item – Page 27 – Moe Lane

Item Seed: Shackleton Mold.

Blame this.

Shackleton Mold

This is some cutting-edge stuff, to be sure. Shackleton Mold get its name from where it was recently discovered: back in 1915 a set of photo negatives from the Ross Sea Party Antarctic expedition got enclosed in a block of ice, then left frozen for a century. Yes, 1915. Which is to say, several decades before the 1947 Invasion from Beyond that fundamentally altered our microbial ecosystem and made us vulnerable to the Greys‘ genetic attacks. Sure, we fended them off, eventually — but we’ve been doing repair work ever since. The Mold has thus been an absolute godsend: covert recovery specialists were able to get a sample of the stuff before it got contaminated, which gives us a baseline for what our DNA looked like before we all got infected.

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Item Seed: The Sausage Protocols.

I had no idea where this was going.

Sausage Protocols – Google Docs

The Sausage Protocols

Description: a standard cardboard accordion file, wrapped in elastic bands and bearing various stencils and imprints that place and date it to the US Army, circa 1936 or so. Interestingly, there are no classification stickers or warnings anywhere in the file; everything was stamped as being cleared for public dissemination at some point in 2007. There isn’t even any red tape or tabs.

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Item Seed: Pinball Wizard.

Pinball Wizard – Google Docs

Pinball Wizard

Despite the name, this isn’t wizardry. It’s just good, honest 24th Century social science, being forced to use primitive 20th Century technology (specifically, seven heavily modified pinball machines). At least, that was what the guy said when the agents burst into his lair; there was also a lot of bluster and sneers about “ignorant fools” and “Cower! Cower before the might of the Chan the Unstoppa…” It was about then that the guy’s integral temporal field finally overloaded from the strain of accumulated paradox, and sent him wherever people go when they get booted out of the timestream. Don’t feel too bad about old Chan, though; the 24th Century seems to be mostly populated by megalomaniacal jerks, judging by how many of them keep showing up here.

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Item Seed: Edible Effigies.

There’s a campaign in Witch-finders Meets NYPD Blue, I’m telling you.

Edible Effigies – Google Docs

Edible Effigies

This particular magical workaround occurs only in a magical tradition (we’ll call it ‘witchery,’ with apologies to benign — or very, very touchy — witches everywhere) that permits the remote cursing of individuals by the use of an effigy that has been enchanted to have a mystic link to the person being cursed. Needless to say, if that sort of thing is both demonstrable and reproducible then the practice will get swiftly banned by the local power structure, because typically the local power structure will inevitably end up being at high risk of being cursed. And when simply banning the spell’s use doesn’t work — it typically does not — the next step is to ban possession of the specialized ingredients and equipment used to create the effigies. That often can work, for a while. But it also does encourage a certain amount of creativity among the witches making the effigies, because banning this sort of thing also invariably makes it much more lucrative.

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Item Seed: The Wells Fargo Wagon.

OK. So it’s a plot device.

Wells Fargo Wagon – Google Docs

The Wells Fargo Wagon

Normally musicals don’t actually trigger a physical manifestation of a concept like this, but sometimes even low probability scenarios occur. The Wells Fargo Wagon typically manifests in the form of a horse-drawn enclosed cargo carriage, complete with a friendly driver (typically male) who happily converses with people while smilingly never telling them anything about himself, his wagon, or how it all works. Speaking metaphysically, the Wagon is a standard wish-generator in tangible form, but with three major differences:

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Item: Waybread of the Cruitani.

It’s short, but I like this one. Short and sweet. And HUNGRY.

Waybread of the Cruitani – Google Docs

Waybread of the Cruitani

Some fantasy nomadic tribes create travel rations that last forever because they’re enchanted to never decay. Others create eternal rations using secret ingredients and techniques. Most tribes use the traditional ‘bake it until all the water’s gone’ method. But the Cruitani have a much more direct technique: they create waybread that lasts by devouring the rest of the travel rations, if you let it.

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Item Seed: Root Beer

Root Beer – Google Docs

Root Beer

This is kind of an assassination tool, maybe? Although it doesn’t exactly kill people. It instead changes their personality, positive and negative traits, and skill sets. So, it’s pretty nasty stuff: you may not die after drinking it, but after whoever gives Root Beer to you gets done with you you won’t be the same person in any real, meaningful sense, either. One of many reasons why it’s rather thoroughly banned, except in the most advanced Galactic cultures, under the most rigorous bioethical guidelines.

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Item seed: Eschermacke

Eschermacke – Google Docs

Eschermacke

This rather bulky artifact consists of eight 2-inch quadruplex videotape reels holding sixteen twenty-five minute long cartoons, for a total of six and two-third hours of footage. The cartoons are from a Serbian-language show called ‘Eschermacke’ (‘Escher Cats’) that apparently appeared on Radio Television Belgrade in 1967; it features a pack of vaguely anthropomorphic cats that can stretch themselves like taffy and have somewhat surreal adventures. The animation is horrible, even by the standards of the time; and the writing is not much better — which probably explains why the videotape reels have been gathering dust in the University of Novi Sad library since at least 1978.

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Item Seed: ‘Destroyer-of-Shins.’

Destroyer-of-Shins – Google Docs

Destroyer-of-Shins

This thoroughly nasty weapon dates back to the end of China’s Song Dynasty. It is a jain (a double-edged, straight sword) that has been unfortunately enchanted to not rust or break; the hilt has a forward-facing guard, and can accommodate two hands. Destroyer-of-Shins has had a number of scabbards over the years, as the sword is apparently destructive of any scabbard that it is placed in. While Destroyer-of-Shins is an extremely well-made hand-and-a-half sword, it is best known (for given values of ‘known’) for the way that a single scratch from it can guarantee that the target dies, screaming, after a week of agony. There’s no known cure or even palliative, whether magical or technological.

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Item Seed: The Evil Survival Crash Kit

Evil Survival Crash Kit – Google Docs

The Evil Survival Crash Kit

This distinctly unattractive, not to mention absolutely repellent, metal box weighs 23.643 lbs, has a handle and carrying straps that are clearly not designed for human hands and backs, and smells mildly like socks that had been used to crush grapes, then left in a dark, damp room to ferment for a few weeks. ‘Evil Survival Crash Kit,’ by the way, is the name that human investigators have given it: presumably its ‘official’ name is spelled out somewhere in the disturbing, writhing sigils and designs that glow in and out of sight on the box itself. Given the contents and the entities that typically carry a Crash Kit, the translated name is probably highly unpleasant and almost certainly blasphemous.

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