Gossamery
Gossamery
Gossamery is the ability that wizards have to affect their physical makeup. This allows them to temporarily make themselves insubstantial or transport themselves to another place. The first effect is intangibility and the second is teleportation.
For many centuries wizards have believed that they can achieve these effects by dissociating the molecules within their own body into individual clouds of particles, the clouds can allow objects to pass through themselves or they can spread out and re-form in another place.
The process is controlled by the wizard’s mind which can have an existence outside the corporeal body.(otherwise the will to re-form would be lost as the brain becomes nebulous.
However, even a cursory examination of the mathematics of the process of
dissolving
an object into its constituent information at one point in space and
re-constituting at another point (without introducing errors) is
mathematically unrealistic However, but taking that same object and ( keeping it whole) whilst moving it through a dimension slightly outside the normal three is merely mathematically improbable.
Even a slight dimensional shift will convey intangibility and most wizards can achieve this.
However using the same technique to travel is altogether more complex.A wizard can travel from A to B by crossing the intervening distance whilst occupying an adjacent but empty dimension. The process is very difficult and requires a particularly focussed mind to achieve the effect without mishap. The difficulty is so great that most wizards need help to achieve it.
Even the rare individuals who can perform the act successfully can only travel a limited distance and need to hop between intermediate positions to achieve any realistic journey length.
Whilst it is entirely possible for a wizard to transfer him or herself through a solid object which doesn't exist in the nearby dimension not all objects are wholly within our own dimensions and these can interfere with the process. If the object has little intrinsic magical particulate activity of its own the object will appear transparent to gossamery. However, an object with substantial particulate activity will pose a barrier to gossamery. Hence it is not the density of the intervening matter that is critical it is its magical inertness, or lack thereof, which prevents the transfer. Moving water and living things both have high particulate activity and hence are substantial barriers. Rain, which is a form of moving water can pose problems but, provided it is not a tropical downpour, most experienced wizards can cope. It is almost impossible for several wizards to travel by this means and arrive at the same spot at the same time. Or rather, to be more accurate, it is impossible to achieve the transfer successfully. Many accidents have been caused by attempts to use mass gossamery.
The most skilled wizards can achieve gossamery without aids however the majority of wizards need safe, established routes along which gossamery can be performed. In major cities these routes are plotted along unobstructed paths and are controlled by a central authority. Access points for the termini are usually placed in green spaces or at locations such as railway stations. These both give camouflage to the appearance and disappearance of people, the first due to natural cover and the second due to the sheer volume of parallel traffic on the non-magical networks.
Major cities are usually built on rivers; crossing rivers by gossamery is inadvisable. Hence in London gossamery termini also tend to be near bridges. The wizard can travel to one side of a bridge, walk across and then continue his or her journey on the other side.
Plotting gossameric routes along main surface thoroughfares is fraught with problems hence the alternative solution of travelling underground is preferred. A gossameric route across London could theoretically be provided via the tube network. However since the tube network contains trains travelling at high speed for twenty of the twenty four hours in a day, the interleaving of wizarding and normal rail traffic is problematical. Fortunately London has an extensive network of unoccupied tunnels; access tunnels for the tube, disused railway tunnels, (dry) sewers, mail, telephone and service tunnels and it has been possible to use these to provide a reasonably safe travel network. Even within the network of ‘safe’ tunnels certain areas, notably those containing larger bodies of flowing water, must be avoided.
The routes of the gossameric network are designated by the colour sensed by the wizard whilst passing along them. Termini and crossing places for these routes are designated by the two, three or four colour combination of the superimposed crossing route. These termini also incorporate aligned way-stones which keep the interconnecting paths energised and contained so that less energy and concentration is needed to direct the individual disembodied wizards along them. The map table in Spring Gardens of the major gossameric routes in central London is shown below.
Where gossameric routes have not been established wizards need to use extreme caution when travelling by gossamery. Failure to re-form is responsible for the highest casualty rate per journey of all wizarding modes of transport. For this reason most wizarding journeys are usually undertaken on normal, non-wizarding public or private transport or, particularly in rural areas by broomstick.