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The
Infinitesimal Point of Thazai Created by one of the lesser known Undying Wizards, this initially appears to be an unremarkable dagger with a plain black sheath and guard. The blade is however quite unusual. It is an inch wide and four inches long and is a slightly iridescent grey in colour. It appears to fade away at the edges and toward the point; it is not transparent as such, just not entirely there. When moved it appears to be reflecting something in its surface, but not any object actually anywhere near it, and when viewed edge-on it disappears entirely. Viewed end-on the blade appears as a tiny glittering point of light. A scholar with knowledge of planes and portals will recognise that the blade is in fact a variety of interplanar aperture and is set askew to the rest of the material universe in one of the mystical directions. It gives a prickling ‘static’-like feeling when near naked skin and appears to be a narrow hole in the fabric of space-time through which small objects my be inserted. The point is extremely sharp and very hard to see – anyone investigating the properties of the blade must roll vs Dexterity or accidentally prick or stab themselves. Used as a weapon the blade has the same characteristics as a stiletto with an additional x1 damage. It totally ignores all armour and most magical defences, only spells that guard against demons and other planar magic will deflect it. Magicians who recognise the nature of the blade and practise with it can make a Ritual Magic skill roll after a successful hit, reduced by the target’s magic resistance. If this succeeds then (success margin x5) points are taken from the target’s magical energy pool in ‘soul damage’. If the pool is reduced to zero in this way no further damage can be done. Being immaterial the blade is useless for parrying and all defence rolls are at -4, and any attempt to use Attack Weapon is at -6, except against shields. It is highly suitable for Deceptive Attacks and any such attack made is at +1. The blade can penetrate any material, but only to a depth of four inches, and as it has no sharp edge as such it cannot be used to slice. For example, it would be possible to use the knife to carve a hole through a door, but making an inch long hole with each stroke it would take a while to make one big enough to climb through. If the blade is taken though a Nexus Point all kinds of unfortunate interactions are possible. The usual one is that the point of the blade becomes a transdimensional lens, sucking in any material object nearby and diffracting it in the fourth dimension, turning it inside out. It leaves the non-corporeal parts of the object intact; the now disembodied soul(s) of the knife’s wielder can get a good view of the own innards as they are whisked off into by the winds of limbo to the wastes beyond the Ultimate Pylon… The blade is also useless against Mihalli. They can see the blade for what it is and can use their Spheres of Immediate Eventuation to destroy it. A particularly vindictive Mihalli may take the risk of creating a Nexus Point in front of the blade by way of a shield. Thazai designed these daggers as a defence against demons, which are often insubstantial, invisible and/or incorporeal and immune to weapons of quotidian materials. It is not known how many of these blades were made. One is on sale at Gijj and Sons in Dlash at 45,000 kaitars, another is owned by the Temple of Gruganu (though where they have put it or who is carrying it they aren’t saying) and it is thought one of the Emperor’s personal bodyguards carries one in case of demonic assault. Resources 250pts The doughty warriors of Shenyu never put to sea in the Deeps of Chanayaga without at least a small amount of this marvellous substance. The natural resinous secretions of the Hluss set like rock, but Sshurg juice slowly dissolves and softens them, making it handy for those trying to recover gems from the exoskeletons of fallen Hluss warriors and seeking to free prisoners who have been bound in Hluss-resin cuffs and coffles. It is also a very useful weapon against Hluss hive-ships and the Hluss themselves. Shen warships fire barrels of the stuff from catapults, and though it takes a couple of hours to have a serious effect on the structure of the hive ship it does make the Hluss panic and start trying to wash it off rather than fight. The juice is harmless to Shen and is used to treat scale mite infections. It is mildly caustic to humans, causing a rash like that caused by a stinging nettle, but the Hluss hate it, it makes them itch madly all over and irritates their eyes as well as making their weapons and buildings dissolve. A Hluss affected by Sshurg juice must make a Will save or make all attack, defence and skill rolls at -1. The juice does 2d10 damage to Hluss-resin weapons per round and reduces the armour multiplier of Hluss carapaces by 1 in five rounds. The juice is squeezed from a plant that only grows in the swamps of Morchaptla and is usually used in a diluted form. A phial of 5ml of juice can make a litre of Hluss-repelling solution, and costs 200kt. It is usually available in ports in Shenyu, and is occasionally found for sale in the coastal cities of Livyanu and Tsolyanu. Beware fake versions made from ordinary nettle juice. Once a week the owner can take a +1 bonus in any skill roll, save or other circumstance where luck might be a factor. Each time this luck is invoked there is a one in ten chance that the foot’s other, unadvertised, power becomes manifest. At some point in the next few days or nights the foot will