Star Slab

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Star Slab is the colloquial name for an artifact from the Mage Wars used to gauge a person's magical potential.

Function

A slab measures magical potential in an individual through an unknown, yet distinct process. Despite having been made in a wide variety of styles and by many enchanters, any two slabs will return the same rating.

The slabs all share the same arrangement: a single piece of stone with a circle carved in it, and a number of stars. When an individual steps into the circle, the circle glows and a number of stars light. The number denotes their potential. If only the circle glows, their potential is considered "0", which means some, with a number of stars(usually no more than 10) lighting denoting the actual full potential.

Number of Stars

The vast majority of documented slabs have exactly 10 stars. With 0 being "no magical potential", this makes the scale 1-10. Some slabs have been documented with as many as 13 stars, but no mage has ever been found to register as "off-scale" on a 10-star slab but measurable on a 13. It is believed the higher-star-count slabs were created in an attempt to measure those rare off-peek individuals.

Construction

The design is incredibly simple, they are typically carved from granite or marble, but shale and sandstone slabs have been seen to exist. Veined marble was the favorite purely for aesthetic reasons, the material did not matter. Though no surviving examples exist, historical sources indicate they were even sometimes made out of wood.

Stone was preferred for it's longevity; a stone slab could, indeed, last forever. The carvings were generally deep, though light etching is known to work just as well. One aspect of the stones that fascinates modern scholars is the way the carvings are both aesthetic and functional. A Star Slab would be carved deep in order to ensure the inscription did not easily wear away, but it is known that only the original inscribed portion was part of the function.

The leading theory for the production of the slabs is that the "spell" being used in the enchantment is not etched into the stone at all, but was actually placed on the stone mason's chisel. This would explain how the slabs are not detectable as standard enchanted objects, as well as why they do not require any additional ritual elements.

History

The first slabs were likely struck during the Age of Darkness, as they were already in common use by the early Mage Wars. Nathan Searlin wrote of them in his surviving journals and implied they were already in common use when he arrived at High Tower.

During the Mage Wars, slabs could be found practically everywhere.

The ability to create Star Slabs was lost sometime in the Second Chaotic Period, and while they were common during the Golden Age, by the Second Age, very few examples survived.

Famously, Valley Gale Keep in Arindell had one used to rate new recruits to the Order of the Slayer Dragons. The slab was located in a hall that had been paved with hundreds of different stones so that the slab itself would not stand out from the decor. According to legend, the hall was undergoing restoration work in the late Golden Age. The work involved tearing up the entire floor to check the integrity of the woodwork beneath it. The workmen had been carefully instructed to save every stone, as they were planned to be re-used on the new floor. But, not knowing what the slab was, the workmen assumed it must be some sort of graffiti, and had the stone placed star-side down. Once the floor had been replaced and repaired, the polished back of the star slab looked no different from the hundreds of other varying colored slabs that made up the room.

Further adding to the mystery: several such halls exist throughout the complex, so exactly which one once held the slab is a secret lost to time.

By the second age, with Magic beginning to wane, the stones became more of collectors items, relics from the Mage Wars to be prized, displayed, traded, and sold. Non-functional copies were made by the thousands as decorations, which became intermixed with the working slabs and many simply thrown away. One infmaous crime duo in the early Second Age was responsible for the destruction of dozens of stones. Their scam involved one posing as a dealer in antiquities while the other other claimed to be a mage (he was in fact a talented humbug magician, but possessed zero magical aptitude). The two would find a mark with a supposedly legitimate stone and offer to buy it. The magician would then dazzle the mark with some faked magic, and attempt to prove the stone's authenticity by standing on it. Since he had no aptitude, the stone would not light, and the con men would then claim it must be a decorative forgery. However, since such fakes were by now sometimes centuries old and collectors' items in their own right, they would offer to buy the stone at a much-reduced rate. Since these were, in many cases, actual Star Slabs, they could then re-sell the slab for a good profit. However, as the two later discussed at their trial, in a great many incidents, the enraged owner of the stone would often smash it out of spite. The two con artists estimate that over the course of their carrier, then probably happened "two or three dozen times".

Interest in the Star Slabs was renewed during the Third Age when the Necromanic Wars again created a demand for battle-mages. Since the stones provided the only foolproof way of identifying individuals with magical potential, the remaining Star Slabs became valuable commodities. Owners of genuine slabs offered "testing clinics" where, for a nominal fee, you could have your potential measured. As in any unregulated industry, it didn't take long for disreputable men to begin cobbling together pressure-activated, LED-lit slabs. More than one riot led to the further destruction of legitimate slabs.

By the Sixth Age, only 17 extant slabs are known to exist, with only a few available to the public for testing. Arden Song, whose priceless collection of Mage Wars artifacts has three different, confirmed slabs, as well as a display of six hundred fakes. In the modern era, Arden is the only place where the public can freely access a Star Slab and be tested. To protect the previous artifact, the museum keeps it beneath a thick plate of plexiglass. Interestingly, tests done on the stones revealed that a person can be suspended as much as four feet above a Star Slab, and as long as their arms and legs are within the circle, the stone will still grant an accurate reading.

Extant Slabs

17.

Foundation

As with most things, the Gudersnipe Foundation is very tight-lipped on the subject. The seventeen extant stones are, of course, elsewhere in the Known Worlds, and there are numerous public records during the Golden Age of stones being sold to the Foundation, on top of the sort of whole-sale looting they were known for during the Chaotic era.

While no public comment has been made, sources within the foundation admit that the organization has "a few" slabs, and numerous graduates of Gudersnipe School have admitted to being rated on the stones during the tenure. Analysts outside of the Foundation believe they may have anywhere from a few dozen to over five hundred slabs.