Portal of Miomarto

" «Oh my God...» September touched the edges of the black hole, then put a hand into the chasm, shivered, still smiling happily, and pulled it out «... A Portal of Miomarto, a space-time gap. Technically it is not possible for something like this to exist, Miomarto has only demonstrated twice that it is possible to use the Portals, but the current ones, under the custody of the magicians, who are the same ones he used in public, do not seem to work. They are... legend. The formula to activate them is secret, the principle of operation is... impossible to understand» he swallowed twice, then ran a hand over his face, the same one he had previously put into the portal «But this... is already active, isn't it?» "

- From "Urban Legends"


Magic is nothing but an element of nature, like matter, light, combustion or time, but it can interact with each of them to manipulate it. While it is common among magicians around the world to use magic to create or channel light, start a combustion, or change the shape and consistency of matter, the manipulation of time is not as common, as it is considered very difficult and fundamentally dangerous.

To travel through time, very complicated formulas are needed, which must incorporate high-level mathematical notions, and these formulas must be updated through the drawing of incredibly complex magic circles, which can take from nine to forty-six hours of work just during the drawing process, and the energy of the magician who activates these magic circles is drained almost to death... or beyond.

Miomarto's Revolution

Alberico Ziomanno Miomarto (1919-2000), a brilliant Italian inventor, was the first and only magician capable of creating a system of travel in time (and space, even between different dimensions) that was safe for the traveler (obviously as long as he didn't get into trouble in another era), through a brilliant intuition: he incorporated magic circles into an electronic device.

No more wasting entire days drawing magic circles! No more being drained of energy and dying (or almost)!

In 1935, Miomarto created electrical circuits that had the shape of magic circles for time travel and that were activated simply by the passage of electricity. As for the magical energy, which was essential for activating the powers of space-time deformation, he used simple magic storage batteries (or aura batteries, invented almost two thousand years earlier by Saadaa of the Serpents) and made sure that these could release their energy to the circuits. And so he created devices, which he called "Analexichronothermogeographic Portals", capable of opening "holes" in reality through which one could pass, in an absolutely painless way and without any dangerous consequences for the organism, to other places or eras, in the present, in the past or in the future.

There were only two public demonstrations of use and none of them included a journey in time, but only in space; in any case they proved effective and amazed the magical community.

Despite the great demand, no other public experiments were ever carried out. The reason given was "recharging the aura batteries for such a use is too expensive, therefore the portals will be used again only in case of absolute necessity, for matters of life or death".

“ «This is pure idiocy…» Vlad approached the silver suitcase and started touching it, turning it, he even tried to open it, but he gave up, perhaps for fear that that thing, that apparently alien technology, could explode in his face «September, do you by any chance know how to recharge one of these?»
«Um…» the wizard approached the suitcase «This is an aura battery»
«An aura battery?»
«Yes» September seemed surprised, then chuckled softly, looking at Vlad from under his eyebrows and bangs, with his head a little lowered «You said you study black magic, you can't tell me you've never heard of aura batteries. How do you think Sauron's one ring worked?»
«But the one ring was this big» the vampire measured, between his index finger and thumb, a length of about three centimeters «And it had the power to destroy a land. This is as big as a bag!»
«That's why it's almost impossible to recharge. Wizards haven't managed it, it would require, at least in theory, the power of the aura of a million souls» ”

- From "Urban Legends"



Later, the magical community began to refer to the analessichronothermogeographic portals simply as "Miomarto's portals".

No public experiments were repeated, but legend has it that Miomarto used the portals to travel through time twice more before he died.

The limitations

Although extraordinary in their power and "convenient" for the traveler, the mechanics of how Miomarto's portals work reveal some important limitations.

The first is that once you arrive at your destination it is impossible to return to where you came from: the portal does not have two usable "faces", one at the place of departure and one at the place of arrival, but only one, the one powered by the equipment at the place of departure.

A hypothetical traveler who wanted to arrive, for example, at the North Pole, once they had passed through the portal and arrived in the ice, would find nothing behind him, no way to go back. While this may not seem particularly dramatic for space travel, it is instead a terrible consequence in the case of time travel, because the hypothetical traveler would have no way to return to their own time.

It was thought to nullify this unpleasant effect by connecting two portals of Mymarto together in order to have an entrance and an exit, but after the death of their inventor no one was ever capable of applying such a modification or even of fully understanding how the equipment worked.

Another limitation is, of course, the amount of energy needed to open a portal and keep it open for a certain amount of time. A popular myth claims that the power of "the auras of a million souls" is needed to fully recharge the batteries of Miomarto's portals, but this is a completely false notion: no one, in that case, would have been able to operate these complex magical devices.

It is true, however, that the life force of a single person is not enough to recharge the batteries and that Miomarto used a portion of the magical energy of seven hundred volunteers, as well as himself, for a single recharge.