disappear, taking with it the most valuable object the person owns that can be fitted into its paw, teleporting it back to the Kuruku Foot vendor. The secret of making these ‘lucky’ pieces is known only to an itinerant clan of Salarvyani ne’er-do-wells, the Braided Beard clan. The Pechani know all about these rogues, and say anyone who thinks they have got a bargain out of a Salarvyani is ‘lucky as a Salarvyani Kuruku’ and confidently expect the deal to go very bad very quickly. The chnau is a swampland creature somewhat resembling a giant centipede, somewhat like a snake and something like a ragworm, renowned for its toxic bite. It lays its eggs on its deceased victims, and these hatch into chunky pale pink maggots about three inches long that glow faintly in the dark. At this stage they non-toxic and edible by humans if cooked (though they taste awful), and are regarded by Ahoggya as a delicacy, especially when sprinkled with ground copper sulphate crystals. The eggs can be stored for some weeks, and Ahoggya in the Shuruna lowlands and Shikel swamps gather them and sell them to Ahoggya traders in the city who hatch them out on suitable fresh corpses and sell them on street corners. While walking in the foreigners’ quarter one may sometimes observe Ahoggya notables scoffing live chnau maggots out of paper cones made of recycled City Ordinances as they go about their business. The maggots love rotting meat that is just on the turn and can smell it from miles away. Human grave-robbers buy chnau maggots and let them loose in Necropoli at night, following the glowing pink maggot to freshly made graves and just sealed tombs giving them first go at despoiling the deceased. The Tomb-Police are well aware of this stratagem and if they find chnau maggots loose in their graveyard they immediately sound the alarm. Sadly meat that is too far gone or too dry just does not appeal to them and attempts to persuade them to attack Mrur and Shedra will not work. It is unknown if they are partial to Jajgi. The city guards also make use of chnau maggots to search for corpses where it is suspected murder victims have been hidden, though in many areas of the city iffy meat is sadly all too common and all too often they go off the trail and end up snooting around in the kitchens of the cheaper caterers clans. A few conscientious market officials use the maggot when inspecting butchers stalls, but it is generally felt that the beasts are a bit too sensitive and many of the joints they appear too like will not too much harm to human customers if roasted properly with the right combination of pungent spices. The maggots can be found anywhere where there are Ahoggya, but the further away from the Shuruna lowlands you are the more expensive they become. Base price in Jakalla is 2 hlash each, and you can get a bag of eight for 15 hlash. They will last only a day away from rotting meat and will undergo their first moult at 5-10 days. At this stage they gain poisonous spines, grow to a foot long and they become more inclined to go for living flesh if disturbed. It is not considered wise to keep them beyond this point, even by Ahoggya. Communication between Pe Choi and humans can be hampered by the inflexibility of the Pe Choi’s chitinous face and the difficulty they have in replicating human expressions. This leads some to regard Pe Choi as at best inscrutable and at worst possessed of a mocking and disdainful attitude to humans. Among the cultured and educated Pe Choi of Bey Su it is currently the fashion to carry a Chkt’kt, a square or polygonal rod about two feet long painted with anywhere up to sixty coloured emblems based on meshqu plaque designs. When the user is in conversation with a human the Pe Choi brandishes this stick with his finger under the symbol indicating his current mood and emotional state. In the course of intense negotiations the stick can be whirled around at quite a speed. It does not solve all the problems of interspecies communication however. The Pe Choi do not see colours in quite the same way as humans, finding it hard to distinguish orange and red and recognising two shades of ultra-violet, kch and tkcht, which look white to human eyes. Thus a Pe Choi may confuse Understandable Depression (red and blue vertical stripes) for Mild Jocularity at Bad Luck of Another (orange and blue stripes), or a human may see Awe at Inspired Rhetoric (white and red concentric circles) where his Pe Choi interlocutor is in fact indicating Boredom and Irritation at the Witless Prattling of Simians (kch and red concentric circles). Some models of the Chkt’kt have a stout bronze ferrule weighted with lead for when civilised communication breaks down entirely. A Pe Choi may become familiar with Chkt’tk use quite quickly, and if they make a roll against the average of their DEX and INT they may use the stick to counteract the -1 CHA penalty they suffer when using communication skills with humans. If they have to use the other function it is used with Mace or Brawling skill, has +2 Initiative, -1 Acc and does x3 damage. Cost varies, the cheapest and most crudely painted versions go for 10 kaitars, elegant colourful ones with enamel symbols and a really stout club on the end are 500kt plus. There are seven different types of these charming little magical stones, each corresponding to a heavenly body in the Tekumeli sky. When held up in front of the users face and released with a twist they spin off an orbit his head with a periodic cycle related to their planet – thus a Kashi stone will whiz round your head every 1.5 seconds, but a Ziruna stone will take 17 minutes to do the same trip.
