For Whom the Spell Tolls

orig image by muratart, Adobe Stock Images

Ship crossing the toll barrier

Research:
Toll Spell

by our grumbly hero,
Lorgan the Annoyed

In this Research Document:

all images by Shade Melodique
unless otherwise stated

Background

If there's one thing you can count on, it's whizan greed. That is the sole explanation for the barrier spell that sits across the Dryanflow at Selaserat.
Many, many moons ago, the elfine whizan Kjiven cast a barrier spell which he sunk into the riverbed and then triggered. The spell prevented boats from sailing upstream to Dryanthium unless they paid him money. No one but Kjiven and his kith and kin liked the idea (surprise!), but he refused to eliminate the barrier--and began to charge those trying to bypass it even more than the toll itself.
Brilliant idea on his part, but for one thing; how to deactivate the barrier to let ships through who paid the toll, while keeping all others on the northern side of it.

Now, one might wonder why an elfine whizan went to all the trouble to cast a spell when he could well have built a physical barrier to do the same thing. Well, he was an elfine whizan.
If that's not enough of an explanation, realize that, at the time of Kjiven's rule, the wildelfine ghosts of Greenglimmer held nothing in higher esteem than magic and powerful whizen. If it could be done by magic, they would do it by magic, even if it proved more efficient to build something by hand. They saw it as a way to elevate themselves above the chaff, and it gave them something to brag about when dealing with other powerful magic users, like the nymph mafiz, the dryan aedefyn, the human and sprite mystics.
The dryan aedefyn were particular annoyances, since they had exceptional Mental Touch and the backing of a large population of ghosts--everything the wildelfine wanted.

The Problem

Small boats slipped past the barrier when it was released for larger ones. Kjiven basically created a curtain across the Dryanflow, and the entire thing dropped when a ship needed to get through. If other boats beat the toll-paying one across, they effectively bypassed the barrier.
And that was something up with which he could not put.
There were other problems as well:

• if the barrier rose while a boat was over it, it would either break said boat apart or lift it high into the air, after which it fell. In both cases, living beings died and ghosts discorporated
• larger ships took time to float over it, which gave smaller ones ample chances to cross without paying
• the barrier was slow to rise and slow to fall, causing backups into the Sea of Winds
• the captains and owners of the larger vessels complained about being targeted unfairly and there was talk among traders about ditching the Dryanflow and getting supplies to Dryanthium by way of overland routes in Happendance, even if it added days to their journey

The Solution

When everyone started to talk about how inelegant and low and awful his barrier spell was, Kjiven got pissy (and petty). He harassed the ship captains and confiscated boats, but the gossip scratched at him. So he sat in Kjivendei and had a think, before coming up with an (obvious) solution that he paraded around as a phenomenal idea of epic proportions (because that's what whizen do).
A toll spell! Brilliant!
By this time (23,098 years previous), the Evenacht had a functional system of travel badges, even if the rural areas of the three continents had yet to adopt them. Most trader and tourist ships had them, and used them as intended--passes into once-restricted areas. Kjiven decided to use them as a base and force those who had yet to purchase one (like small fishing boat owners) to do so.
He had a representative of each ship bring their ship's badge to the River Controller office at the docks. There, an official would use a special wand to infuse the spell into the threads. The rep would take it back to the ship, attach it to the very front end, and a hole the size of the vessel would appear in the barrier--no need to drop the barrier. The spell was good for two passes--one upstream, one downstream--and the ship would need to respell the badge on their return up the Dryanflow.

The Spell

Kjiven used a simple friend detection spell as the base for his masterpiece. Friend detection spells are commonly used with military defensive shields, to allow soldiers into areas but keep the enemy out. The shields link to patches or badges, and when a friend attempts to pass through, the link tells the shield that they should be let in.
The drawback is that the links are that--links. They have a magical line linking them to the shield, and if that line is cut, the link disappears and the friend is no longer able to pass through the shield. This led to the invention of triggers, which bypassed the need for a physically linked object, but those developed millennia later.
What Kjiven did was simpler than a trigger. He used a Light spell he formulated on both the wand and the barrier. The spell would cover the ship in a Light shield, the barrier would recognize his Touch and let the vessel that had it through. Multiple boats of whatever size could pass through at once, without the dropping and raising of the barrier. To make extra certain that no other boat could hitch a ride, he made the spell brilliant enough, that anyone within a certain distance outside the spell could not see. If they could not detect the gap, they couldn't get through it.
The spell did have a time limit of a couple semma, but most vessels returned back down the Dryanflow in plenty of time.

orig image by digitalstormcinema, Envato Elements

going through the toll barrier

You thought I was joking about Kjiven getting pissy about beings skipping his tolls, didn't you? I am here to say, sadly, I was not.
He did not flip larger boats into the jungle (probably because he did not have the magical ability to lift them, but he, of course, never admitted that). But smaller vessels owned by the commoner? Fair game.
He had a favorite place to drop them, too. Beings attempting to by-pass the tolls would take a rugged path from West Selaserat down to a ferry run by the town of Yjoudespayr, a place outside Greenglimmer so not under Kjiven's rule. He would dump the boats in the middle of this pathway, forcing foot traffic into the trees to go around--and because the forest is dense and murky, some got lost, some got attacked by wild animals, some disappeared.

orig image by Fxquadro, Adobe Stock Images

landed boat--spell preserved
to embarrass later generations

The Aftermath

The Light spell became known as Kjiven's Toll Spell, or just the Toll Spell. Eventually, because it was simply much faster to sail up the Dryanflow than to travel by foot to Dryanthium across mountains and through rainforest, traders, guide companies etc., just paid the toll. A special few received a permanent badge, one where the Light spell linked to a ryiam well, so did not need to be recharged by a port official.
Kjiven raked in money, handed it out to favored acolytes, and swam in his success--until Light showed up.

Talis, as the new Syimlin of Light, toured the temples dedicated to Light because he had issued a lot of changes to how his worship worked, and those accustomed to the previous Light's lax attention detested his interest and often refused to follow his lead.
Kjivendei's grand temple dedicated to Light was no different, and he made his way there around 19,890 years previous, after he had confronted the obstinate temples of the living on the continent of Talis (named for him after his ascension, much to his chagrin).

Talis was not impressed with it or the whizan who claimed he brought Light to Greenglimmer. Having suffered through the Aristarzian gauntlet, he had little patience for the corruption of Light.
He shattered the barrier and left. Kjiven, having bragged that his power exceeded the new Light's (and therefore he should be Light), could not resurrect the barrier or re-cast the toll spell. He managed a work-around by creating a new barrier further up the river and infusing it with the frondy leaves of kradl trees. He used Nature magic and bits of the leaves to link badges to it. He was not happy, but the flood happened before he could investigate a better solution.
Hrivasine, after the flood, resurrected the barrier using Water magic, and the Touch of Water allows ships upstream into the present.