Well, it's not 10 bottles, actually. It is rather, 6. And they aren't on a wall, but in the wardrobe of my rented room, at the Apex Club...
It all began a few days ago, while I was rummaging in the basement of the AM Daily offices, buying and reading old numbers of the newspaper in search of any articles about spells and magic. The most interesting thing I found were some detailed lines about Klein bottles, how to make them and catch spells inside them, and the probability that they'd be used as a (new) spell component in the not too distant future. A year and a half has passed since publication, but this things go slow, I imagine...
For those of you that ignore totally what I am talking about: Klein bottles are the deformed product of trying to make a crystal bottle in an area with a high magical buildup.
At the western end of the Street of Cunning Artificiers lies George's glass blowing shop. If you order him a bottle after creating a big enough number of thaums in the shop (around 50-60; use a thaumometer to measure them), the result will be this:
>l bottle
This is a mind bendingly paradoxical Klein bottle which has the revolutionary property of not being able to hold anything at all, on account of having no volume. A student discovered the ingeniously intricate shape at the back of a lecture theatre, as he was trying to make a paper giraffe out of thaumic funnel paper. This one, however, has been skillfully blown from glass.
So, what can you do with this peculiar item? It won't hold liquids, but it will hold spells. The next part of the process is getting yourself a butterfly net and search for a runnaway sphere of energy, the result of failing to remember a spell from a scroll, and involuntarily setting it free.
At this stage, I had the unvaluable help of my coz Winsalt, whose general ineptitude in wizardry was put to good use in releasing spells for me. Then, the issue is to 'catch' them...
You attempt to capture the substantial sphere of energy.
The substantial sphere of energy showers your stomach with hot sparks but your floating large wooden shield swoops in and absorbs all of the blow.
Hp: 2170 (2170) Gp: 306 (371) Xp: 1212735
You swat at the substantial sphere of energy with your butterfly net but its thaumic field absorbs most of the blow.
The substantial sphere of energy wriggles out of your butterfly net.
The substantial sphere of energy showers your right arm with hot sparks but your floating large wooden shield swoops in and absorbs all of the blow.
Hp: 2170 (2170) Gp: 308 (371) Xp: 1212738
The substantial sphere of energy buzzes angrily.
The substantial sphere of energy showers your stomach with hot sparks but your floating large wooden shield swoops in and absorbs all of the blow.
Hp: 2170 (2170) Gp: 311 (371) Xp: 1212741
The substantial sphere of energy buzzes angrily.
You swat at the substantial sphere of energy with your butterfly net but its coloured haze absorbs most of the blow.
The substantial sphere of energy showers your back with hot sparks but your floating large wooden shield swoops in and absorbs all of the blow.
Hp: 2170 (2170) Gp: 313 (371) Xp: 1212744
The substantial sphere of energy showers your neck with hot sparks but your floating large wooden shield swoops in and absorbs all of the blow.
Hp: 2170 (2170) Gp: 316 (371) Xp: 1212747
The substantial sphere of energy showers your chest with hot sparks but your floating large wooden shield swoops in and absorbs all of the blow.
Hp: 2170 (2170) Gp: 319 (371) Xp: 1212750
You swat at the substantial sphere of energy with your butterfly net but its coloured haze absorbs most of the blow.
You capture the substantial sphere of energy in your butterfly net and wrestle it into the Klein bottle.
Once captured, the bottle adds an adjective to its description (a glowing Klein bottle), two lines (Not quite inside, but within the glass itself; a substantial red sphere is zipping around energetically. /It produces a warm becon of octarine light.) and, from time to time, some spam about its light properties and fluctuations (The light from your glowing Klein bottle pulsates warmly.).
Do all trapped spells look the same? The first 4 bottles or so I made, I had employed scrolls of Nargl'frob's Empyrean Spear, and the spheres trapped in the bottles all had a distinctive red colour. The regularity seemed to discard total randomness in colour, and suggested one of three possibilities:
1) All spells and their energies are red in colour
2) Nargl'frob's Empyrean Spear is red; other spells might have different colours, or share this one
3) General classes of spells (Misc., Defensive, Offensive) share a common colour
To test this, I needed to make more bottles, one more with a different offensive spell, one with a Defensive spell, another with a Misc. one. It wasn't an easy task, as I couldn't myself scribe the biggest of those (the bigger the spell, the easier to let it free), nobody was willing/able to make HEB and DKDD scrolls, and Winsalt was annoyingly capable of remembering, even with the help of repeated cross-spellchecking, spells of less than size 40. After some time, I did manage to set free and capture Grisald's Reanimated Guardian, Patient Taming of the Quantum Weather Butterfly and Stacklady's Morphic Resonator. The results confirmed the last hypothesis, as Grisald' addopted a 'green' colour, the Butterfly gave a 'multicoloured sphere', and Stacklady's the predictable red...
So, what remains now? Nothing much, really, except awaiting for the new spells that might require them to be implemented. Otherwise, their uses are non-existant for the moment: they glow (but it seems, from the AM article that they can't act as lights in spite of the glow) and can be thrown to create explosions, with no damage. I still have to test these two last characteristics, though...
