Magic Item

Magic Items or Enchanted Objects are objects, usually inanimate, with magical properties. Unlike most magic, they are generally usable by Innocents, which may not even cause Karmic blowback if there are clear warnings or warning signs attached.<ref name=":2"/> Peddlars are Others who craft or find magic items, while a Gilded Lily is a human with a similar knack.<ref name=":0">Peddlers - A broad grouping of Others with a knack for making or finding objects that have some power to them, which they then distribute. They may make, curse or tweak the items or manipulate the subjects so they destroy themselves in a way that is karmically just (often violating a warning given with the item), then sweep in to reclaim the item and the power it gathered. Collectors may deal with or trade with Peddlers, who are often skilled at transubstantiation, or who can point them the right ways.
Gilded Lilies (or Gilded) - A loose term for people, non-Other, who are often unawakened, who have a knack for coming into possession of things of value or leading a train wreck of a life where they keep stumbling onto cursed items and trinkets. There are a variety of names and labels for such people and variants. Important or useful ones can include artists or craftsmen who make things of value that fit to patterns or become natural hallows for certain kinds of Other, ‘Gilded’ Heroes or notable people who have a tendency to turn things they regularly handle into an item that could fit a collection (see Legacy items, below), people who’ve become the target of a trickster spirit (or spirit of misfortune, or god, or whatever) who come across magical or cursed items on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis. - Pact Dice: Collectors</ref> Collectors specialize in obtaining, organizing and using magic items, while Enchanters specialize in creating them. Keepers are also known for their interest in them.

Cursed Items

Perhaps the most common type of magic item, at least outside of Practitioner hands, is the cursed item; one which has negative effects, typically preying on the unaware.<ref name=":1">A lot of devices and ‘found’ items tended to be… problematic. When an Other got into an item, it tended to be frustrated or angry, or else a predator lying in wait, or a conniving thing trying to use the device as a vector to hurt people.

These items, from the scratch-a-sketch to the polaroid camera, were ones Zed had tended to. Curses removed, Others managed or pulled out, bound, and put back in again. In cases where those Others had been ones who preyed on fear or negativity, the items unfortunately became things that couldn’t recharge or sustain themselves. - Excerpt from Out on a Limb 3.z</ref> Much like a Brownie, a cursed item will frequently offer some benefit, only to take back more than it gave should some rule be broken. The "fair" trade of benefits given, clear warnings, and sometimes a gradual descent from Innocence or humanity, help to mitigate the karmic protections normally afforded to Innocents.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":2">An Incarnation of Poverty might try to spread poverty. Sometimes that would be with a cursed item; innocents handle it, they ignore the warnings printed on the item or shared by the seller, they lose their earthly belongings and fortunes, they die or suffer a dark fate, the item gets passed on, having strengthened Poverty, until someone figures out a way to deal with it. Other times, it’s a ritual that finds its way to people’s hands. [...] that’s the gamble, of sorts. Will the ritual pull in enough to be worth the cost of inducting an innocent? If the ritual brings in enough poverty, for example, or brings in enough other people who fail, it may be worth paying the penalty or assuming the karmic responsibility. [...] Often, the karmic cost of bringing in innocents is tempered. If it’s just, if someone must opt in, and if there’s a possible way out, it’s less costly. Remember what I said earlier about the warning given with full expectation that the warning would be ignored? One such example. The Ritual Incarnate may be a game, or a pattern people willingly participate in, with enough traps or enough of an uphill climb that failing at the game is expected, and they may be difficult enough that by the time the participant is done, they are no longer capital-I Innocent, or even no longer human. - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.4</ref> Practioners are known to cleansing particular items to make them more useful for their particular practice.<ref>“This was a find of mine. A cursed object I cleansed. It remains an interesting tool for observation. A little cumbersome, but I have to admit, I like having an excuse to dust it off.” - Excerpt from Stolen Away 2.z</ref><ref> Pact Dice: Mile End</ref>

Cursed items are often made various dedicated Peddlars who then reap the power an item harvests,<ref name=":0" /> or the victims collected.<ref>wrtyrtyrty</ref> Faerie, goblins or Incarnations (including Envoys) for example might also make cursed items to further their goals,<ref name=":2" /><ref>She was pretty certain that presents and boons like the ones Keller was giving out were traps. That they’d be wonderful and fantastic up until the point that things turned sour. Maybe they became too much of a good thing, maybe there was a rule that had to be followed, with some horrific backlash if it wasn’t. Maybe there was a catch.

Exiled Faerie weren’t allowed to go after innocents, not directly. But, Maggie was fairly certain, they weren’t forbidden from doing something like giving a kid a flute that would summon a sprite to do their chores for them, with the caveat that the sprite would blind them if they ever tried to watch it while it worked.

