Over 30cm of snow fell on the city last night, thought to have been caused by the hatching of an ice dragon in Cold Cave. The city’s fire mages are hard at work to clear the streets, and most main roads are already open, and businesses and schools will be running as normal. However, a shortage of mana potions compared to previous years has significantly slowed the clearing of side streets as well as highways, making it harder to get potions in from other towns. City guards are reminding people of the dangers of teleportation in winter, and suggest that they not be used until spring.

“Teleportation spells are great,” says Guard Sergeant Garluuk Potenwok. “They’re the fastest and easiest to cast out of all insta-transport spells, getting you where you need to go almost immediately. However people need to remember that they work through light, and the extra light reflection caused by snow makes them highly unstable and dangerous.”

So far, there have been two teleportation crashes, leading to six serious injuries and a merger. Potenwok says that people teleporting around the same time to areas within 500 metres of each other can crash, even if they would never see each other in regular conditions. Instead, he suggests using warp spells, which, while harder to cast and slower (a warp from one side of the city to the other can take as long as five minutes) are much more accurate and safe than teleportation spells. If someone cannot cast a warp spell, he says that they go to one of the tele-warp stops throughout the city.

“Tele-warping is the safest of all, people just need extra time to use it, so they should leave early to get where then need to be on time.” While tele-warping may just sound like a combination of teleportation and warping, it’s in fact something entirely different. While teleportation and warping will bring people between two points of their choosing, tele-warping will bring people between two set points, such as the many tele-warp stops scattered throughout the city. They do however cast only once every twenty minutes, plus the added time needed to get to them, so they’re significantly slower than other ways of insta-transporting. However, the city makes them free to use during the winter, and they are the safest way to insta-transport, even for skilled casters. “If you’re not skilled enough to warp, definitely don’t teleport,” says Potenwok. “Even if you’re a highly skilled caster, teleporting is a bad idea right now. At best you’ll wind up far from where you wanted to be, at worst you’ll wind up merged with someone else.”

Explorers saw additional eggs in Cold Cave during the summer, and while ice dragons often eat their siblings if they’re the first to hatch, city guards say citizens should prepare for snow from additional hatches, as well as regular winter snowfall.