Eluvians

An eluvian is an enchanted mirror that was used by the ancient elves as a method of communication and transportation. Using a type of magic that has mostly been lost, like everything else from the original elven civilization, the magic mirrors allowed their makers to travel great distances in an instant or hold a conversation between two people who were on opposite sides of the continent. While the latter is currently possible by other means, the former is not. Teleportation is not achievable with our modern understanding of magic. There are several techniques that approximate it, usually over short distances, but those are tricks of time or perception, or briefly shifting into the Fade, not truly warping from one place to another. Even if we don’t exactly understand eluvians, it is possible to use the ones that have survived, provided they can be unlocked. Every eluvian requires a particular thing that allows it to be used. That thing can differ wildly, from speaking a certain word or phrase to using an actual, physical, object as a key, to possessing a particular magical spell or ability, virtually anything you can imagine. It was, presumably, up to the creator of the mirror to set their own lock and key. As to where they go, that answer is less variable. Eluvians lead to a nexus of sorts, an odd pocket dimension called the Crossroads. The Crossroads is neither in our world nor the Fade, but somewhere in between, and it can be assumed that the elves that crafted the mirrors somehow made the place where they all connect, as well. It is an eerie, foggy place full of eluvians. I could see dozens in the small area I observed, most of them broken, but it shows the extent of the network that used to exist. Modern knowledge of eluvians and how to work them is scarce, even amongst elves. I knew virtually nothing about them before Morrigan activated one in Skyhold. It was her belief that Corypheus was after an eluvian because it would be far easier for him to achieve his goal of reentering the Black City from the Crossroads, which is closer to the Fade than our world. While it turned out that was not exactly the case, that doesn’t mean active eluvians are any less dangerous. Exploitation of such powerful artifacts could have drastic consequences, no matter how useful it might be to warp around the continent at will.