Tag: item

Item Seed: Doctor Marrane’s Wondrous Traveling Carnival.

Doctor Marrane’s Wondrous Traveling Carnival – Google Docs

Doctor Marrane’s Wondrous Traveling Carnival

 

This magical artifact appears as an eighteen wheeler, truck-tractor rig.  The trailer is weathered, but in good shape; on one side there are the words “Doctor Marrane’s Wondrous Traveling Carnival” written in bright gold-red letters, with the logo of a cornucopia flanked by two ravens beneath it. Don’t bother trying to paint over the logo. Or checking the tire pressure. Or filling the tank up with gas, for that matter. Why? Because it’s a magic item.

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Item seed: Roseate Boots of the Sauromatian Queen.

Blame this.

Roseate Boots of the Sauromatian Queen – Google Docs

 

Roseate Boots of the Sauromatian Queen

 

This particular artifact was first described by an obscure 19th Century German folklorist researching various equally obscure tribes in the Crimea.  He came across one such tribe who claimed to be descendants of the servants of an ancient royal family, who ruled far to the East. The folklorist wrote of them:

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Item Seed: Practical Demon Breeding.

Practical Demon Breeding – Google Docs

Practical Demon Breeding

 

This book (written by one “Mary O’Brien, Jermyn Chair of Exotic Zoology, OBE”) is not for the faint of heart.  Not that Practical Demon Breeding is actively pernicious; indeed, it is scrupulous about presenting a strong, credible, and practical case against encouraging evil behaviors and traits in one’s demons.  It’s just that it’s profusely illustrated; and… it’s a book about breeding demons.  Some of the pictures are nigh-impossible to credit.

 

And what are demons?  Well, they’re pretty much what people think of when they hear the word ‘imps:’ small, rather humanoid, supernatural creatures with an aptitude for destruction, and the native intelligence of a fairly bright dog.  From context clues, ‘demons’ have been a side effect of ‘spontaneous Hellmouth incursions’ since ‘the Monte Bello Disaster of 1952.’  Fortunately, demons are also apparently fairly tractable, and easily enough bred.  The book was published in 1990, which was enough time for the breeding program to reach its fourth generation.

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Item Seed: Reverse-Gravity Bullets.

Reverse-Gravity Bullets – Google Docs

Reverse-Gravity Bullets

 

The name says it all: getting shot with one of these bullets (which can, quite inexplicably, fit into virtually any chemical-reaction firearm, somehow)  will cause gravity to reverse for the target for about five seconds. In practical terms, on Earth the target will accelerate upwards at about 30 feet per second, go up about 150 feet or so, then probably fall right back down again as gravity reasserts itself.  All of which assumes that there isn’t a ceiling or something in the way.  

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Item Seed: Eel Juice.

Eel Juice – Google Docs

Eel Juice

 

Be very careful when handling this stuff; Eel Juice is a sticky, rather toxic liquid that also happens to be a room temperature superconductor. The species of eel that produces the juice is also an apex predator on its home dimension / planet / elemental plane, so getting the stuff isn’t exactly easy or cheap, either. But, hey: room temperature superconductor.  That’s worth a lot of money, and if it can be synthesized (Eel Juice may be esoteric, but it’s not inscrutable) then the stuff will rapidly start being worth even more.

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Item Seed: Tennis Shoes.

Tennis Shoes – Google Docs

Tennis Shoes

These magic items subtly alter the path of projectiles, thus aiming them at the person wearing the Tennis Shoes.  It won’t unnaturally curve the trajectory of a projectile, but ‘in the general direction of’ is usually good enough to ensure a hit.  If somebody is actually aiming the projectile at someone, a hit is almost assured.  The top velocity of the projectile must be no more than about one hundred miles an hour, which means that it works on baseballs — but not, say, arrows. Also, the projectiles generally aim for the center of mass; this is not a spell for headshots.

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Item Seed: Magna Gladius ex Dumnonia.

Magna Gladius ex Dumnonia – Google Docs

Magna Gladius ex Dumnonia

 

This iron double-edged greatsword is fairly obviously magical, given that it was just pulled from the bottom of the River Tamar (Plymouth, United Kingdom) by a nine year old girl, yet is still as sharp and sound as the day that it was forged.  It’s a pretty thing, and clearly derived from the Roman aesthetic tradition: but the Celtic motifs are both obvious and well-crafted, and the sword is remarkably light in the hand (presumably).  Magna Gladius ex Dumnonia also has an inscription on it in Latin, which basically states that whoever holds this sword is the rightful ruler of the Kingdom of the Dumnonii.

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Item Seed: The Hisarköy Anomalies. [Edited]

Hisarköy Anomalies – Google Docs

The Hisarköy Anomalies are named for their original location (Hisarköy, a Turkish village found on the ancient Byzantine site of Amorion). A clandestine NATO archeological operation (assisted by half-rogue Turkish military semanticists) uncovered the artifacts in early 2016, and managed to get them quietly airlifted out of the country by year’s end. Currently, the Anomalies reside in a black facility at Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo, and are being analyzed to a fare-thee-well.
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Item Seed: Boozerang

Boozerang – Google Docs

Boozerang

 

A Boozerang is a magically enhanced, hollowed out boomerang (typically filled with blessed wine or beer, although any watery liquid can do in a pinch) designed to be thrown in a very tight (18 foot radius) circle, then returned to the user’s hand. Part of the enchantment enables the tight radius and return; the rest of the magic handles the controlled spray-release (as a fine mist) of the liquid inside the artifact. You do not have to be a mage to operate a Boozerang.

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Item Seed: The Vorpal Snowglobe.

Vorpal Snowglobe – Google Docs

The Vorpal Snowglobe

 

Appearance: a snow globe with snowflakes and a wooden snowman in it.

 

The Vorpal Snowglobe would normally be considered a hideous blasphemy, given the materials that it’s made out of.  The glass was melted down from sand gathered in Mecca; the water inside it was taken from the headwaters of the Ganges.  The wooden figurine found inside of it was carved from a piece of the True Cross, and the ‘snowflakes’ are actually fragments of bones from a hundred saints of a dozen faiths.  In short, everything in the Snowglobe is arguably a perversion of one religious tradition or another.

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