Star Slab
Star Slab is the coloqual 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 arrangment: 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.
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, Stormwind 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 any many became lost simply by being 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 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, who's priceless collection of Mage Wars artifacts has three different, confirmed slabs, as well as a distplay containing over six hundred fakes.
