Magical Devices in Trithofar

I feel as though I've been sort of on the darker side lately, so I wanted to write about something a little more upbeat, friendly, etc.  

 

I basically am going to brainstorm some of the things magic does in Trithofar.  Not the various types, but just a few of the tools artificiers make for the other schools to help do what the aethren desire.    

 

Chiurgan Tools:

• Ant Death: In Frosomia, this is the Chiurgan/Alchemist X Prize.  The ambush ants have been a problem along the Great Easterwester Highway.  A certain mejen (what a chiurgan specializing in making biological potions is called) managed to make a poison that would lure and kill any of the ambush ants nearby.  Unfortunately, the ants do not take the substance back to their queen, and therefore, the problem is not eliminated.  Current manifestations of ant death are not cost efficient enough to produce, and not easy enough to make for a village overrun with ants to be safe.  
• Liquid Rage: Many people in Trithofar have been trying to develop potions to duplicate kunjelic rage.  Unfortunately, this often requires a kunjelic participant to volunteer blood, and most kunjels are not willing to rage for money, or rage for experiments (this is tantamount to prostitution for them). Rage is closely connected to their social structure and moral code.  Kunjels consider the rage only to be done in very specific, very necessary circumstances.  To them, it would be like being naked in front of people to just rage.  It just isn't done.       
• Self-Filling Ink Bottles: Chiurgans make a particular type of ink out of a mold spore.  Those who know how can cultivate the stuff in specialized bottles so that it regrows after use.  
• Transmography Liquids: These change the drinker into something else.  Depending on the quality of the potion, the transformation can be permanent/temporary, painful/easy, complete/not quite entire.  If someone changes into a squirrel using a transmography potion that is too strong or too effective, he might find himself incapable of thinking like anything but a squirrel and will be stuck there for as long as the potion lasts.  IF the potion completely changes one into something, he cannot be turned back without another potion.  If he comes back, the victim may have lost all memories of being human or at least the thoughts that could not fit into a squirrel's head.  Think trying to install Windows 7 on a 1985 Apple computer.  
• Wakemore Juice: Like caffeine on caffeine.  A potion that can keep a person awake for days on end.  Unfortunately, when a person crashes, they crash hard.  

 

Wizard Tools: 

• Liquid Portals: One of the most commonly recognized potions in Trithofar, and also one of the most expensive and complicated to create.  These are made in just about every empire or major kingdom in Trithofar, and heavily restricted.  Liquid Portals create a portal that links a location to an obelisk.  When shaken (this is the current way I'm doing them), they show the area around the obelisk they travel to.  The person looking through them sees in the direction he/she happens to be looking, like looking through a crystal.  When poured, the liquid inside the obelisk-shaped bottle becomes a column of mist, through which the traveler passes.  He appears as though he walked out from the obelisk.
• Portalians: Traveling in the Sark, the portal realm, is extremely dangerous and requires expert and very delicate calculations of the mind (Which is why most wizards are a little eccentric, at least).  To make things easier on wizards, they invented 'creatures' or 'living artifacts' called Portalians.  It is difficult to say exactly what a portalian is, because it is rarely standardized.  Some living creatures can be used as portalians, because they already negotiate the sark to travel.  Among these are dragons, fligs, neggles, etc.  Portalians do one of many things for the wizard: 
  • They are effectively creatures made to navigate the sark.  Like a horse can carry a person across the prairie faster, and with less difficulty, than a person's own feet, these creatures are better at moving through the sark and actually arriving where they want to go.  
  • They can be like living calculators, making the necessary calculations for the wizard to travel through the sark himself.  
  • Some of them are like animated doorways, twin artifacts with one end in one place and the other end in another.  
  • Some are capable of making portals for the wizard to where the wizard wishes to go.    
• Porters: Not really tools, but people.  Porters are people who are masters in the art of snapfire magic, which means they are capable of storing, within themselves, certain objects.  Effectively, the objects are shrunk down to the size of a cell in the body and kept within the body.  They cannot do this safely with magical objects (which are resistant to such change) and they cannot do this safely with living tissue (which may blend with them).  
• Trailmazes: Large open areas with multiple stone pillars set up in organized rows.  Using these devices, a wizard can travel through portals to other places.  The most powerful of these Trailmazes is in the Forever Mountains and was established by the Natomist Wizard Monks.  It is said this trailmaze can actually travel forward in time.  Some believe it can also move people back in time as well, but either this has not been discovered yet, or is so difficult as to be impractical.   
• Travel Obelisks/Travelisks/Obelisks/Wander Stones: All over Trithofar, and most of them within the confines of huge cities, though a few have been damaged or broken down, the obelisks are used for traveling with liquid portals.  They serve as markers through the sark, so that once a liquid portal is used to open a portal, a traveler can travel to an obelisk.  Think of it like a 'wormhole' or 'hyperspace' in a science fiction movie.  Particular paths must be established.  
• Water Engines: Some wizard artificiers make waterwheels with portals above and below the wheel.  The portal below empties out from the portal above, so that the water cycles through and through and through.  Eventually, the water will dry up, and wizards have come to regulate the creation of portals as it has tended to cause what they call 'scarring.'  While water engines are incredibly useful sources of power for various industrial things, wizards only have come to regulate the making of them.  
• Writer Tools: To navigate the Sark, wizards have to create certain written calculations, most of which cannot be done inside one's own head.  Therefore, they use tools to either write in the air, write on a particular medium, or to write directly on a needed artifact.  One of the biggest reasons for the use of portalians is that they do not create writing that other wizards can see and follow. 