The volunteers were then rested and fed abundantly and none of them suffered the slightest side effect. Five portals It is common knowledge that Miomarto created four portals.

Nowadays, two of them belong to the Ministry of Light, one belongs to Lilith and one is considered by most to be missing, but was actually kept secret by Alberico's grandchildren, Mack and Jack. Almost no one knows that the portals created by Miomarto were actually five: a low-consumption prototype, which however risks killing its user with each activation, plus the four known portals. The prototype is currently preserved by the Ministry of Darkness and its use, considered too dangerous, is not accessible to anyone except the Black Warden, who in any case has never turned it on.



Trivia

• Even aurolupus lycans, creatures immune to magic, can pass through Miomarto's portals: this is because the portals act on the surrounding world and not directly on the traveler.
• The most used portal of all is the one belonging to Lilith, the only person in the world able to regularly collect enough energy to make it work even once a month.
• The portals, during the creation phase, have never been tested on animals, but only on human beings.

Charta Cultro (ENG)

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Charta cultro

An unmissable artifact for every witch that entertains a dense correspondence, the charta cultro, also simply known as "magic letter opener", is a small blade used since ancient times to break temporary sigils.

History

That of magic letter openers is an ancient tradition, that goes hand in hand with the use of paper letters in the West and their fast spreading in the magical world.
The use of paper was born from the contacts that West world entartained with Arab culture, which had and still has its own version of the charta cultro: it’s the shifrat sahria, a thin, elegant blade forged with precious metals. Unlike the charta cultro, both the blade and the handle of the shifrat sahria are made of the same material and the blades are enchanted not by the insertion of external elements, like crystals, but by writing the intent on the blade in full.
Between the two, the shifrat sahria is still the one in use in the Ministry of Light.
Given that the magic letter opener was born in conjunction with the replacement of parchment with paper in the fifth century, it is uncertain whether one of the blades inspired the creation of the other or is a simple "evolutionary convergence".

The charta cultro was born in Italy, which is still the country that has the oldest and most flourishing history regarding these magical instruments; tradition has it that they are built by hand, and if possible also by the witch who will use it in person.
It’s also possible to inherit it from a relative or get one from another craftsman, although an old superstition says that a charta cultro will never break the sigils imposed by their original creator.
Excellent charta cultros are also produced in Germany and in Czech Republic, Prague in particular.
   

Description

The appearance of charta cultros can vary greatly from one item to another! It can change both in size and shape, and the materials it is made of can vary, like the decorations and colors.
Generally they are made of different materials that are embellished with elements thar are useful to perform their magic, such as precious stones or other natural elements (feathers, for example), but they aren’t necessary. This practice is more widespread in Italy than in the Czech Republic, where magic letter openers usually have dense decorations carved directly on the handle and sometimes on the blade, and more frequently have the shape of little swords.
In Italy the production is very creative but also more heterogeneous.
For an object to be classified as a charta cultro, therefore, it must present all the following points:

1. It must have a blade. Whether it's made out of crystal, metal, ivory or bone, each charta cultro must have a blade that can physically cut the chosen sigil.

2. It must be small. It must not exceed twenty-five centimeters (around almost ten inches) between blade and handle.

3. Must be enchanted to break the sigils. In order to carry out its task, each charta cultro must have specific spells that allow it to identify the temporary sigil to dissolve it effectively; the modality is not important: runes, crystals, sung spells, blood seals, everything is fine as long as the magical powers of the charta cultro in question are functional.

As long as these parameters are respected, any shape is fine.

Magic and limitations

Many witches still use paper letters today, although many others have decided to resort to more technological means. In any case, the mail secured with magic sigils was for centuries and is to this day one of the safest ways to have missives delivered that are unreadable to most. Some witches create letter envelopes that are physically impossible to open except in exceptional cases, but the most common spells are those for which, if the envelope is opened without breaking its magic sigil, the letter destroys itself by autocombusting.
And this is where charta cultro comes into action, making it safe to handle those letters!
Even if each of these magic letter openers has a slightly different functioning, and consequently different limits, its task is to be able to break the temporary sigils through the perennial ones that are affixed to them. Although their use is often limited only to opening these magic letters safely, their power can be used in most cases to break even other temporary sigils.
Whether it is successful in dissolving other kinds of sigils, however, depends on the power of the artifact itself and that of the sigil that has to be dissolved.
It is unable to undo other perennial sigils.
Charta cultro may need to be recharged with magical energy more or less frequently to function properly, depending on how they are built and what mechanisms are implemented in them.
If it is a well-made charta cultro, the period between one recharge and the other can go from one month to fifty years on average, even if there are very well-made charta cultro that work well even with longer intervals between recharges.