Sending information through Transfer Portals

[MerchantDeryni]

So I was looking at a means of information transfer for my Fanfic. Transfer portals allow a person to carry a message through. This would allow a lot of information to be carried from place to place.

In another thread I was wondering about the telepathic link medallions that KK has used to send information from a mobile point to another mobile person. This idea could be used to send information from city to city as a news service, or telegraph service, if the range is reasonable. Even a range of 30 miles would save a day's ride along winter roads. Messages could be sent via telepathic telegram. (Slogan"Send a Happy thought!").

Long range communication is possible by transfer portal if a person goes through the portal. This requires energy and they may not have enough to safely transfer from point to point.

In the books it has been mentioned that some users can 'check' a destination portal to see if it is trapped before they actually transfer. So information can be passed along between the portals.

The next question is can a message pulse be sent between two portals? This hopefully would cost less energy than transferring a person. If so then a message system could be created.

Picture 2 people, 1 on each portal. The sender sends the message along the portal matrix and the receiver gets the message at the target portal. This could be either a complete message, mind speech, or even pulses (long and short for psychic morse code). The receiver writes the message down and it can be sent to the recipient.

If this were possible then cities could be tied together in an information matrix as well as a transfer portal matrix.  Governments and merchant houses would be interested in getting current news instead of relying on dispatch riders.

Any thoughts?

[Bynw]

I'm sure something like that could be possible. Because as we already do know that you can test the destination portal for traps without actually going there and becoming trapped. I haven't done anything on this myself yet and I find this to be a fascinating idea.

[MerchantDeryni]

Glad you like it Bynw.

If it is possible, and was widely used it would change things. It would change the books as well. The thread about borrowing a portal to pass word to the king about the death would become moot.  The character could have sent a 'telegram' or a coded message and the king could have the news within a day.

News of troop movement could be sent from spies in one city to their allies (if within portal range, or send it along a network.)

For my Pepper and Lace fanfic the news network could be used to coordinate cargo movement from house to house. Rumour and important news could give the Merchant House with such a new network a big advantage over rivals.

And of course give more credence to the public outcry that the evil Deryni are hoarding information to their unsavoury advantage.

[whitelaughter]

It's been done in canon. 'warning Deryni, here lies danger' or something to that effect - the ruined portal of the Gabrilites sends out a warning so that no one will attempt to port there. Granted that was part of a life ending spell, but I can't see why it would be particularly difficult - the incoming Deryni needs to create a connection to jump, so you just download information via that connection.

Given the importance of tourism, it's likely that as part of the 'grand tour' Portals would include information on their location; possibly evolving into an early internet as the number of Portals increases.

[Bynw]

It's been done in canon. 'warning Deryni, here lies danger' or something to that effect - the ruined portal of the Gabrilites sends out a warning so that no one will attempt to port there. Granted that was part of a life ending spell, but I can't see why it would be particularly difficult - the incoming Deryni needs to create a connection to jump, so you just download information via that connection.

Given the importance of tourism, it's likely that as part of the 'grand tour' Portals would include information on their location; possibly evolving into an early internet as the number of Portals increases.

That wasnt a message/data being sent through a portal. That was an imbedded message at the portal.

[whitelaughter]

That wasnt a message/data being sent through a portal. That was an imbedded message at the portal.

which could be heard from any other portal (unless I am greatly misremembering Camber the Heretic).

Assume a renaissance era Deryni, with access to a Portal and curiosity about some subject, say the best tea in Cathay. Open a connection to a portal in Cathay - learn the data. Follow the data from Portal to Portal, until you learn what you need at a Portal at say Qimen. You've access to an equivalent of the internet, some 5 centuries early. The term 'renaissance man' will have a slightly different meaning.

[Bynw]

That wasnt a message/data being sent through a portal. That was an imbedded message at the portal.

which could be heard from any other portal (unless I am greatly misremembering Camber the Heretic).

Assume a renaissance era Deryni, with access to a Portal and curiosity about some subject, say the best tea in Cathay. Open a connection to a portal in Cathay - learn the data. Follow the data from Portal to Portal, until you learn what you need at a Portal at say Qimen. You've access to an equivalent of the internet, some 5 centuries early. The term 'renaissance man' will have a slightly different meaning.

It's a misremember there unfortunately. It would only be heard in the mind at the portal square where the message was left. Dom Emry's embedded the message at the portal, just as you could with a wax seal on a scroll. And then he ripped the portal from this universe. And died.

