Slate (Alceon Item)

A Slate, also known as a Patrician's window, is a magical item that is found throughout the Centallin Empire. It is most frequently carried by Patricians and Magistrates for magical communication between other slate owners.

Description
A Slate is typically made from a smooth stone and an enchanted crystalline screen. In terms of size most slates are relatively uniform in their dimensions as they are all crafted in Goldborne and are meant to easily be used with one hand holding the device and the other interacting with the screen.

Uses
The primary function of a Slate is for communication between members of a specified group. This is typically patricians, Centallin military leaders, or members of the The Tower of Mages. For Patricians Slates are used for reading proposed legislature from the Emperor or other patricians and to record and send their vote on such matters.

History
The invention of the Slate is credited to a Shakei Impin, a well known artificer and member of The Tower of Mages, in 850 CE. After frustrations of sharing her research to colleagues who were not located at other Towers (and therefore near stable teleportation circles) Shakei devised a plan to create a system of interlinked sending stones. After discussing with her apprentices at the time they realized that the more users that become involved in the system that the result of mass messages sent into one's mind might cause insanity. The idea of a sending stone displaying the message through a magical script on the stone was born from there. Through the use of Aetherius crystals Shakei was able to create a system that would connect slates from all over Alceon with each individual slate being registered with a specific rune code. After seeing a diagram of how the slates would connect to one another one of Shakei's apprentices described as it as a large invisible web and the description stuck since.

Seeing the use for keeping in contact with Empire government and military officials, the current Emperor at the time ordered for 700 slates to be made. One for each Patrician, magistrate, and for 100 military officials. Realizing that there would be a need to separate the Centallin slates from those of Tower Mages Shakei and her apprentices spent four years developing another system that could keep groups of slates separated based off of their rune codes. This ultimately led to the creation of two different and more regulated "webs" for the slates. For the Tower the Magus Communication Web ( MCW) was created. For the Empire the Centallin Primary Web (CPW) was created along with the sub webs of the Centallin Senate Web (CSW), Centalling Legal Web (CLW), and Centallin Military Web (CMP).

The Slate has since seen many different versions and updates since, with the most recent version distributed out to in 1435 CE.