Crondor’s Fabulous Detection

What’s it called? Crondor’s Fabulous Detection (in short, CFD)

What does it do? This is one of the spells (in fact, the first one) that you have to use when recharging an object. Well, you don’t really *need* it for the process, but knowing if the recharge is more or less safe is something important if you don’t like blowing up into pieces. Crondor’s Fabulous Detection will tell you through a colour code if it is safe to try to recharge a magical artifact. After you’ve succesfully cast the spell on it, it will glow in a certain colour. The colours are (from safest to most dangerous recharging) purple, green, red, blue, orange, pink, yellow, cyan, indigo, vermillion.

Where is it? You have to travel almost to the back of the Unseen University Library to pull it out of the unnamed Arts & Crafts volume which, from Spellcheck Project, we are led to believe it may be called Intermediate Artifact Magic, fourth ed.

What does it require? A staff and a gold ring (see below, note 2) which aren’t consumed. Also, evidently, a magical artifact on which to test the availability of it for safe recharging.

What skills do I need? Staff, Gold, Turning

Has it worked? A correct output of the spell should read as something like this:

You prepare to cast Crondor's Fabulous Detection on the xxx (magical artifact).
You tap your staff grandly on the floor, considering the strength and solidity of an ancient oak tree.
Concentrating on the solid strength of the gold ring, you compare it with the xxx.
You probe the magical power in the xxx by turning it over and over in your hand and your mind.
The xxx glows purple / green / red / blue / orange / pink / yellow / cyan / indigo / vermillion.

Help Information:

Crondor's Fabulous Detection - Evaluate artifact strength.

Crondor's Fabulous Detection is a first order miscellaneous spell which attempts to probe the strength of an artifact to discover if it can stand up to recharging.

Notes:

In the past, the first stage of this spell employed the skill crafts.points instead of Staff, and therefore, didn't require any component. Recent changes have eliminated this skill from all the spells that used it in the past (all of them ‘Silver Star' specialities). The output line for the first stage used to be also different:

You ponder the flexibility of wood and metals and all things arcane.

It seems paradoxical, from the wording of the second stage, that a gold ring isn’t required as a component too. As long as it isn’t consumed, it wouldn’t be much of a disturbance for wizards, who tend to carry lots of gold rings anyway, and this would be more in tune with the output.

Notes (2):

When I first included this spell, some time ago, I am pretty sure it only employed one component, which was a staff. The last lines I wrote in the note seem (as of today, 24th of February 2008, when I am adding this addenda) to have become true, as now the spellcheck does mention a 'gold ring' as a necessary component...