World hopping? What did YOU do?

Closest thing I've got to cover long distances without having to walk or ride was to use a magical staff to open a portal or gateway between the two points. You wave it in a circle big enough to fit through, the air gets all shimmery in the middle, and then you can see where you're going. This takes some concentration, because you think about where you're going, and the staff can only be used by certain people.

"Be nice to the imaginary people. Don't kill too many." -- e-mail from my youngest sister, June 23, 2008

My main character can gate through to other dimensions, but he doesn't use an object. It's intrinsic to who and what he is.

2005: In Back of the North Wind (urban fantasy) -- WINNER!
2006: Leopard's Paw (mystery) -- WINNER!
2007: The Old Straight Track (urban fantasy) -- WINNER!
Origami cranes completed: 42

"The night was moist." -- (Throw Momma from the Train)

I have a character with a jump reflex. Unless the move is completly at random (so a bird crapping on you and you didn't see it) this reflex kicks in and moves you around (usually out of the way)

http://img128.imageshack.us/img128/7139/ghoswritsigzc8.png

I have one world where the characters travel through space on ships. I realize that it sounds like scifi, however it sort of crosses into the fantasy realm, because the ships are powered through magical means. They also have a device they call a stepper that allows them to travel through time and dimensions.

On the same world, there are portals that were built by mages. When the spell is activated, they open into swirling pools of light and people can use them to go from one place to another - sometimes just from one place to another on the same world; other times, it's to other worlds. They harness a natural magical occurance (well, natural in my universe) that spawns what are termed wild portals. I've used those in stories as well to get my characters conveniently lost.

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NaNo 2006: Steel Bars - 59,233 words
Screnzy 2007: The Enchanted Forest - won
NaNo 2007: Turning Beetles into Buttons - 51,949 words
Screnzy 2008: Simple Gifts - 43 pages total & Butterfly - 9 episodes

My charries teleport through different dimensions, one that connects all the worlds they can get to, it's like a highway between worlds, but only powerful mages can access it.
((Wow- I am cracked up, instead of they, I started writing we..... hello insane asylum!))))

"One does not simply walk into Mordor."
"In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!"- LotR

It's not really an object, but a secondary character in my novel is actually hanging around the MCs because she needs them to open a portal to another world. She wants to take over the world, but she can't in her home world beccause of the vampire hierarchy. That's the sequel!

ok, this wasn't world hopping, but one of my MC's uses the Blarney Stone to travel quickly from place to place.

Symphonic Refrain

my character goes through a yard light.

Don't piss off the fairies

2006 - Bound - [winner]
2007 - Elemental Assassin

Steam powered space ship.

"To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007)

2006 - Famine: A Novel - failed
2007 - A Midsummer Night's Dream...IN SPACE! - on hold

[Lasalle has a good mode of transportation.]

I get my characters from place to place the good old fashioned way: Walking. The story I'm currently working on is about a kind of religious prilgrimage like a mini-Exodus, so walking is kind of necessary...but not all of the time though. Sometimes the MC and a few of his buddies hitch a ride on a Garuda or Roc (Both Giant mythical birds: holding onto the back of a dragon is near impossible, plus they fly so high that you'd get dizzy and toss your cookies.) Yaks and Rams are always good for climbing mountain paths, Horses are ok on more even ground but they need to make frequent stops for water and rest. To cross a river without a bridge or raft is tricky unless you know a naga (yes, giant water snakes) or two. I usually don't use too many magical items to reach destinations in older era Fantasy novels, it's a kind of plotgap fix that cheats the reader. (Of course, there are some cases that -need- instant transport, like climing up Ring Fellowship Mountain [why Tolkein, why?])

However, I may need a magical item to get my MC (call him Raj) into the earth to fight the big purple/grey/red boss. I'd like to keep it low-tech, so no giant blasting lasers or holotransports. Any ideas?

NaNo 2008, what will you bring?
More WKRC? The Triumphant return of Siegfred's Giant? The Misadventures of Hans and Greta? Or the newly discovered From one Architect to Another?

In my book Witchcanery, there are a few ways of transportation over long distances. The first is a Wizard portal that changes from time to time. At the start of the book it was at Putnam's Emporium, just a few steps beyond the saddles and bridles, bridging the gap from Earth to the Wizards' asteroid home.

The second way was by a wizard's spell of translocation. A good wizard could take himself and party members to anywhere on Earth in a split second by muttering the correct words and making the appropriate gestures.

The third way was by witch's broom. Shelley loved her cherished Model X100 Everfly Besom, with retractable bristles, which easily collapsed into an ordinary walking stick, guaranteed for the lifetime of the user. All she had to do was her little witch's hop onto the broom, murmur a gentle command to it, and off it would whisk off (if you'll pardon the expression) to wherever she directed it. Three perfectly good ways to travel, imo :D

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Raya
www.fantasyfic.com

In my nano, characters walked through the Other Door to reach the Other Side. It was basically just a nondescript black door in the middle of nowhere (although the one they use in particular has a hotel built next to it) and when you walk through it, it seems like you haven't gone anywhere, but have actually come out in a parallele dimension to Earth. It's explained that every world has two sides, and the Doors act as a passage between the two sides. I never went into how that works.

In the one I'm working on now, Spirits (not ghosts - more like angels) use the Gate to travel between Earth and Headquarters. Souls also travel through the Gate after they die, though nobody, even Death himself, knows where they end up. That's just where they go when they die, but a Spirit passing through the same Gate simply comes out in Headquarters. They can control where on Earth the Gate opens up, but it's always way up in the sky, hidden by clouds, requiring flight to reach.

And a novel I've got a vague idea of involves travelling through tiny rips in the universe with a hot air balloon.

