item seed – Page 29

Creature/Item Seed: Gunpowder Wasps.

Gunpowder Wasps

Never allow the sophonts at the Galactic Uplift Bureau’s Surreptitious Assistance Department too much free time. Or access to trashy Old Earth vidshows, apparently. GUB-SAD operatives can get themselves into all sorts of trouble that way.

The basic problem is this: most oxygen-nitrogen water worlds in the Milky Way galaxy have roughly similar biospheres, and that’s not even remotely accidental. A standard biological package of photosynthetic bacteria was apparently introduced to every planet that looked like it could support it (don’t ask anybody in the various Galactic governments who, or Who, did that). So, you can introduce new species into a particular planetary mix. If you have that sort of mind.

Continue reading Creature/Item Seed: Gunpowder Wasps.

Item Seed: Magiki Sfaira.

Blame this.

Magikí Sfaira – Google Docs

Magiki Sfaira

Well, it’s like this. Back in the fourth century BC, one of the proto-mages that the Greeks had hanging around back then did a favor for a friend of his and enchanted a sling-stone to ‘kill the enemy its user chose.’ Unfortunately, the spell did not do anything to actually help with the aiming of the sling-stone in question; the first time it was used, the slinger missed his target completely. And then apparently promptly forgot about it, except to possibly mildly complain to his magician friend.

The Magiki Sfaira has been the thaumaturgical equivalent of the Goose That Laid The Golden Egg ever since then. The original mage’s notes have been lost, assuming that he ever wrote any in the first place, and nobody else ever learned the enchantment that he used. Which is a real pity, because black-box research on the Magiki Sfaira suggests that said enchantment was a masterpiece of efficiency and potency. Even today’s state of the magical arts would probably still be improved if the spell was finally reproduced — to say nothing of the prestige that would result from finally cracking the code — but the item is still ‘stuck‘ in active mode.

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Item Seed: Ozone Pills.

…You know, I should just write this up as a short story. After reading more about ozone, of course.

Ozone Pills – Google Docs

Ozone Pills

Ah, Mad Science. It’s like regular science, only the explosions are judged by their aesthetics. Or pyrotechnics. Or possibly their ability to dissolve sand. And so it goes with Ozone Pills. These particular bio-metaphysical pills were designed by Doctor Archibald Harriman Cheverly-Button, Baronet of Woodly-on-the-Avon. As you may have guessed, the good doctor was called mad at university, and he spent the rest of his very long life proving them right. The man was an admittedly inspired chemist, but: he had the bad habit of never checking secondary effects.

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Item Seed: the Affinity Polygraph.

Yes, I find it a bit alarming as a game concept, too.

Affinity Polygraph – Google Docs

The Affinity Polygraph

There is a saying among those involved in espionage and such-like activities: “What you do not know, you cannot reveal.” This device was designed to circumvent that rule of thumb. Note ‘was:’ it is 99.99% likely that every version of it was destroyed, and thrown into a blast furnace — right alongside of the bodies of its creators, as well as any documentation whatsoever that might have been useful for reverse-engineering it. And then the more patriotic and/or idealistic of the people involved in the blast furnace thing probably murdered everybody else working on the cleanup project, dumped them into the blast furnace, and then shot themselves. It’s that kind of item.

Continue reading Item Seed: the Affinity Polygraph.

Item Seed: Arg fisk drikke.

Blame this.

Arg fisk drikke – Google Docs

Arg fisk drikke

Yes, even the crack agents of Sweden’s C-byrån intelligence agency hate the taste of the arg fisk drikke (‘angry fish shake’). …What, you’ve never heard of C-byrån? Yes, well, that would be the idea, wouldn’t it? The Swedes did an excellent job of sanitizing what little public history there is of the group, which is impressive. Normally you’d think that a World War II spy agency that was top-heavy with art historians and other academics, and who had Abwehr head Wilhem Canaris as an intelligence source, would trip the radar of certain researchers in the modern era. Then again, there were a lot of WWII and Cold War archives that got thoroughly sanitized before the Internet showed up and made copying things an exercise in triviality.

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Item Seed: The Grasshopper’s Revenge.

grasshoppers-revenge-google-docs

The Grasshopper’s Revenge

(With apologies to Expiration Date and Dracula)

This artifact is a heavily modified US Army XM27 prototype silicone gas mask (colloquially known as a ‘Grasshopper’). The actual time of the modifications is unknown, but since the mask was only prototyped in 1966 it can’t be more than fifty years old (best guess is that somebody did the work at some point in the late 1980s). It is not strictly speaking an enchanted item — The Grasshopper’s Revenge will not register as one via any standard magical detection method — but it is definitely an occult one.

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Item Seed: EPSILON HOSANNAH.

epsilon-hosannah-google-docs

EPSILON HOSANNAH

This device is called ‘EPSILON HOSANNAH’ largely because it was captured and classified before even its creator — whose name is VERY redacted — could give it another name. Superficially, EPSILON HOSANNAH resembles a modified 1984 TRS-80 Model 200 flip-top portable computer. It lacks any interface jacks and does not have an immediately obvious power source; a very sophisticated radiation scanner will determine that the items is extremely mildly radioactive, but hardly dangerously so.

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Item Seed: Tertium Bellum In Caelo Polyporum.

Blame this.

tertium-bellum-in-caelo-polyporum-google-docs

Tertium Bellum In Caelo Polyporum

Tertium Bellum In Caelo Polyporum (“The Third War Against the Sky Octopuses”) exists only in palimpsest form: the earliest copy was apparently a 10th Century transcription of an earlier scroll. The copy was later erased sometime in the 13th Century so that the parchment could be used for monastery tithe records (modern-day researchers found it via a standard check for palimpsests). The records were eventually found, slightly buried, in the back of a natural cave in Spain, next to the remains of a trussed-up monk: both the remains and the bag holding the parchment had been covered with quicklime before burial, which ironically enough helped preserve the parchment itself. Interestingly, Interpol is still treating this discovery as being part of an open murder investigation, although that may simply be because even international police organizations are allowed to have a little fun sometimes, too.

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Item Seed: The Pravaz Syringe.

the-pravaz-syringe-google-docs

The Pravaz Syringe

This particular device is a masterpiece — a bizarre, twisted masterpiece — of 19th Century technology. To begin with, it’s titanium covered in silver, which would be generally considered to be simply flat-out impossible, given that the Syringe has been verified as existing at least since 1850. It’d be like finding a handmade automatic breech-loading rifle in Grant’s Tomb: a sufficiently brilliant and obsessive tinkerer might have made it, but why didn’t they make any more?

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Item Seed: Spear of the Holy Tent-Peg of Saint Deborah.

The stuff you come up with, when looking for other stuff…

spear-of-the-holy-tent-peg-of-saint-deborah-google-docs

Spear of the Holy Tent-Peg of Saint Deborah

Well, strictly speaking it should be the Spear of the Holy Tent-Peg of Jael, but from the Roman Catholic Church’s point of view St. Deborah was the ranking Biblical figure. Quick summary: Deborah was a prophet and a Judge among the Israelites in the time of the Judges (obviously), she and her military adviser went out to smite the Canaanites, the Canannites were duly smote, and the fleeing general of the Canaanites (one Sisera) ended up getting a tent peg pounded into his head by, yes, Jael. The tent peg then effectively disappeared for a few thousand years, and only resurfaced in the 12th century AD as part of a steel spearhead that is reputed to be remarkably strong and rustproof.

Continue reading Item Seed: Spear of the Holy Tent-Peg of Saint Deborah.