The Guardian and the Stretcher-Opius Bond

The Guardian - and the safety net that defines him, known to scholars as the Stretcher-Opius bond - is counted among the great magical inventions of the age after the Empire’s fall.

Origins

A group of researchers led by Nahal Stretcher was studying the old Empire’s magical inventions when they came upon ancient texts mentioning the “mind loaners”: humans whose minds had been specially enhanced and linked to a spellcaster, so that the caster might use the loaner’s mind as extra space in which to hold his magic. The procedure was said to be harmless to those who underwent it. The ritual to create such enhanced humans was recovered - but vast portions of it were missing.

Stretcher and his partner, Kal Opius, set out to reconstruct the ritual. After a number of failed attempts, they at last succeeded - in the narrow sense of keeping the candidate alive.

The Bond

The result was baffling. The Stretcher-Opius bond had nothing to do with the minds of the mage and the candidate, as the old “mind loaner” texts implied, but with their bodies instead. The human produced by the ritual was very tall and intimidating, could endure massive amounts of punishment, and - through the bond - could absorb the damage taken by his linked partner.

These were all the perfect traits for a bodyguard, and so the created being lent his name and his profession to the role: the Guardian.

Appendix

”…We cannot go over great magical inventions without noting the Guardian and his safety net, also called by academics the Stretcher-Opius bond.”

• an excerpt from Jerald Góviër’s book, Greatest Magical Inventions from the Dawn of Time to Our Own Days: Third Book, From the Empire’s Fall and Onwards