'Racks' And 'Tokens'

“You remember how the doors connect to different rooms randomly when closed? Well they also close themselves randomly, usually after a very short time, shoving out of the way or breaking any non-living thing used to prop them open. The way the people of this world have found to get around that and allow trade, diplomacy, and warfare between colonies is 'racks' and 'tokens'.” I declared and again the world bubbled up to show as well as tell.

In it's most basic from a 'rack' is like a set of key-hooks, which you attach to the wall next to a door you want to keep going to the same place. Each time someone passes through that door they leave a 'token' on the rack, which are little articles of personal significance in some way, such as a painted wooden shield with your coat of arms on it, or a wad of your hair, or a pilgrimage badge from your faith, and so on. There are five classes of token, each of which must be directly created by you or at least with your help, and each of which from 1 up to 5 will keep a door which has a rack for it connected to the same place longer, but each of which will eventually be consumed, so if a 'road' between two colonies becomes disused long enough it will be 'severed', and they may not be able to physically contact each other again for years, decades, centuries even, and in a few cases never yet since their 'road' was lost.

Racks must be one contiguous item, though it can be made of parts they must be solidly attached, such as with glue, or being tightly screwed or bolted together, at must be solidly and permanently affixed to a wall directly adjacent to the door for which it is supposed to work: in point of fact it must touch the door frame, and it must be enchanted or blessed by a mage or clergy with a connection to a power beyond themselves: be it the mana fields of the world or the power of a god or goddess as or just before it is installed. The more pegs or hooks or something a rack has the more tokens it can hold and therefore the longer it can keep it's door properly connected, so the smallest racks like a line of key-hooks are used only for places where keeping the connection strong is either not important or not desired, such as places where you have a found a 'special' door for which you have the Type 2 Silver Key and WANT it to lead to new rooms every few days after you have thoroughly looted it's contents.

Now the first class of tokens are the simplest to make, a wad of hair from your hairbrush or a scrap of paper with your name written on it, but they are very weak, they will be consumed after only an hour when the door gets to them, so they are discouraged by all colonies for anyone but the destitute.

Class 2 Tokens are slightly more expensive and time consuming to make, but still fairly minor. Things like calligraphy 'prayer strips' into the blank of which you write your name, folded paper lockets you put around a bit of hair, fingernail or skin filings, or a piece of string or ribbon sealed with wax by your signet ring: and these render the door proof against changing destination for a whole day as they are consumed. These are the baseline of 'tokens', the kind most people use.

Class 3 tokens are generally only for the 'well to do': such things as the fore mentioned painted wooden shield with your coat of arms on it, and pilgrimage badge from your faith cast by your own hand, and these artistic works will take a week to be consumed when the door gets to them.

Class 4 tokens are yet more pricey, the province of those in leadership positions, such as a colony's high priestess, mayor, prince, or 'architect'*, and examples would include illuminated scrolls of your own poetry in a silver case, an ivory medallion carved with your coat of arms in bas relief and painted by your own hand, or a crystal vial of your own blood with a colored glass stopper sealed with drop of liquid gold. When the door gets to consuming them it takes a 30 days, one standard month, to do so.
*(The person who organizes and orchestrates the proper addition of 'windows' to expand the colony.)

Class Five Tokens are the province of Emperors and High Priestesses of Major Religions: They are made from gold, silver, platinum, and gemstones, and almost always are some kind of personal device or icon, usually with a hidden compartment containing a measure of their own blood, breast milk, or semen, or else are crafted solely by their own hand from raw materials to finished work. These tokens keep a door connected properly for 1 full calendar YEAR when the door begins to consume them, and often are only placed onto the rack at the main doors of the capitol of the empire or sacred city of the faith once every 365 days.

There is also another type of 'Class Five' token, in a sense more common but in another much rarer: common in existence but rarer in USE: that of the 'Grand Sacrifice'. Most any noble could place a Class 5 token onto one rack if he felt the need to do so: by hanging up his signet ring itself: but to do that and have it count as such would require this act to be the willing and willful revocation and rejection of his status as a member of the nobility, and would be irrevocable.

Once a token is placed onto a rack no known **** can remove it as long as the door is unlocked save it being consumed by the door the rack is attached too, at which point it slowly vanishes over the course of the listed time, piece by piece starting with the part that most ties it to the person who placed it. many are the people who have tried to steal class 5 tokens for their value in gems and precious metals but they have found that such things are impossible: no **** in the known universe can cause them to cease being in contact with the rack nor damage them while they are. The one notable exception is locking the door the rack is attached to with a Skeleton Key, the only type of key which can do so while the rack has even a single token remaining on it, at which point all the tokens on it can be removed freely, but the door will not go to the same place when unlocked: and for this reason empires and major faiths fear and/or respect the bearers of Skeleton Keys greatly.

It is worth noting here that there is another way to keep a door open when it would shut itself: it will not close while a living thing is in it's way. For this reason in some areas token racks are used sparsely or not at all: in their place being pairs of people who take it in shifts to sleep, sit, or stand blocking the doorways keeping the doors open by dint of their presence. These so called 'Door Monks' are kept supplied by the colonies they serve and instead of leaving tokens on the racks travelers leave tins of food, bottles of water, and so on with the monk or nun as they pass each door. This practice is embraced as a holy calling by almost every major religion in the world and most colonies of any appreciable size and religious conviction support two or three pairs of 'Door Monks'.

'Salvagers' like yourselves employ similar persons in their explorations of new territory: starting out a salvage mission with 3-5 hired two person teams of 'door minders' who stay in the doors they have passed through making sure the doors which lead back to the stable paths don't shut behind them and leave them lost in 'the wilds' and likely never able to find their way back to their home colony. Many are the legends of salvage teams betrayed by their minders because a rival team wanted them out of the way, and being a minder to good team is a position of intense trust, often undertaken as a kind of apprenticeship before being allowed to join the team itself as older members die or retire: while more religiously inclined and sponsored teams will have Postulant Door Monks as their 'minders', Monks and Nuns in training to take up the life of standing lying and sitting in doorways contemplating their god or goddess's mysteries while keeping the paths open.

"So we are 'Salvagers'?" Madoka chimed in. "What is involved in this kind of work?"

"That was going to be a bit further on in the explanation but I suppose I can switch up the order a bit." I stated and moved on to the explanation of what a 'Salvager' is in this world.