Microstory 1436: Motus

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Following the 2070 Mage Selection Games, a young man was sourced what would turn out to be a very powerful time power. He could teleport, but also apport, which means he could instantaneously transport other things besides himself. Not all apporters are alike. Assuming a given mage or choosing one is standing at point A, some would be able to move an object from A to B only, while others could move it from B to A, while still more could move it either way. There are even a few who can move something from B to C, but they would have to know a whole lot about the location of just about anything within range, whether they were looking at it, or not. These were the three primary classifications of apportation, but there were variants within them. Baran Avan was a Class A apporter, but with a special twist. He had to teleport himself along whatever it was he was trying to move. Of course, regular teleporters were limited to this, but they generally had to be at least touching the target for it to work. He just had to be close enough to see it. The thing about him, though, was that his power grew over time, the more he used it. When starting out, Baran could only transport something the size of a penny, but he kept practicing, and upgrading, and becoming more powerful. In under ten years, he was so strong, and his range so wide, that he was capable of moving an entire town from one place to another. Knowing this would be the case, a group of people started building a new town to capitalize on its utility, which they called Motus. They didn’t dig into the ground, though. They first constructed a gigantic platform, on top of which every building would sit. It required a flat surface to remain stable, but these weren’t too hard to find. While Durus did have mountains, valleys, ravines, and the like, it was actually pretty smooth. They had, by then, surveyed the whole surface, so Baran had an accurate map to know where to make his jumps. Once completed in 2079, Motus required fewer mages to be assigned there than other towns. It wasn’t like they didn’t need any, but their primary means of surviving monster attacks would be Baran. When the alarm sounded, the other mages would fight the threat, while Baran gathered his strength, and prepared to make the jump. At first, this often resulted in his fellow mages being left behind to fend for themselves, but as time continued, he not only grew even stronger, but also more precise. He could select individual objects within his range to tag along with them, even if they were a hundred meters off the platform. Some believed his power would never reach a limit, and that he would one day be able to move the whole planet across the void. They never found out, though. Motus was only around for a little over a decade before the final battles of the war began. While many of his contemporaries survived to pass their genes onto their offspring during and after the Interstitial Chaos, Baran ultimately became a casualty of the war. Until then, however, the Motus method proved productive. It just made travel between it and the other towns a little more complicated.