Each use drains 1 charge from the stone, and each starts with 1d100 charges. When exhausted the stone becomes grey and apparently lifeless and unable to orbit, but there is a ritual spell that enables the caster to store 1d10 magic points in such stones. Use of a full set gives an additional +1 magic resistance over an above any bonuses from individual stones and costs no charges. You can have more than one stone of a given type orbiting at any one time, but this does not increase the bonus gained, just the number of charges available for use. The big disadvantage of these stones is that they can be easily stolen or lost. All an opponent has to do is reach out and grab them; doing this in combat requires a Sleight of Hand skill roll at +2, or a save vs DEX. Grabbing the fast moving Gayel and Kashi stones is at an additional -1, the slow Ziruna and Shichel stones are at +1. Consequently the owners of such stones usually only get them out for special occasions (parties and such), or when they are accompanied by a fair number of bodyguards. Each stone is worth 1000kt plus
10kt per charge left (if known, otherwise add 250kt) and a full set
starts at 8000kt. Their functions and use are detailed in the text
‘The Marvellous Planet Stones of Kurua hiYtletel’, a late
Engsvanyali volume found in These are hand-sized spheroids of an ancient metal, usually painted with glyphs in Llyani and Duruob, with a sliding button on one end. When activated this device creates a psychic field five meters radius which aggravates that part of a Shen’s brain which controls aggression against their own species. This section of brain is usually only stimulated by the pheromones given off during the mating season and by rival egg-groups. Any Shen within the area of effect must save vs Will each round or immediately feel as though any Shen nearby are about to assault them. Each round within the field the save is reduced by 1, until all the Shen are attacking each other. These devices were produced during the Latter Times by the predecessors of the Llyani Empire to combat Shen invasions. They use one charge each use plus 1 per minute of activation and each has up to one hundred charges. There are probably dozens hidden
away among the armouries of the
The price should one come on the market is 8000Kt. Amulet of Peace Among the Servitors of Ksarul (See original Empire of the Petal Throne) There are several different varieties and grades of this most useful amulet. It is a small purple gem mounted on a tarnished silver arm ring and has up to 100 charges. It is designed to protect against those underworld creatures originally created by the priests of Ksarul. Roll on the following table to see how powerful each amulet is. The base range is 6 meters, which can be extended by 2 meters per extra charge used up to 12m and has a duration of 3 minutes, plus 1 minute per extra charge used to enhance duration. Extra charges may also be sued to control more creatures, as noted on the table below. Affected creatures will not attack the user of his allies, but cannot be commanded or dominated. It is possible to expend all the charges in an amulet in one go in one super-powerful spell.
The bearer can use more conventional methods to negotiate safe passage, alliances etc once the target creature has been calmed, but he/she must be able to speak the language of the target or have spells suitable to achieve such communication. The amulet can be recharged by using a specialisation of the Azure Scarab spell. The lowest grade of amulet is worth 1000Kt plus 10Kt per charge, doubling in value for each higher grade – thus the most powerful version is worth 64 000Kt plus 640Kt per charge. The Amulet of Finding Treasure in the Underworld (See original Empire of the Petal Throne) This amulet is sacred to Okh, The Warder of Devices, an aspect of Gruganu. It is a small carved scarab beetle that when activated with a magic word will begin to glow and to scuttle off through the underworld toward the nearest cache of gold, gems or silver within 100 meters. It appears to make no distinction as to the size of the hoard – it may lead you to a cheap tinsel necklace or to solid gold vases packed with diamonds, all a matter of what happens to be closest. Its effectiveness also depends on the religion of the user. Roll d100 on the following table to see if the amulet succeeds in finding treasure. If it fails, roll again to see if there are any serious adverse effects.