It all began a few days ago, while I was rummaging in the basement of the AM Daily offices, buying and reading old numbers of the newspaper in search of any articles about spells and magic. The most interesting thing I found were some detailed lines about Klein bottles, how to make them and catch spells inside them, and the probability that they'd be used as a (new) spell component in the not too distant future. A year and a half has passed since publication, but this things go slow, I imagine...
For those of you that ignore totally what I am talking about: Klein bottles are the deformed product of trying to make a crystal bottle in an area with a high magical buildup.
At the western end of the Street of Cunning Artificiers lies George's glass blowing shop. If you order him a bottle after creating a big enough number of thaums in the shop (around 50-60; use a thaumometer to measure them), the result will be this:
>l bottle
This is a mind bendingly paradoxical Klein bottle which has the revolutionary property of not being able to hold anything at all, on account of having no volume. A student discovered the ingeniously intricate shape at the back of a lecture theatre, as he was trying to make a paper giraffe out of thaumic funnel paper. This one, however, has been skillfully blown from glass.
So, what can you do with this peculiar item? It won't hold liquids, but it will hold spells. The next part of the process is getting yourself a butterfly net and search for a runnaway sphere of energy, the result of failing to remember a spell from a scroll, and involuntarily setting it free.
At this stage, I had the unvaluable help of my coz Winsalt, whose general ineptitude in wizardry was put to good use in releasing spells for me. Then, the issue is to 'catch' them...
You attempt to capture the substantial sphere of energy.
The substantial sphere of energy showers your stomach with hot sparks but your floating large wooden shield swoops in and absorbs all of the blow.
Hp: 2170 (2170) Gp: 306 (371) Xp: 1212735
You swat at the substantial sphere of energy with your butterfly net but its thaumic field absorbs most of the blow.
The substantial sphere of energy wriggles out of your butterfly net.
The substantial sphere of energy showers your right arm with hot sparks but your floating large wooden shield swoops in and absorbs all of the blow.
Hp: 2170 (2170) Gp: 308 (371) Xp: 1212738
The substantial sphere of energy buzzes angrily.
The substantial sphere of energy showers your stomach with hot sparks but your floating large wooden shield swoops in and absorbs all of the blow.
Hp: 2170 (2170) Gp: 311 (371) Xp: 1212741
The substantial sphere of energy buzzes angrily.
You swat at the substantial sphere of energy with your butterfly net but its coloured haze absorbs most of the blow.
The substantial sphere of energy showers your back with hot sparks but your floating large wooden shield swoops in and absorbs all of the blow.
Hp: 2170 (2170) Gp: 313 (371) Xp: 1212744
The substantial sphere of energy showers your neck with hot sparks but your floating large wooden shield swoops in and absorbs all of the blow.
Hp: 2170 (2170) Gp: 316 (371) Xp: 1212747
The substantial sphere of energy showers your chest with hot sparks but your floating large wooden shield swoops in and absorbs all of the blow.
Hp: 2170 (2170) Gp: 319 (371) Xp: 1212750
You swat at the substantial sphere of energy with your butterfly net but its coloured haze absorbs most of the blow.
You capture the substantial sphere of energy in your butterfly net and wrestle it into the Klein bottle.
Once captured, the bottle adds an adjective to its description (a glowing Klein bottle), two lines (Not quite inside, but within the glass itself; a substantial red sphere is zipping around energetically. /It produces a warm becon of octarine light.) and, from time to time, some spam about its light properties and fluctuations (The light from your glowing Klein bottle pulsates warmly.).
Do all trapped spells look the same? The first 4 bottles or so I made, I had employed scrolls of Nargl'frob's Empyrean Spear, and the spheres trapped in the bottles all had a distinctive red colour. The regularity seemed to discard total randomness in colour, and suggested one of three possibilities:
1) All spells and their energies are red in colour
2) Nargl'frob's Empyrean Spear is red; other spells might have different colours, or share this one
3) General classes of spells (Misc., Defensive, Offensive) share a common colour
To test this, I needed to make more bottles, one more with a different offensive spell, one with a Defensive spell, another with a Misc. one. It wasn't an easy task, as I couldn't myself scribe the biggest of those (the bigger the spell, the easier to let it free), nobody was willing/able to make HEB and DKDD scrolls, and Winsalt was annoyingly capable of remembering, even with the help of repeated cross-spellchecking, spells of less than size 40. After some time, I did manage to set free and capture Grisald's Reanimated Guardian, Patient Taming of the Quantum Weather Butterfly and Stacklady's Morphic Resonator. The results confirmed the last hypothesis, as Grisald' addopted a 'green' colour, the Butterfly gave a 'multicoloured sphere', and Stacklady's the predictable red...
So, what remains now? Nothing much, really, except awaiting for the new spells that might require them to be implemented. Otherwise, their uses are non-existant for the moment: they glow (but it seems, from the AM article that they can't act as lights in spite of the glow) and can be thrown to create explosions, with no damage. I still have to test these two last characteristics, though...
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