Singing Stones

Invented in 1541 LE, the singing stones were a magitechnical device capable of transmitting sound over some distance. They took advantage of two things: the network of invisible leylines known to crisscross the landscape, and the basic principle of sound being a series of vibrations. The device used magic to first convert a sound into magical energy, and then transmit that energy across a leyline and to a waiting recipient device, where the energy would be used to vibrate pieces of the internal mechanisms to produce sound.

It was a revolutionary piece of technology for the time, but it did have limitations. It was difficult to properly direct the message to a particular recipient, for one thing. Often, the message would simply be sent to any and all possible recievers within range all at once. Another limitation is that its range was limited by the leylines. If one wanted to send a message to a recipient that was two stops over, it would have to go through a recipient in the middle and be passed along, much like a semaphore tower—which these were ultimately meant to replace.

Another big limitation was that it only transmitted sound, making it useful only to species that rely primarily on sound to communicate such as humans and emine. Even then, emine have been known to be capable of making loud enough noises to be heard from miles away as is, somewhat limiting the need for devices that can carry sound over long distances.

But, these devices were capable of transmitting messages faster than most other methods used at the time, and were unidirectional, unlike emine long-range communication. They still required people to operate them, both on the sending and receiving ends, but that made the transition to using them much simpler in many ways.

They are considered the original base for modern smartphones, though obviously the technology has come a long way over the centuries.