End result? The kid would be stupid, the sprite would eat the kid’s eyes. People, the kid included, would rationalize it away as an accident, an infection, or just a freak occurrence. Life would go on as normal, and the local Faeries-in-exile got their jollies without breaking the rules. - Excerpt from Signature 8.2</ref> <ref> “Goblins fashion things.  I, as you may know or not know, am very good at putting tricks and trinkets together,” Toadswallow told them.  “Weapons, tools, distractions.  Gremlins dismantle and build mechanical things and work with the mechanical and technological.  Fomorian goblins deep in the Warrens conspire to make cursed things, raiding underground waters and organizing.  The Warrens themselves are dug out of muck, nightsoil, and dreck, supported by goblin will, the trampling of goblin feet helping to beat a trench downward, in a measure equal to the roof above.” - Excerpt from Dash to Pieces 11.11</ref> These goals can be many and varied.

A cursed item can commonly contain a predatory (or simply angry/hurt/confused) Other.<ref name=":1" />

Cursed items can typically be sorted into one of the following categories:

• Pendulums- Cursed tems that give something to the user, typically a quality, and take it away on the backswing. This typically leads to the death of the user, when the item used the claim it established to drink up the soul or Self.<ref>Some items were pendulums.  Give something, then take it away on the backswing.  A makeup kit that could make someone beautiful but then the beauty would fade and it would take away the original face’s beauty with it.  Bit by bit, encouraging more use, more use, more use.  Until the user took their own life, or got killed for being a monster.  Then the makeup kit would drink up the Self or the soul, using the claim it had established, position itself to be found by someone else or get moved by its creator, or it would return home for the stored power to be extracted. - Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.7</ref>
• Plot- Cursed items that have built in stories with patterns or traps. Breaking from the story requires tests of character and sacrifice. Plot items tend to reward being able to step back and think about things, with clear ideas or clear morals for anyone who isn’t too emotionally invested. <ref>Some items were plot items.  Cursed items that had built in stories with patterns or traps woven into them.  A cursed clown doll that would let someone invent humiliations to force on a peer in worse ways and worse ways, from blurting out something embarrassing, sudden weight gain or hair loss, wardrobe malfunctions, crapping themselves in a public place, having debit and credit cards cut off in front of people, and so on, always asked for and then enacted the next day.  The doll would always demand the wielder of the doll to escalate from the last time, but as the pattern was established, the doll would always be stolen by the target, would always be used against the original wielder.  There would always be a final confrontation, always with both the original user and the primary victim holding the doll and trying to wrest it from the other’s grip, each trying to top the other’s last stated curse, or top themselves.  And, almost inevitably, the two would invent humiliations capped off in finality.  Each stating an embarrassing death for the other.  Then the doll would go cold, and they’d have nothing left but to wait until tomorrow.  That was the pattern, and breaking from it would require tests of character and sacrifice.- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.7</ref>
• Apples or Poison Apples- Cursed items that generate an effect, help an energy or effect take hold, then collect that energy. Often very simple, beautiful objects that people want to keep around or keep on display just for the artistic value – this kind of aesthetic leads people to put them in prominent places where they can work. <ref>Apples or Poison Apples were a curse specialist’s term for items that generated an effect, helped an energy or effect take hold, then collected that energy.  She’d read about a crystal egg that made love cool.  Families would become cold and distant, calculating, ruthless, empathy dying for those touched by any light that hit the egg and refracted out, for anyone else also touched.  Clementine had picked up the fake flower in a plastic tube by the roadside, and it had generated an overabundance of life.  But poison apples were often very simple, beautiful objects that people wanted to keep around or keep on display just for the artistic value – that kind of aesthetic led people to put them in prominent places where they could work.  This frame and this world wasn’t that. - Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.7</ref>
• Trials- Cursed items that act as tests of character, where items offer power with the expectation that someone will be ruined by that power, or demand the target learn a lesson. Enough people should fail that the cursed item will collect more power than it spends doing whatever it does. Trials are usually mostly solved if it is discovered what they actually do. <ref>Trials were tests of character, where items offered power with the expectation that someone would be ruined by that power, or demanded the target learn a lesson.  Enough people would fail that the cursed item collected more power than it spent doing whatever it did.  A lot of Clementine’s items were tests of character.  The game console, the thrift store dress, the choker, the sleepy book, the key to the goblin room, the knife, the earring.  Others.  If there was a pattern for Clem’s items, it had to be something related to that.  Avery had read about a bowl that, if filled with water, could let someone see and control the dreams of someone they loved.  Writing in cuneiform around the edges of the bowl told of the rules, that it had to be someone they loved.  The test was what that love involved, and how someone would act if the love faltered.  Often, a lot of the people using the bowl would act in a way that had no love in it, for their own satisfaction or glory, with no kindness, respect, or trust.  Then, having violated the warning, they would be swallowed by the bowl and kept imprisoned in the same kinds of dreams they devised.

