can connect to them, but the limitation is usually meaningless since it’s always several hundred. In addition, connections can be forcibly removed or expire if they are not renewed after several years.
• Markers cannot be directly quickened. This is partially due to the fact that they are quartz but mostly because they are made quicken-proof by design.
• Marker connections are always active. Unlike when connecting with a person, a connection to a quickener marker never becomes dormant. This is because markers are designed to send a constant "psuedo-call" to all connected quickeners.

Markers are relatively expensive items, similar to the cost of a rockwood quickener staff, but they require no maintenance once created and last virtually forever unless physically broken or mentantly undone by guardian level mentus.
Quickeners can quicken to any marker they are connected to as long as it is in an accessible area. Typically, cities place quartz markers at their outskirts, beyond any quartz or physical barriers that protect it. The most common way a marker is secured is by embedding it in a stone wall that is attached to a metal poll anchored in the ground. There is typically little fear of a marker being stolen since it can be so easily found by a quickener connected to it, however they are usually protected by mentus based security. Some places also allow quickeners to post their own markers, though this is a rare practice. In areas where this is done, the private markers are stored in a secured metal box outside the city.

The Quickener Call

Any person connected to a quickener can perform a “quickener call.” This is when a person infuses their voice with adimus energy—a skill known as adimus voice—and calls out to a specific quickener. In almost all cases, a quickener can hear the call even in places that they cannot quicken from. If both parties are surrounded by thick layers of quartz, such as inside of a mountain or underground, then the call may not be heard. A quickener call will also work if a person holds a marker connected to a quickener.
The quickener call activates a dormant quickener connection and is normally used to summon a quickener when you need them to take you somewhere. Of course, a quickener can choose not to answer a call. In addition, a quickener call will not work if the person calls the wrong name except in certain cases where the name is recognized by the quickener’s staff.
Quickener calls can also be done in reverse, where the quickener, using their staff, can reach out to a person they have a connection with. However, unlike with normal quickener calls, which use adimus voice, a reverse call cannot make a dormant quickener connection active.

Quickener Staffs

Quickener mentus is a very complicated branch of mentus. Much of it can’t be used without a special amplifier to work properly. Quickener staffs were invented for this purpose and are the main tool of all quickeners.
Quickener staffs are extremely precise instruments made by quavers, a special category of quartzsmith that only quickeners can become. Quickener staffs are comprised of various types of quartz and use a special wood to bind it together. Every quickener staff is unique in its design and abilities, and a staff can only be used by one person, its master. However, some quickener staffs have the ability to be passed down through the bloodline of the original owner to a new master, once this is done, the staff will only respond to that new master.

Design & Materials

The quartz used in quickener staffs varies based on the design, but the primary types are tuner, melivian, and amicus. Other quartz is added to increase memory or give the staff different properties. There are only two types of wood used for quickener staffs, rockwood, and vornwood. Rockwood is the hardest and most durable wood available; it also channels mentus extremely efficiently. Vornwood, though not as durable can conduct mentus energy almost as efficiently as rockwood, and it is far more prevalent and easier to obtain.
Vornwood staffs can last anywhere between 50 and 100 years depending on design and maintenance. Rockwood staffs can last almost indefinitely if well maintained. In addition, rockwood staffs tend to have more memory, are more resistant to exotic energies, and can perform extremely complex tasks. They can also be passed down through a master’s bloodline. However, a rockwood staff will typically cost ten times as much as a vornwood staff and require very specific maintenance that only a few quavers are capable of. For this reason, vornwood is the more popular wood choice for quickener staffs.
In general, quickener staffs should receive maintenance by a quaver every few years, though it can be more frequent depending on use.