Theoretically I like the idea. But you would have to have people at both ends of the Portal. It would be like old fashioned dial up modem to a BBS in order to work though. It couldnt just get information through osmosis.

[whitelaughter]

that makes the message completely pointless then...the only people who can detect it have no need to be warned.

[Evie]

That wasnt a message/data being sent through a portal. That was an imbedded message at the portal.

which could be heard from any other portal (unless I am greatly misremembering Camber the Heretic).

Assume a renaissance era Deryni, with access to a Portal and curiosity about some subject, say the best tea in Cathay. Open a connection to a portal in Cathay - learn the data. Follow the data from Portal to Portal, until you learn what you need at a Portal at say Qimen. You've access to an equivalent of the internet, some 5 centuries early. The term 'renaissance man' will have a slightly different meaning.

It's a misremember there unfortunately. It would only be heard in the mind at the portal square where the message was left. Dom Emry's embedded the message at the portal, just as you could with a wax seal on a scroll. And then he ripped the portal from this universe. And died.

Theoretically I like the idea. But you would have to have people at both ends of the Portal. It would be like old fashioned dial up modem to a BBS in order to work though. It couldnt just get information through osmosis.

that makes the message completely pointless then...the only people who can detect it have no need to be warned.

I agree with whitelaughter. It would be senseless to embed a message into a destroyed portal that essentially says "Warning: Don't come through this portal!" if you have to be on the destroyed portal to hear the message!  I think anyone attempting to jump to that portal would be able to hear that message at the moment they are trying to balance the energies between its signature and the portal signature they are trying to jump from, and that the message serves as a warning not to attempt the portal jump because the portal on the other end has been destroyed and the circumstances that required it to be destroyed. If you are actually at St. Neot's, you wouldn't have any need for that warning except as a notice that it is not safe to use that destroyed portal to jump out either.

[Bynw]

That wasnt a message/data being sent through a portal. That was an imbedded message at the portal.

which could be heard from any other portal (unless I am greatly misremembering Camber the Heretic).

Assume a renaissance era Deryni, with access to a Portal and curiosity about some subject, say the best tea in Cathay. Open a connection to a portal in Cathay - learn the data. Follow the data from Portal to Portal, until you learn what you need at a Portal at say Qimen. You've access to an equivalent of the internet, some 5 centuries early. The term 'renaissance man' will have a slightly different meaning.

It's a misremember there unfortunately. It would only be heard in the mind at the portal square where the message was left. Dom Emry's embedded the message at the portal, just as you could with a wax seal on a scroll. And then he ripped the portal from this universe. And died.

Theoretically I like the idea. But you would have to have people at both ends of the Portal. It would be like old fashioned dial up modem to a BBS in order to work though. It couldnt just get information through osmosis.

that makes the message completely pointless then...the only people who can detect it have no need to be warned.

I agree with whitelaughter. It would be senseless to embed a message into a destroyed portal that essentially says "Warning: Don't come through this portal!" if you have to be on the destroyed portal to hear the message!  I think anyone attempting to jump to that portal would be able to hear that message at the moment they are trying to balance the energies between its signature and the portal signature they are trying to jump from, and that the message serves as a warning not to attempt the portal jump because the portal on the other end has been destroyed and the circumstances that required it to be destroyed. If you are actually at St. Neot's, you wouldn't have any need for that warning except as a notice that it is not safe to use that destroyed portal to jump out either.

The warning that Dom Emrys left wasn't for the portal use. Since he was going to destroy it. No one would be able to sense the portal to jump into it and no one would be able to sense the portal to use it to get away after he destroyed it. The warning was just a warning to other Deryni that humans kill what they don't understand. And since they don't understand magic ... the humans killed Deryni.

If you cant sense the portal, you cant hear any message left on it because the portal was destroyed.

[Laurna]

I agree with Whitelaughter and Evie as well.  The embedded message was for anyone at any other portal attempting to connect with the St. Noit's portal signature; from the warning, they would know not to attempt the jump. St. Noits was a school, every Deryni student who attended there for the last three to four generations would know the signature, along with many guests who had ever visited. At the time of the portal's destruction that would be a large percentage of Deyrni who could know the signature.

This leads me to wonder that if a Deryni did not test for a portal's viability before they made a jump to a destroyed one, like they just thought of the signature and jumped in a hurry,  would that person be lost to the void if the portal truly no longer existed? So the warning was to alert anyone trying to connect with that signature to tell them of the portal destruction before they made that jump.