Trials were usually mostly solved if it was discovered what they actually did.  This wasn’t resolved by that. - Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.7</ref>

• Snares- Cursed items that close around the user like a bear trap, slowly or quickly.  A lot of them tend to make realms.  They tend to have bait or something appealing to them to lure people in as the jaws close. They tend to be simple.  They usually don't have complex rules, beyond the one obvious one.<ref>There were snares, like Clementine’s possible first magic item, the videotapes that had sucked up her neighbor.  Items that closed around the user like a bear trap, slowly or quickly.  A lot of them liked to make realms, like this.  They tended to have bait or something appealing to them to lure people in as the jaws closed.  Verona had liked the idea of the oil of Aphrodite, which would enhance lovemaking between couples or help bring fantasies to vivid life for the solo lovemaker.  But the experience would be so vivid the user would lose track of time, they wouldn’t answer knocks on the door, and ran the risk of enjoying themselves to the point of wearing their genitals down to calloused or scarred-over nothingness, or lovers would fuse together at the pelvis.  That sort of fit here.  But they tended to be simple.  They didn’t usually have rules like this had, beyond the one obvious one. - Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.7</ref>
• Affliction- Cursed items that are simple, often tying themselves to the user.  They do something bad while held and are hard to get rid of.  <ref>And there were affliction items.  Simpler still, often tying themselves to the user.  They did something bad while held and were hard to get rid of.  Cherrypop’s rock.  There was no way this was an affliction item. - Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.7</ref>
• Coded-Cursed items that have rules or codes that have to be followed.  They can be intricate and complex, or simpler, and some items of other categories often have codes or something going into them.  A pure coded item was one that set out rules for how it was to be used, and then punished the violators.  <ref>Coded items had rules or codes that had to be followed.  They could be intricate and complex, or simpler, and some items of other categories often had codes or something going into them.  But a pure coded item was one that set out rules for how it was to be used, and then punished the violators.  The brownies at the Blue Heron were that. - Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.7</ref>
• Ferries- Cursed items that house Others.  The Other gives the item its power along with a more complex motive and an intelligence. <ref>Then there were Ferries.  Items that housed Others.  Jinn in a ring, something fairy in a music box, gremlin in a computer, echo in a piece of clothing.  The Other gave the item its power and it also gave it a more complex motive and an intelligence. - Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.7</ref>
  

Grails

Think of Grails as to Magic Items what Magic Items are to mundane objects; even more useful, dangerous and coveted then "regular" magic items.<ref>Certain items of power are capable of filling in a great variety of slots, or otherwise ignore rules about placement and can fill in any space in the diagram. These items are termed ‘Grails’ and are typically very powerful and very much sought after. Simply by their inclusion, they may improve the entire collection, as they are sets unto themselves.

[...]

The goal of practitioners trying to complete a true collection is typically to collect a large set of grails, where they are collecting ‘the’ items under a category. One couldn’t have a sword collection without Excalibur, for example. These could be Lost items, or Swords, Cups, or Aztec Treasures, to suggest categories. [...]

The more grail items one has, the more they’ll find themselves wrapped up with Keepers and rival collectors, but they also gain a lot of power, and more overall claim to the rest of the set.

[...]

There is a runaway effect where success leads to more general claim and thus more success, but considering that a single grail item can be months or years of work, this is often the endeavor of a lifetime or the focus of a whole family. - Pact Dice: Collectors</ref>

Instrumental incidentals

After the owner of an implement dies it loses its status as an "implement" but can easily take on incidental power, making it easier to become a magic item compared to other objects.<ref>“They were implements, owner died, item was left behind, took on incidental power… you left before that class, right.”

“Right right.  Guess an implement is nicely primed to become an accidental magic item.”

“Yeah.  Pretty good ones, a lot of the time.”- Excerpt from Summer Break 13.12</ref>

Living objects

Those items that can move by themselves, animate or such things that have a life of their own to the point that they straddle the border between an Object and a person.<ref> “…the Other that becomes an object, and the object that takes on an Otherness…” [...] “…and the line grows fuzzier as we introduce the middle ground elements.  An object of prominence has a complex spirituality.  In the right circumstances, sometimes something as simple as using particularly trained Sight, that spirituality may be made manifest with its own personality.  As an object is used, with history leaving its mark in minor wear and tear, damage, chipped paint, and whatever else, that spirit gains a memory.  It can pick up echoes, playing into the complex spirituality.  Where do we draw the line, then?  When can we say that this is simply an object that has witnessed life, and this is an object that has life?”
[...]