Core & Memory

The main element of the quickener staff that gives it its abilities is the core, which is a hybrid of multiple types of quartz fuzzed together. A core has several functions, but the main one is its memory.
Staff memory is defined by the following quantifiable attributes
Connections: The number of people or markers the staff can connect to. This is typically between ten and twenty though some staffs can go as high as fifty and some rockwood staffs can even reach one hundred.
Load: A staff’s max load is how many people or objects the staff can transport at once. This is separate from connections since a load is temporary. The staff only has to carry its load for a brief period of time, so the load is always held in a separate part of memory so that it doesn’t impact the connections. A typical load is between five and ten people or objects, though loads as high as twenty are not uncommon in rockwood staffs. Load is also dependent on the skill of the quickener since concentration is required to dimensionally move people and objects. This is why the number is so much smaller than a quickener’s max connections.
Peers: Two staffs can share a temporary link that allows the quickeners to be able to communicate with one another and consciously share connections. This is especially useful in quickener networks and is normally used to allow a quickener to quicken to a place that they don’t have a connection to. Typically, a staff can have between two and five peers and these links can be temporary or permanent. Peer links are separate from bonding which is a stronger type of link that happens deeper within the staff’s core.
Whenever a staff maxes out its connections, load, or peers, it will drop the oldest one from memory to make space for the newest one.
Staff memory also holds the master bond, subordinate bond, and psyche.
Master Bond: This is the bond between the staff and its master, once established it cannot be overwritten against the staff’s will, not even by guardian level mentus. Once the master bond is formed, the staff belongs to the quickener indefinitely. The only exception is with rockwood staffs that can be passed down to another in the master’s direct bloodline as long as it’s the staff’s will. This is due to the woods higher ability to conduct and channel mentus, allowing for the subtle change between users within the same bloodline.
Subordinate Bond: This is a secondary bond that a quickener can make with another quickener. The practice is known as “bonding staffs” and it can only be done with one quickener at a time. It requires both the quickeners and their staffs to be in sync. A subordinate bond is similar to a peer, except it cannot be overridden by a new peer. Not only can the two quickeners communicate but they have a permanent perpetual link that allows them full access to the other person’s entire staff memory even without their explicit consent.
Bonded quickeners also sense each other at all times and the stronger and more in sync the bond is, the more intimate the connection feels. Because of the level of access, a subordinate bond gives, two quickeners have to have a high level of trust in order to use it. As such, bonding usually happens between married quickeners or similarly deep relationships.
Two people with bonded staffs also have the ability to utilize the full potential of both staffs combined for far greater effects including being able to transport up to fifty people at one time, depending on the skill of the two quickeners.
Pysche: The psyche of the staff is very nebulous. It is the part of the core that all mentus commands flow through in order to be processed and interpreted. As such, it tends to maintain bits and pieces of repeatedly used mentus, and this energy, over time, is cobbled together into a type of “personality” for the staff. This is the most unique and hardest to define part of the staff core and often why people say that quickener staffs are “alive.”
The psyche is what is said to contain the staff’s “will” which is developed over time as it is used by its master. Quickener staffs are highly resistant to tampering and mentus directed through it by anyone other than their master. Except for physical destruction, it’s impossible to dissolve the link between master and staff, it can’t even be done by the quaver who created it. A staff’s will can affect who a quickener can bond with, based on the commonalities or differences within the two staffs. In addition to this will, the staff psyche can also develop certain quirks or traits based on how the staff is used.
For example, if a staff is constantly used to transport the same three people over and over again over months or years, the staff may develop an aversion to connecting to other people, this could manifest as a reduction in its load, or those three people never being removed from memory even if they are older connections that would normally be removed to make way for new.
Another ability caused by the psyche is the so-called ‘instant call” phenomenon, where a quickener can respond to a call seemingly instantaneously. In reality this is the psyche processing the call and the intent of its master in real time and moving before the quickener is even fully aware of it. This can happen after years of the psyche processing the same calls and responses repeatedly.
There are also rare cases where a staff that has a particularly strong or long-lived subordinate bond will respond to certain mentus given by the subordinate if the staff is separated from its master.
It usually takes years for a staff to develop any sort of traits within the psyche and these traits are random and cannot be individually changed. The only way to get rid of a bothersome staff trait is to have a quaver reset the core memory, or to try to train the trait out of the staff.

Other Abilities

In addition to staff memory, a staff’s core also holds its unique abilities, this is usually dependent on the different types of quartz the core is comprised of. Some common staff abilities include:
Visual Communication: The staff can produce the image of a person its connected to, allowing the quickener and that person to communicate visually. This is similar to certain types of communication quartz that allow for a semi-transparent 3D image during communication.
Quartz Emulation: The staff can create a transparent field around the quickener with the properties of a specific type of quartz. The type of quartz depends on the types available in the staff itself, though some quartz cannot be emulated. Quartz emulation can allow for various other abilities depending on the mentus skills of the quickener.
Knowledge Transfer: Information can be stored inside of the staff that the quickener can then access. This typically requires complex mandamus to accomplish but the staff must have the ability for it to even work. This can be useful for giving the quickener access to things like languages, area maps, and even the customs of specific places. Having information embedded in the staff is significantly easier than trying to embed it in another person’s brain, which is near impossible except for extremely powerful guardians.
Protection: A staff cannot be tampered with by external mentus and a quickener staff that has a protection ability can extend that trait to its master, protecting them from most common mentus based manipulation done without the quickener’s consent.
Reverse Call: This allows the quickener to call out to anyone that their staff is connected to. Like the quickener call, a person can hear the reverse call in almost all cases even in areas that aren’t accessible by quickening. A reverse call can be useful to let someone know that they are ready and available to quicken the person.
There are many other abilities that can be embedded into a staff core though most depend on the traits and attributes of the quickener as well.

Page Contents

Transportation

Vehicles & Animal Transport Translifts Quickening

Society & Culture

Featured Articles Society & Culture (Main) The Races of Mendala History of Spirituality Education

Related Materials

• Tuner Quartz