seed – Page 8 – Moe Lane

Item Seed: The Anagnorisis Pattern

Anagnorisis Pattern – Google Docs Download

The Anagnorisis Pattern

Description: various auditory and visual artifacts, generally distributed via social media. To most of the mundane population, any one item that qualifies as an ‘Anagnorisis Pattern’ will appear to be interesting, but ultimately not engrossing. Alas, those susceptible to the Pattern will instead find it irresistible, and at least psychologically addictive.

Effects: exposure to the Anagnorisis Pattern seems to encourage a particular kind of weak-willed subservience in some people. Even brief exposure makes the susceptible inclined to obey anyone who incorporates elements of the Pattern in their dress, conversation, ideology, and/or iconography. Prolonged exposure accelerates the process, and encourages a certain reckless disregard for personal safety. Anybody’s personal safety, really.

Item Seed: Nega-Demon Serum.

Nega-Demon Serum – Google Docs Download

Nega-Demon Serum

Description: a transparent vial filled with a golden-white fluid that glows in the darkness, yet casts no shadow. Don’t bother trying to analyze it, either. It’s not that the Nega-Demon Serum isn’t really there; it’s that, from the Serum’s hypothetical point of view, nothing in the physical universe really is.

Powers: Comprehensively destroying Evil schemes, plans, machinations, and eventually the evil entities involved with them, apparently.

Item Seed: Eleanor Twitty Memorial Library

Eleanor Twitty Memorial Library – Google Docs Download

Eleanor Twitty Memorial Library
Name: Eleanor Twitty Memorial Library
Function: Ghost Library
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Collection Size: 60,000 books; 40,000 multimedia
Staff: 20
Funding: Private endowment

The library itself is not particularly astounding: it is about as good as a regular public library with no children’s section, with a special emphasis on all those books that people always mean to read, when they had the time. The Old Nellie’s regulars now have that time, and they flit through the shelves contentedly enough. Don’t annoy them, of course. Annoying a ghost rarely works out well.

Item Seed: Russian Minuets.

Russian Minuets

Description: a set of thirty minuets, scored for harpsichord and written by Makar Olegovich Samarin (1702-1756?). The individual sheet music seems to have been printed in the 19th century in France, then bound in leather a century later by a Berlin bookbinder of dubious reputation. Rumors that the leather is actually tanned human skin are false.

Powers: If a Russian Minuet is performed before a live audience of at least one hundred people, one of those people will die of heart failure before the night is out. Resuscitation can work, if there’s medical staff on hand and ready to spring into action, but there’s no way to prevent the original heart failure. As for everybody else: it is apparently a marvelous rush to feel a Russian Minuet target another person. The sensation is not physically addictive, but it definitely can produce a psychological dependence. Fortunately, both the positive and negative effects only work in a live performance; streaming, televised, and digital productions do not have the same effect.

Location Seed: Rutherford College.

Rutherford College – Google Docs Download

Rutherford College
Type: Four-year college (B.S., B.Eng, M.Eng)
Founded: 1949
Location: Milburn, Nebraska
Attendance: 8,000
Faculty to Student ratio: 1:12
Accreditation: ABET

Rutherford College is located more or less in the center of Nebraska, and is considered a very good but not unusual engineering/technical school. Students generally live and spend most of their time on campus, as the surrounding community does not offer many amenities for students; in fact, many of the locals traditionally go to the Rutherford campus instead for their entertainment. The college offers reduced tuition and a fairly solid Associates program for local residents; most townies who go past a high school education started their college careers at Rutherford.

Monster Seed: [ ].

[ ] – Google Docs Download

[ ]
Description: varies.
Powers: varies.
Goals: varies.

Item Seed: Liber Squamis.

Liber Squamis – Google Docs Download

Liber Squamis

Description: hardbound (red cloth) book, printed in 1895 by Zann and Grieg publishers. 128 pages of musical notation, for a number of unnamed pieces apparently scored for a flute; despite the Latin title, what text exists is in French and German. No author. There is a handwritten dedication to a ‘Herbert Vaughn,’ but the signature is illegible.

Item seed: Blue Bed of Blood.

Blue Bed of Blood – Google Docs Download

Blue Bed of Blood

Description: a child’s bed, made of blue plastic and wood and shaped somewhat like a race car. The Blue Bed of Blood is perpetually damp with, well, blood, no matter how often it is cleaned. It radiates as rather unpleasantly magical, but not quite as straight-up Evil.

Item Seed: Mheet (TM).

Mheet™ – Google Docs Download

Mheet™

Description: it’s synthetic, yet edible meat! It’s shelf-stable and doesn’t go stale! It doesn’t taste like chicken, it tastes like beef! There’s no slime! There’s no glow! There’s no smell! And it never, ever moves on its own! Try Mheet™ today!

Believe it or not, all of the above is true. And didn’t it take the longest time to make all of the above true, too. Basically, Mheet™ originally is what’s left over whenever someone desummons Ye Liveliest Awfulness or the Bite Lords of the Murder-Pit or what have you; even when successful, desummoning tends to leave huge chunks of sort-of organic matter all over the place. And it all has to be cleaned up. Only: somehow, somebody managed to notice the admittedly interesting culinary possibilities, so now here we all are.

Item Seed: Magic Bats: Major League Baseball 1955

Magic Bats_ Major League Baseball 1955 – Google Docs Download

Magic Bats: Major League Baseball 1955
Publication date: 1956, Pickman Brothers
Pages: 128, with numerous black and white photographs
Description: Magic Bats: Major League Baseball 1955 purports to be a somewhat superficial look at the 1955 American major league baseball season. It’s written in a style redolent of Madison Avenue, to the point where the book has no apparent author and feels like it was written by committee. Notably, there are numerous oddities in the text, starting with the actual baseball teams: