Trope-a-Day: Cool Key

Cool Key: Quite a few of them, historically – between the locks made to key, in various ways, off people’s signet rings to the keys which are themselves intricate pieces of clockwork machinery, thus making locks hard to pick because substantial parts of the lock are, in point of fact, part of the key. And even regular house keys tended to be made quite fancy – even though it only comes up occasionally, having a key worth handing over in the various ceremonies of the hearthmistress daressëf often took priority over the practicality of the key, inasmuch as most of Eliéra has never had the kinds of crime rates that encourage people to bother locking their doors.

Of course, these days, most keys are electronic codes stored conveniently in people’s Universals.

In specific example terms, one might consider the keys that form part of the Imperial Regalia to be Cool Keys. Not really, though – while awfully symbolic, as unlocking the covers of the master copies of the Imperial Charter when used together with the keys given to the Curia and the President of the Senate, they aren’t really anything more than symbolic. The really cool key is the electronic one inside the Imperial Seal that has all manner of specialized high-level ackles in it…