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Share this dragon
And if you do
A lucky end
For them and you

Rather tamely, a master key and dreams/death.

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NaNo 2006: Killing Cillian (Admirable failure.)
NaNo 2007: Jumbie Secondary

A song. I was inspired by an actual type of folk music in the US- it's called Sacred harp, or shape note music. I am not this type of person, but the first time I heard it sung, it brought me to tears, just by the sound of it, not by the words. It is usually sung by large groups, and the sound is POWERFUL. The majority of lyrics are based biblical passages, many about longing for heaven, going "home", etc.

It got me thinking... I created a race of people that were singing this powerful music, and 400 or them were "lost' to their own world and stranded on another. They have the abiliy to go back in time to any time to relive any memory that they possess, but they can not get back across that barrier back to their own world. When they sing in the new world, many people who hear it lose consciousness, or have very vivid visions of their past memories.

In the end, I wanted one character to find a way to escape a demon that was pursuing him, and so he studied ancient texts to find the words to the exact song that the lost race was singing when they were transported. He sang it and escaped from the world.

I don't really think I have all the technical details for the story worked out, (rules of how time travel works for them, etc) but I like the idea of the song being powerful enough to transport people through time or worlds.

Here's the lyrics to a typical sacred harp song:
Oh, when will the period appear,
When I shall unite in your song?
I’m weary of lingering here,
And I to your Savior belong.
I’m fettered and chained up in clay;
I struggle and pant to be free:
I long to be soaring away,
My God and my Savior to see.

Anyone interested in shape note music : http://www.fasola.org

:) Jen

I know my idea is the most unique. My character was a perciever. He had the power to see the truth that the sky hides from us. Just by looking at the sky he falls into it and then falls on to another world. It's not like space travel but kind of like flying from island to island in an ocean of sky. He was born on earth, in present day so when he discovers his ability it kinda freaks him out. In a sense he litterally world hops.

"I talk best with my finger tips"

Yep..

recieved a bullet from a parallel world.. ends up in it.. needs to find his way back home... but is his precense more than just an accident?

ok thats cliché but I read the fantasy cliché page and i think i have a good dozen in the book in some shape/way/form!

lol

cheers,

Mozougly

Gods, I've used everything from a book to an archway.

But only in fanfiction...and I haven't written any of that in a really long time.

One of the lockers in my characters' high school contains a portal to another world. Why has no one else tripped into that portal before? Because most of the kids at the school think it's haunted, so no one ever opens it.

NaNo '06: Blue Moon (Winner!) --Freaky haunted reality show.
NaNo '07: Deafening Silence (Winner!)--Some sort of epic fantasy/alternate dimension...thing.
Screnzy '08: ...I'll get back to you on that one.

For me, it isn't really an object, but it turns out to be a subliminal desire within a person that allows the hop. Then the person (I can't really remember her given name right now) takes the desire and pulls them into this sort of limbo area, where they are either sent directly over into their new world, or if they want extra things (language, clothing, etc.) they have to make a sort of sacrifice for it, give something of equivallent value. I've explained it in a really vague way, but I hope I made my point clear.

So if she shifted to Japan and wanted to speak Japanese and wear a kimono she could give up the clothes she was wearing and her ability to speak English? Or do you mean something else?

The many pieces of a shattered magical boulder. The magical boulder was dormant for a long time and while it was dormant, it was shattered by some cataclysm or something and the pieces gradually got picked up by people, carried around, traded, bought, sold, etc. because they were magical, but no one really knew how to tap into that magic. Long story short, the pieces started 'waking up' and began randomly teleporting the people that held them to a place/area very close to where there was another piece, usually a dormant piece. In general, the idea was that the magical boulder was trying to piece itself together. (All credits to my sister who thought up the original idea and did most of the creative work. I only helped to develop some of the plot around it.)

And in my NaNo, I had a portal/tunnel thingy that worked by magic on one end and science on the other, because on one side of the portal,magic worked and on the other side of the portal, magic didn't work. And the portal was locked in place on the science side and skipped around everywhere on the magic side. And this portal/tunnel thingy was the only connection between an island in the sky (the science side) and the rest of the world (the magic side).

Yes, pretty much, but she would have pretty much no control of when she could do it. It isn't spontaneous in the sense of wanting a PB&J at midnight or something. Spontaneous like a torando or an earthquake fits it more. It is also a one-time thing only. But, unfortunately you couldn't shift within your real world, as much as I myself would like to go to Moscow, or Japan. You could also exchange things by my "ehyuub"'s force. Like, if you didn't offer something, she could take a bit of your memory, sanity, even a leg or an arm if she was feeling in the mood. She takes what she deems equivallent, and can deny your offer.

My story is more sci-fi, but a lot of my stuff ends up bordering on fantasy just because I can't get enough of either genre =) Anyways, my MCs use the antagonists' clunky, industrial portals to travel from world to world. My antagonists aren't the only ones who have the portals. Basically, most portals are made by the galactic government on each world. However, the cheaper ones my antagonists use only last a matter of days, whereas properly built ones can last for a generation at least. In general, the portals are a pain to build. In addition to which, everyone is advised to take a breather after use of any portal. One thing that's common to most of my odd means of travel though is that it's not a pleasant process. I am a huge fan of the common fantasisms of teleports and transmats and all that. But I figure that anything where you get squeezed across many thousands of miles, it's gonna be hard on the body. Lol, not a pessimist here. I just think too much.

Probably better suited for this particular thread, in another story, I have an entire race who can create magical doorways in trees (or any large, natural object) to transport themselves from one dimenson to another. Typically, they only open these doorways to get back to their own dimension, they're not much for exploring. Basically, when they open up the portals, they will only stay open until the conjurer or the last of their group has passed through and the tree becomes solid again.