Inter-Planar Travel

Portals and Teleportation

It is a rather interesting discussion, that of inter-planar travelling, but complex. I shall attempt to do the best I can with the knowledge that I have. Perhaps the best place to begin is with a general discussion of portals and teleportation.
The art of teleportation, telemancy as it is commonly called, is quite complex and takes years of study to master. The general idea, of course, is to be able to instantaneously travel from one point to another, thus eliminating the issue of travel time. For now, we will only consider intra-planar travel (that travel which is entirely within one plane). In general, a portal has, perhaps obviously, two sides: an entrance and an exit. Of course, it is a two-way construct, so something on the "end" of the portal, the target destination, can pass through to the "entrance" of it, to the caster's location (I shan't discuss portal projection, when the caster is not at the location of the "entrance." In such a case, the "entrance" is merely the location of the party who wants to go through it.).
So, then, how does a telemancer know where to open the terminal end of the portal? How can we possibly navigate that large a distance without being able to see it? This is where beacons come in. A beacon is a special construct, magical in nature, that has a very strong magical signature in the River. Each one also has a unique signature, so that each beacon can be told from all the others. A skilled telemancer will be able to quickly locate this signal and open the portal at the beacon's location. Most large cities and important institutions have these beacons, and even many small townships and villages have smaller beacons that can be easily seen by nearby telemancers.
An important principle of magic to keep in mind is that all objects and beings have some amount of impression in the river which can be sensed by sensitive magic users. However, as the physical distance between the scryer (he who is trying to sense that impression) and the object creating the signal increases, the signal of that object or person blends in more and more with the River wholly. In other words, the farther away from the beacon you are, the harder it is to sense. To remedy this, many of the more oft-travelled-to regions have set up an expansive network of beacons which can be teleported along until reaching the terminal location. This means that it may be necessary to make multiple teleportations before arriving at your final destination. The reason that absurdly powerful beacons cannot be used instead is that magical spikes that are too powerful can create a rift in the River, through which all manner of unpleasant creatures may pass. Thus, it is preferable to use a long chain of low-powered (but still powerful) beacons to one extremely powerful one. With this established, I shall move onto inter-planar travel.

Inter-Planar Travel

To travel between planes can be quite a dangerous and harrowing task. Only the most skilled of telemancers can actually navigate the space between planes using the River. This form of transport makes teleportation from one end of Ultor to the other look trivial. In order to successfully teleport between planes, beacons must be used. It is near impossible to teleport between them without use of these constructs. The reason for this is due to what is called "planar shift."
You see, my dear readers, the planes of our universe are not fixed relative to one another. If I opened a portal to the Astral plane, closed it, and opened one a few minutes later, I could be in a wildly different place. The planes have no "fixed position" relative to each other. A single portal is anchored in place, but over time, should I open multiple portals on the same spot in Ultor, they will not open in the same place in the Astral plane (or any plane for that matter). What exactly do I mean by a single portal is anchored? Simply, I am saying that if I open a portal and I leave it open for an hour, its terminal point will not move on the Astral plane, no matter how long I leave it open. The terminal end of the portal is thus said to be "anchored" to that physical location on the target plane.
The natural remedy to this issue of planar shifting is, of course, beacons. Beacons are, obviously, tethered to a physical location, not to one in the River. Therefore, finding a beacon planted on another plane will grant you the ability to consistently teleport between planes with relative accuracy and dependability. These beacons are, as you may imagine, much more powerful than their intra-planar counterparts. Since they are designed to breach the River and shine into another plane, they can be quite a bit more potent than their kin. These specially designed inter-planar beacons specifically point from one plane to exactly one other. This is to eliminate the possibility that an unwanted creature (perhaps a magical predator or demon) can use the beacons to navigate into our world.
Of course, where there are beacons, there must be mages. These things must be maintained, for if one was to break in, say, the Celestial plane, we would have no recourse but to ask the celestials for assistance or to blindly teleport into the Celetial plane (I have heard a few worse ideas) until we reach a point near the original beacon. To prevent this problem from happening, there are, at all times, telemancers at every beacon site, actively working to ensure that the beacon does not collapse and fail to send a proper signature.

Type

Metaphysical, Arcane