Books - Advanced Arts and Sciences of the Cunning Artificer

A filigreed hardcover is on the floor.

This book is constructed completely from some form of hard wood. Its intricately filigreed and shows fanciful carved scrollwork throughout. The pages of this book are no exception to the rest of it, they too are seemingly carved from the same type of wood. It is bound with the highest quality octiron and its spine is adorned with a perfectly sculpted rowan wand.

An octarine snake slithers arond the rowan wand on the spine of this book.

Table of Contents
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2 - Thousand Dancing Celestial Fates

Dismal Digit of Doom

What's it called? Dismal Digit of Doom (in short, DDD)

What does it do? This spell allows you to send an anonymous and macabre message to someone of your choice. The message will be written for them by a dismal finger, that will afterwards drop back to its dead state.

Well, the message doesn't have to be macabre, really. But sending it through an undead finger is. Nice toy spell, but I'd use it more myself if it wasn't slightly unconvenient with the components, as I don't tend to carry chalk powder with me, except when I am casting the troll-skin. As for index-fingers, they are quite easy to come by with...

Where is it? Along with other body-fetching-and-disturbing spells that make the delights of the Order of Midnight, you may body-snatch this one out of the Ae Thouesand and Onne Thyngs ae Boye cann Do with Corpse Partes grimoire, in the Unseen University Library.

What does it require? just a pinch of chalk powder and an index finger. Both are 'consumed' (if you call it that...) in the process.

What skills do I need? Enchanting, Healing, Binding, Animating

Has it worked? A correct output of the spell should read as follows:

You prepare to cast Dismal Digit of Doom on xxx (Player target).
A voice says: No, you go left into the Street of Small Gods. Right would take you into Attic Bee Street [1].
You give your message to the finger.
You use the chalk dust to patch up the bleeding stump of the finger.
You bind a small amount of magic into the finger.
The finger quivers and shakes in your hand.
The finger crawls away through a small wormhole.

Help Information:

Dismal Digit of Doom - give a scare.

This spell allows you to send a finger to another person with a chilling message.

Notes: The syntax for the spell is a bit tricky. You have to type "cast Dismal Digit of Doom at xxx (target) with **************** (message)".

As for the receiving output, it is something like this:

A small wormhole suddenly opens four feet above the ground and a dismembered index finger crawls through it.

The finger straightens and begins pointing towards you.

It beckons.

The finger slowly begins to write, hovering in mid-air, leaving a softly glowing white trail.

The finger finishes its message and rapidly rots away, leaving only its fingernail behind.

Your eyes are drawn irresistibly to the softly glowing words hanging in the air.

A part of you realises that even though the ancient script is unfamiliar, you can absorb the meaning nonetheless:

xxxxx (the message)

[1] Optional, it seems. Might vary (depending on the target’s place when casting?).

Chanting

Chanting concerns the vocal afpects of spell cafting. Often more important for the attainment of a mood or feeling, yt can still have a profound occult effect on some types of creature.

Books - Divinational Arts

A closed origami tome is on the floor.

This book is made from traditional, Agatean origami. How someone was able to fold a single piece of rice paper into a book of this size, complete with seperate pages, we may never know. The face of this book is shinier than most books you've seen before. It calmly reflects your image subtly across the cover.

An octarine shimmer plays across this book slowly and hypnotically.

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2 - Reckless Encouragement of Arcane Peacock

3 - A Cup of Tea and Sake

Crondor's Mysterious Sparkling

What’s it called? Crondor’s Mysterious Sparkling (in short, CMS)

What does it do? It's a toy spell that adds some (not many) spammy, 'wizardly' effects to your staff. Among those effects, the following lines are added to your staff description:

> Sparks of octarine light run across its surface

> It emits a slight octarine glow.

And like the zodiac charm, some lines will appear from time to time, like the following ones: "Lightning crackles over the tip of your xxx" "Raindrop grey / Ultramarine / Chocolate / Black smoke pours from the tip of your xxx" "The air around your xxx shimmers for a moment" "Your xxx momentarily shines in all the colours of a rainbow" "Your xxx emits a bright flash of light" "Your xxx sprouts a small clump of dandelions, which grow, flower, turn to a soft grey dandelion clock, and blow away" "A series of honey yellow sparks runs across your xxx" "Icicles grow from the tip of your xxx before melting and dripping away".

Where is it? Like its namesake, this Crondor spell can be found in the Intermediate Artifact Magic, fourth ed. volume, at the Unseen University Library.

What does it require? First, the focus of an octogram. Then, a staff (which is the intended object of beautification and spammyness) and an Ankhstone (consumed in the process).

What skills do I need? Staff, Whittling, Binding, Enchanting

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

You prepare to cast Crondor’s Mysterious Sparkling on the xxx staff.
You hold the xxx staff aloft above the centre of the octogram.
You form a small knife of pure magic and carve a setting from the ankhstone into your xxx staff’s interior.
You force the very essence of the ankhstone to merge with the xxx staff.
You empower the xxx staff to be able to contain the brilliance of the gem.
Octarine flames wash over the xxx staff.

Help Information:

Crondor's Mysterious Sparkling - Expresses the power of a wizard's staff.

Crondor's Mysterious Sparkling is a zeroth order miscellaneous spell which adds some wizardly effects to a staff.

Recharging

So, yesterday Winswand recharged an artifact for the first time. It seems that recharging, with the exceptions of wizards specifically tailored towards that field (Silver Stars?) doesn't get practiced much. Probably, it is our least-employed command. Also a mysterious one, as it is the only one whose requirements are, to the present, unknown. Some time ago there was a research underway to guess (I think it was quite successful, but I don't remember the result). The required level for getting Runes to teach you is probably in the field of magic.items, which are the ones that play on the recharging skillchecks.
The reasons why Recharge isn't employed as much as it should are, of course, self-evident, as it can be deadly dangerous in case of failures, and generally quite expensive, as the only recharging agent until now that works decently is purple mineral powder (recently, though, there's been some tweaking of the recharged Black Shells, so we should be doing some testing there one of these days... Up to now, they just didn't compensate any effort, or so profesional rechargers say).
It is easier, safer, and maybe even cheaper just to buy a new artifact and throw away the empty shell. Not very wizardly, though...
I won't go into details about the general aspects of Recharge, and the items it is used upon. For that, you may as well read the excellent material that's already on the web (like here and here...), but just stick my first (succesful!) recharging attemp on a blue crystal ring. As I only had 44 pinches of powder, I was only able to place 2 charges in it...

>You exclaim to Tempus Plavalaguna: ok... let's hope I don't explode... thanks a lot!

> You tell Trident: well, I am using it for the first time...

Tempus Plavalaguna tells you: balsa wands are deadly, blue rings just a bit- deadly, so only a bit dead.

>You say: okay, let us try not to burst...

Dwmmigh sings "Nooooobody knows, the troubles that I've seen...".

Dwmmigh sings "Sometimes I'm up... and sometimes I'm down...".

>You tell Tempus Plavalaguna: ummm... well, I am a bit more 'democratic' on that subject. Once dead, I won't care much if it was for much or for little...

[...]

>recharge blue crystal ring with 20 pinches of purple powder

The magic seems to drain away into the tiles.

You absorb the power of some purple mineral powder which crumbles into nothingness.

You feed the power into the blue crystal ring and charge it once before the power runs out.

Brewing

Brewing ys another method that tends not to be practifed by wyzards but ys moftly utilifed by wytches and apothecaries. Yt confifts of performing a magickal reaction on a micksture of subftances - as oppofed to a merely alchemical reaction - to obtain a magickal subftance or potion.