 

Motivar/Aavemancer Tools: 

• Hallucinogens, Tranquilizers, etc.: Motivars, because they were once worldwide, and are now in Sarkoshia, a sort of magically endowed police force, use many types of drugs, the effects of which are common to Earth, to control people and render them subject to suggestion.  Quite a few plants provide ample solutions which can do a multitude of things.  A plant common to Terrilia can actually completely erase a person's short term memory.  Others make people insane, see things that don't exist (not even in Trithofar), and allow for suggestion and/or hypnosis.  I will not necessarily go into detail about what these are (today), but will eventually I'm sure.  
• Language of Binding: Motivars and Aavemancers use commands that force either souls or aaviri to listen and cooperate.  Usually, a person can be bound most easily to do those things they might otherwise want to have done anyway.  However, Motivars and Aavemancers can trick people into doing what they want with this language of binding.  Think of it as Extreme Legal Language, where a person sort of signs up to a contract with so many complicated clauses they can't possibly think how it's going to make them go.  Whereas Motivars put curses on people so that a violation of this contract will cause them physical anguish, Aavemancers actually capture and make use of people's souls, minds, or spirits.  Motivars cannot do anything to a person's soul, but can severely mess with physiological or biological mental processes.  
• Soul Crystals: Crystals are used for holding aaviri or the souls of the dead for Aavemancers.  This is an evil act and is not encouraged among most of the aethren world, but this does not prevent it from being practiced. 
• Prophet's Tongue: A substance that forces a person to only speak the truth.  It causes a sort of nasty taste/sandy sensation in the mouth such that the victim can only get rid of it by telling the truth.  
• Pyins: These are tools for torture or to make someone hurt particularly badly without causing too much bodily harm.  Usually, they are a small device which simulates, in some way, tremendous bodily harm.  Sometimes, they convince people they are on fire, or that their body is roasting.  Sometimes, they convince the victim he is freezing cold, so cold he is falling apart.  Sometimes, they cause terrible sickness, violent pains, extreme hunger, sensations of extreme anxiety, the belief one is about to soil oneself, etc.  These come in all shapes and sizes and can be used to put curses on people that last for a while.    

Mage Tools: 

• Directars: These are little tools set up which redirect something.  Some will redirect light, sound, air, etc.  Mage magic is primarily about positioning of things so that things work in reaction to them.  
• Attenters: These things are devices which cause a person to pay attention to them, to stare, or only want to look at something.  Elves are famous for their mages using devices like this.  In fact, one of their prison systems is merely an attenter in the middle of a particular area so that when the criminal looks at it, he will not be able to look or think about anything else.  
• Diverters: Diverters are tools that deliberately affect the psychological processes of someone looking at them.  They force a person to get lost, be afraid, be sure about the wrong answer, etc.  Diverters are not exactly an object, but instead a series of interrelated feng-shui style devices that force a person to think a certain way (like a subliminal message).    

 

Here are just a few things I've come up with for now.  Maybe others will have some ideas for things.  

J. Gullage