Lien Paper

For all its quiet appearance, Lien Paper is one of the most dependable tracking tools used across The Continent of Nauquan. At first touch, the material feels like a sturdier cousin of parchment—smooth, cool, and lightly lacquered—but its inner patterning is where the real craft lies. Scribes prepare the sheet with a special spiral-circle design using ink mixed from powdered Emberhorn Ram horns, iron salts, and a touch of divination magic. The design itself remains inert until it is given something to “listen” to. This happens the moment a drop of blood touches the center of the page.

The paper absorbs the blood immediately, leaving behind no stain. Instead, the spiral pattern awakens, drawing out a small blot of ink that shifts and reshapes itself into a mark unique to the person who provided the blood. This “Lien Mark” behaves less like a symbol and more like a living droplet suspended on the page. When the sheet is held flat, the mark begins to drift toward the direction of its owner, guided by the faint magical pull of the person’s essence. The movement is never rigid or precise; it has a slow, natural quality, like watching a needle bob across still water. Distance influences its behavior—steady when someone is nearby, sluggish when they’re far, and trembling when they’re beneath the ground or shielded by certain magics.

Producing Lien Paper is considered a respected craft among certain scribes mainly in larger cities these days. The process begins with the preparation of the ink. Emberhorn Ram horn is ground into a fine powder and mixed with iron salts collected from riverbanks and is then imbued with divination magic to help the ink hold what the artisans call “directional memory.” The ink is then brushed into the spiral-circle design with careful strokes, each line measured to ensure even pull once the paper is activated.

The parchment itself is treated beforehand with a thin lacquer of boiled tree resin and powdered quartz. This treatment makes the sheet more durable and helps it absorb blood without staining. Once a page has dried, it is trimmed into small squares and stored flat until needed. Most scribes say the real art lies not in the materials but in the steadiness of the hand—if the spiral is drawn even slightly off center, the paper becomes unreliable and pulls in strange, inconsistent arcs.

Activation of a sheet does not require a ritual or spellcasting—just a drop of blood from the person to be tracked. Hunters have been known to carry several sheets at once, using them for wounded companions or lost animals. Messengers keep them folded in waterproof cases. Even some families use them to keep track of children during long travels, though the practice is less common due to ease-of-use magic readily available.