Tag: item

Item Seed: To Wear The Rose Lightly.

To Wear The Rose Lightly – Google Docs

To Wear The Rose Lightly

 

Description: A dramatic play, in three acts.  The plot is relatively straightforward: the protagonist (Randall Lee) is an unhappily-married businessman who begins a doomed affair with a soldier half his age (Octavia Adams) after he meets her at a party hosted by his rival Arthur Wolfe. Naturally, Arthur himself is having an affair with Randall’s wife Elizabeth, and it takes about three acts for everybody to end up being miserable, alone, and ready to start the whole thing over, with different people. The play draws very deeply on  flower-based symbolism; roses in particular are used as visual shorthand of love. Randall is told by Octavia in the final scene (as she is about to ship off again to a carefully-undefined ‘war zone’) that he ‘wears the rose lightly;’ i.e., that he refuses to do anything to sustain the love that he demands from others, and it ends with him holding the rose after she leaves — then dropping it, casually, as the lights fade.

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Item Seed: Hellcracker.

Hellcracker – Google Docs

Hellcracker

 

Description: imagine a jackhammer.  Now rotate it up 90 degrees and give it a sling so that it can be carried and wielded horizontally.  Recast the entire thing in titanium and tungsten and make the drill bit out of industrial diamond; all the wiring is made out of gold, and every surface has been coated with inconel. And that’s just the mundane features; Hellcracker is not covered with every charm, holy symbol and prayer known to man, but it has a hefty percentage of the ones that are generally conceded to actually work.

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Item Seed: The Magnet Drive.

Magnet Drive – Google Docs

The Magnet Drive

 

The Magnet Drive appears to be two regular magnets, lashed together positive pole to positive pole via a liberal use of titanium wire wrapped in an intricate and bizarre pattern.  The two ends of the titanium wire are soldered to alligator clips; when these two clips are attached to a flattened aluminum tube filled with carbon suspended in glycerin, the flat side of the tube opposite the magnets produces thrust. Two decorative refrigerator magnets generate enough thrust to put a quadcopter drone in the air; a no-fooling interplanetary cruiser probably wouldn’t need magnets that were larger than, say, a microwave oven.  Just to add to the fun, there’s no power source. The item just works. It also generates a field at high enough speeds (at least one-half c) that apparently has never heard of the lightspeed barrier.

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Item Seed: The Insinuation Codex.

Insinuation Codex – Google Docs

 

The Insinuation Codex

 

This unpleasant tome of unsavory magical lore was first published in Charlottetown, Canada in 1793.  The publisher was Jonathan Grimsby, a Connecticut Loyalist of evil reputation, both in his old home and new one. When his house was struck repeatedly by lightning in 1802 (over a three day period), presumably killing everyone inside, no-one mourned.  No-one, in fact, bothered with a funeral.

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Item Seed: Smoke Scabbards.

Smoke Scabbards – Google Docs

Smoke Scabbards

These charming assassination tools somehow never get officially banned by various nations or public institutions; Smoke Scabbards are simply too useful. In their natural form a Smoke Scabbard is a dirty grey-brown thin sheet of magical fabric. When it’s used to completely wrap a weapon (usually no larger than a dagger), the sheet and whatever it’s wrapped around transforms into a cohesive cloud of gas that can be inhaled and kept in a container — like, say, a pair of lungs — for eight hours.  At the end of that eight hours, the Scabbard is expulsed from its container and solidifies back into a sheet and whatever it was wrapped around. If the Scabbard was being kept in somebody’s lungs, the expulsion does not cause direct damage but is highly unpleasant.  Note that the magical effect can be ended early, if desired.

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Item Seed: Lincoln’s Bow.

Lincoln’s Bow – Google Docs

Lincoln’s Bow

 

This 19th Century recurve composite bow is fairly obviously enchanted, given that it’s made out of American chestnut while still looking brand-new.  Well, brand-new and archaic, at the same time; it’s a hand-tooled, wood-and-sinew affair with about a hundred pounds of draw weight and featuring a single white crystal inset just above the grip.  The string was originally gut, but apparently could be ( and was ) replaced safely without breaking the Bow’s enchantment.

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Item Seed: Lava Ice Cream.

Lava Ice Cream – Google Docs

Lava Ice Cream

 

Lava Ice Cream is in fact made from lava; well, the lava is technically flavoring.  It’s a fascinating use of enchanting magic, really; the base is regular ice cream that has had the lava magically mixed with it.  The result is an ice cream that simultaneously tastes hot (but not dangerously hot) while still showing all the properties of something that melts at room temperature.  The sensation is remarkable, particularly since Lava Ice Cream doesn’t actually taste horrible.  A bit salty-sweet, but that’s hardly unusual in the ice cream world.

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Item Seed: Taiga Tea.

Taiga Tea – Google Docs

Taiga Tea

Camellia exotica

 

This plant superficially resembles Camellia sinensis (the common tea plant), but it only grows in the Ural montane tundra/taiga region. The plant itself has leaves that are significantly more purple on the underside, and the plant does not increase in size past a certain point.  Camellia exotica plants are also considerably hardier than ‘regular’ tea plants, and can survive in much more hostile conditions.  It is not exactly an invasive species, but it grows well and fairly quickly.

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Item Seed (heh): Sequoia Mortars.

Got dark quick.

Sequoia Mortars – Google Docs

Sequoia Mortars

 

Description: It looks remarkably like a World War II American M2 Mortar, if they had been made out of rich, brown-inlaid wood (and glowed faintly blue in the dark). Unlike most Elvish items, Sequoia Mortars appear to be mass… ‘produced?’ ‘Grown?’ ‘Conjured?’  There’s also an extremely death-tinged magical aura about them that many mages find unpleasant. They’re not quite Evil weapons, but they’re closer to ones than you’d normally expect Elves to get.

 

To use, aim the Sequoia Mortar at your target (typical range is about one quarter to one half mile).  Drop in the payload (a modified Sequoia pine cone; the payload is very expensive and hideously rare) and enough mana to get the pine cone launched and distributed. Once the Mortar’s been fired, either fire it again, or grab it and run like the devil.  Enemy mages will come looking for you.

 

Once at the top of its arc, the Sequoia Mortar round will disintegrate, causing its seeds (typically about sixty viable ones per cone) to descend straight down above the target, ignoring wind.  Once they land, the seeds will rapidly mature into a sequoia sapling. Extremely rapidly: a sequoia tree seeded by this method will reach full maturity in 5 years.  Worse, the sequoia’s growth will be fuelled via frankly necromantic means: these things suck out all the sentient life force within five hundred feet.  Spend more than fifteen minutes in the presence of a growing Sequoia Mortar tree, and you’ll be too weak to move. Spend more than a half hour, and you’ll never move again. The death field dissipates after the tree matures in five years, which is a lot shorter-term to an Elf than it is to a Human or Orc; and it’s otherwise a normal tree.  So: excellent for clearing out stubborn legionary camps and/or walled colonies.

 

The only reason Elves can get away with using Sequoia Mortars is because Elves generally do not engage in wars of aggression.  These are explicitly guerrilla weapons, and they only get broken out when invaders manage to viciously conquer a significant portion of Elvish lands.  Using them offensively absolutely infuriates the other races; using them defensively usually just results in indifferent shrugs. A sentient race has a right to defend itself against aggressors, right?  But by the same token: nobody says anything when it turns out that Elves caught with a Sequoia Mortar invariably decide to fight to the death, rather than be captured. Mess with death magic, accept the consequences.