If the amulet does not work it scuttles off into the darkness and its light fades away, or it may just run around in a circle or just lead the user into a dead end. If it goes wrong, all kinds of things can happen; it can lead people into traps and ambushes, lead them into a well guarded shrine of Gruganu or even transform itself into a demon servitor of Lord Qu’u and attack. The worst fate of all is to be led through a nexus point to Okh’s favourite temple on the planet Ziruna. Each amulet can only be used once and costs 200Kt. It is possible that many on sale are fake, or are designed as booby traps, designed to lead the unwary into prepared traps and ambushes laid by the pernicious priests of Gruganu and their underworld friends. This is a beautifully made set of crystalline vessels with polished brass lids and numerous tubes and valves to connect them. This is in fact a miniaturised version of the tanks used by the priests of Ksarul to create Hra. To use it requires numerous expensive materials prepared by skilled alchemists, including extracts of human blood, pituitary glands and amniotic fluid, all best taken fresh from human sacrifices. If used correctly one can grow a variety of small monsters from globs of dead tissue sewn together and reanimated by a version of the Necrofacture spell. Nourished by the hormone rich nutrient bath this material achieves a kind of synthetic life and becomes a living homunculus, the form of which is only limited by the users imagination – and the kind of people who use such devices have pretty lurid imaginations. There
is only one of these devices known; it is in the private collection of
Hakuru hiTleslu of the Cloak of Azure Gems Clan of Bey Su. He is a
lay-priest of Ksarul and noted sorcerer, and has been experimenting with
the possibilities of this device. He has made a few entertaining little
beasts (including a three-legged hunchbacked homunculus with a face
modelled on the Usurper Dhich’une) but he cannot get them to live
outside the tank for more than a few minutes. He does not know what the missing
reagent or spell is, and he is not held in high enough esteem by the
temple to get any hints from their experts on Hra. It is possible that
this miniature version is the last functioning Hra tank in Tsolyanu -
the temple
of Price for an Amnion should one come on the market is unknown, but is likely to be very high. The manuals on Hra creation that presumably go with the tank would also be worth a great deal. There are a few tiny Hra kept in the Temples of Ksarul, Hru’u and Gruganu that were presumably originally created in such a device. Quill of Prevention of Pettifoggery Sacred to Khalesh the Decider, an aspect of Thumis who is patron of administrators and bureaucrats, this amulet is designed to ease dealings with the civil service. The Talisman is made of silver and is shaped like a small kaika-quill pen. Its enchantment is used on a scroll to imbue it with the ability to teleport and self-heal, but it can be used only once. Anyone who puts the document in a pile will find that however many other chits, dockets and other materials are placed on top of it, the enchanted one always moves to the top of the pile. If filed in a scroll rack the next scroll to be removed from that rack will always be the magic document. If an official tears the scroll up or burns it, it will reappear on his desk later that day miraculously whole. If he scribbles on it, it will be clean and readable when next seen, which will not be long, as anyone leaving an office where this document resides carrying a scroll will find that their document has strangely turned into the enchanted one. The only way of getting rid of such a document is to pass it on to a higher ranking official or to act upon its request or instruction oneself. This is a very powerful item and is worth 3000Kt, not that the priests of Khalesh are willing to let just anyone get one and magically mess around with their time honoured and traditional procedures and protocols for looking busy and competent while actually wasting time. Some priests regard the creation of such objects as blasphemous; the endless waiting in queues, losing of documents, filling out of meaningless forms and acquisition of official stamps and seals are all spiritual lessons set by Khalesh to strengthen the petitioners character and to prepare their soul for the bureaucracy of passport control in the Isles of Teretane. These glowing green berries are allegedly native to the moon Gayel and are thus sacred to Dlamelish and Hrihayal. They can be sacrificed to these deities for favours and also eaten as a very powerful aphrodisiac, adding +4 to any sexuality rolls. However, the user must also make a save vs the average of Str and Will or lose 1 Str point for 1d3 weeks. It is possible to become addicted to these berries; such unfortunates usually expire of heart failure. They can be bought outside most Dlamelish temples for 20-50Kt per berry. The vendors of these berries are very unwilling to say how they harvest them; if they really do grow on the moon then presumably there is a nexus point available to these grubby hawkers that opens out upon its surface. These are golden circlets set with azure gems and are used by long range telepaths in the service of the Imperium and Temples. While wearing the circlet the cost of casting Ascertainment spells is halved. The Dial of Digital Discernment This is a beautifully crafted object of silver, gold, platinum, brass and iron which consists of two filigreed prongs attached to a three inch wide dial with a long spinning needle. When pointed at an object, person or animal the needle moves across the face of the dial, which is engraved with the numbers 1-9 in elegant Engsvanyali numerals. The number shown depends on the value of the target’s name, reduced to its essentials through the technique of Averral, as detailed in the book Tsolyani Numerology. This number depends on the True Name, not the given name. This can sometimes be useful in spotting spies whose pseudonyms do not numerically correspond to their real names, but is of most usefulness when dealing with demons. The clues gained from the Dial can enable an experienced Demonologist to work out the possible true names of the demon, and to thus gain power over the creature. Knowing the Averral number enables magicians to know which kinds of magic a given person or object are most susceptible to, though it does require a thorough grounding in Numerology to make any practical difference. These objects are works of art in their own right and worth 1500Kt.
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