After a generation or two, the signature would be forgotten and the warning would no longer be heard from another portal, simply because no one remembered the old signature to it. Therefore with warning could only be heard at the source.

So yes, someone can embedded information into a portal signature. But can you embed information that is only meant to be heard from one adjoining portal and not from every portal around the world? Perhaps if portals had special links to each other. Say sister portals that have keyed signatures in some way. Then information could be passed from just one site to just one other site, and not across the whole network.

[Evie]

That wasnt a message/data being sent through a portal. That was an imbedded message at the portal.

which could be heard from any other portal (unless I am greatly misremembering Camber the Heretic).

Assume a renaissance era Deryni, with access to a Portal and curiosity about some subject, say the best tea in Cathay. Open a connection to a portal in Cathay - learn the data. Follow the data from Portal to Portal, until you learn what you need at a Portal at say Qimen. You've access to an equivalent of the internet, some 5 centuries early. The term 'renaissance man' will have a slightly different meaning.

It's a misremember there unfortunately. It would only be heard in the mind at the portal square where the message was left. Dom Emry's embedded the message at the portal, just as you could with a wax seal on a scroll. And then he ripped the portal from this universe. And died.

Theoretically I like the idea. But you would have to have people at both ends of the Portal. It would be like old fashioned dial up modem to a BBS in order to work though. It couldnt just get information through osmosis.

that makes the message completely pointless then...the only people who can detect it have no need to be warned.

I agree with whitelaughter. It would be senseless to embed a message into a destroyed portal that essentially says "Warning: Don't come through this portal!" if you have to be on the destroyed portal to hear the message!  I think anyone attempting to jump to that portal would be able to hear that message at the moment they are trying to balance the energies between its signature and the portal signature they are trying to jump from, and that the message serves as a warning not to attempt the portal jump because the portal on the other end has been destroyed and the circumstances that required it to be destroyed. If you are actually at St. Neot's, you wouldn't have any need for that warning except as a notice that it is not safe to use that destroyed portal to jump out either.

The warning that Dom Emrys left wasn't for the portal use. Since he was going to destroy it. No one would be able to sense the portal to jump into it and no one would be able to sense the portal to use it to get away after he destroyed it. The warning was just a warning to other Deryni that humans kill what they don't understand. And since they don't understand magic ... the humans killed Deryni.

If you cant sense the portal, you cant hear any message left on it because the portal was destroyed.

I think you can destroy a portal's functionality without destroying its unique signature, otherwise Duncan and Alaric wouldn't have been able to sense the faint tingle that told them there had ever been a portal there in the first place. Also, other people would have committed that signature to memory, and destroying the portal itself would not destroy those memories, so some Deryni might have attempted to jump there not knowing it was no longer a viable portal. But having that message linked to the portal would warn them off making the attempt the moment they tried locking onto that memorized portal signature.

[Bynw]

I don't have my books handy. But I don't think Duncan or Morgan sensed the Portal. They knew that there could be a portal there because it was a Healer's school. I believe, if I am remembering correctly, all the sensed was the message. But the portal itself was completely gone.

[DesertRose]

I don't have my books handy. But I don't think Duncan or Morgan sensed the Portal. They knew that there could be a portal there because it was a Healer's school. I believe, if I am remembering correctly, all the sensed was the message. But the portal itself was completely gone.

I agree with most of this, that Morgan and Duncan went to the ruins of St. Neot's because they knew there was a good chance that at least at one point in time there had been a Portal on that site because it had been a monastery/school dedicated to teaching Healers.

However, I think that while the Portal was in fact entirely destroyed by Dom Emrys, in addition to the message the abbot had embedded in the site where the Portal had been, there remained by Morgan's, Duncan's, Kelson's, et al. time an "echo" or some other psychically-perceptible indication that there had once been a Portal at that place.

I'm thinking of the same concept as being able to see where there were once castles in Europe or cities/settlements in the Americas created by people long dead, because the traces of the foundations are still visible, if you look at the right time with the right equipment.  There isn't a castle in that place any more, but you can tell that there once was.

[revanne]

And maybe in circumstances where senses are peculiarly acute - at St Neot's Morgan and Duncan were both emotionally raw - the psychic echoes would be more easily sensed.

To pick up Desert Rose's analogy it was an interesting effect of this summer's drought in the UK that long forgotten outlines of buildings were revealed as markings on the sun- scorched earth. Extreme conditions revealing what us normally hidden.