Printing Press

A New Technology

The printing press is a rather new technology, only invented in the early 2000s. Most books before this was handwritten, which took a long time per book. With the invention of the printing press it was possible to make several copies in the same amount of time it took to make one handwritten book.

This made it possible to spread literature in a whole new way. Instead of having to wait for someone to painstakingly copy the whole book by hand, the greater libraries on Shireon could all get a copy at about the same time - and even more than one copy!

The first printing press was invented in the city of Lenthir. Some people were worried that scribes would become obsolete now that books could be mass produced by fewer people in a fragment of the time it took to hand copy one. This fear grew a bit as every large city started to have their own printing press. Then it became apparent that magical text still needed to be handwritten, making the more magically inclined scribes look at the possibility to write scrolls and incantations instead.

The Printing Press and Magic

Scientists are still hard at work to manage to imbue printed materials with magic, but there has been no successful way to do this yet. Printing on Spellpaper with Gayavi Ink seemed to work for a little while, but the paper didn't seem to be able to hold the magic effect for any longer than five minutes before the Ithari letters giving the effect crumbled away, leaving charred holes in the paper as it disappeared.

It is clear that more work needs to be done in the field of imbuing printed materials with magic.