“Pay attention to the movement mode of the living object.  Objects that can propel themselves, like this bike and its spirit rider-” [...] “-Simple enough,” Raymond continued.  “They move easily.  Virtually any power could be used to get them moving on their own.  Through that movement, they may perpetuate an action or help keep themselves going.  If they can’t, the energy may be spent. If there is unattended energy freely available, it may drink them in.  This particular complex spirit collected energy from unattended practices and things that had been set up to gather and bank power, then ignored.  It fed and gained clarity through attention.  Most weekends, the bike would roll downhill from the old eccentric’s house, then stubbornly and carefully make its way around back, avoiding all possible interaction and nearly spending itself of power before arriving at the property, refilling on its fuel, then repeating the process.  If it ran out, got too much innocent attention, or fell, chances are good it wouldn’t have resumed moving.” - Excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.5</ref>

Some for example might be weapons that create they're own wielders.<ref>Red Swords were Others who were derived from Incarnations of Battle and War, and were complex, nuanced weapons with souls, carried by faceless Others that wielded them. - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.2</ref> Specific to each individual item.<ref>There were items without the damned of hell attached to them.  A straight-razor, a sun-bleached trash bin unlike any Lucas had seen, that produced sounds like the glass around the arena.  Hollow, dull.  A book of photos- grotesque photos of blindfolded people with sawn-off body parts.  The photos came free and the ones that touched the blood on the ice were grabbed by hands from beneath, dragged under.  The ones that touched the concrete of the arena started spreading dark stains.

Cagerattler whispered.

Every item without an owner became its own owner.  The shadows they cast became figures, the figures fit to each item.  A man with skin that looked like he’d been rinsed in dark ink a few too many times, his glasses bright in the dark, a camera at his neck.  A man in old-fashioned clothing with a face rendered unrecognizable by a criss-crossing of cuts.  The trash bin tipped over, and someone or something banged within as they shifted position.

Things that went down there got hardened, turned ugly.  It was easy to get angry, easy to get desperate, easy to give up on everything.  And Lucas had been down there long enough to see some get out.  He’d seen them fall back down, after.  Some came up, they killed a few, they were vanquished, and they’d be sent down, and that was the pattern.  Some of these objects were owned by those sorts of beings, and by binding the items, the owners were bound to follow and obey.

Others were just the objects.  Objects with enough awfulness behind them that they could boil up too, they could find targets, and they could hurt.  The people that Cagerattler had created were representations of the gathered negativity in those items.  Manifestations of the history, of the owners, of everything else. - Excerpt from Break 4</ref>

Related phenomena are Habiliments, Hatched objects, living armor and more.

Spoiled

Those unintended magic items that have stretched out and linked to other items that begin to enchant the environment.<ref>The Spoiled

The Spoiled or Spoils is/are an enchanted object that has sprawled, or a 'rat king' of enchanted objects, often derived from one object with wild power seizing on a series of vessels and objects of importance. It may occur in places where a cursed or enchanted object has no outlet, while having a lot of power, residing in a demesne, manor, storage area, or shipwreck that has been abandoned and forgotten. A root object could, for example, be a Fae portrait that extends the parties and enjoyment of all dancing before it... with nobody within a hundred miles as grass grows over the old household. Gradually, especially as errant spirits corrupt it or dust/corrosion connect it to other things, it extends its influence to animate objects or expand its size, until it becomes a singular entity. The painting could become a mural, then take over the house, or gradually assume a humanlike shape.

Spoiled generally ruin what they draw into themselves, and are more a large pest to be cleared out than a resource to be drawn on. Their strength is proportionate to the value of what they have taken into themselves, but are generally fairly middling, if durable and capable of transferring their essence across linked or spoiled (corrupted) areas. Some are used for their knowledge of history and events. - Wildbow on Discord</ref> Not very powerful they are seen as danger rather then a resource, outside of being information sinks.

Token

Main article: Token

Tools

Many practices have specific tools that have important uses, such as diagnostic or protective, that are commonly used in one's work.<ref>“What do you have?” Avery asked.

“Tools. For managing and analyzing spirit, animus, vestiges. Tools for measuring incarnate forces. Magic items. Some scattered relics for heroic lines we’ve stopped keeping track of.”- Crossed with Silver 19.14</ref><ref>The Turtle Queen shrugged. “For now, they’re happy with what they stole from the Whitts. They’re identifying items, to see what’s cursed and what isn’t. Seth Belanger has been mentioning the tools available in Belanger custody, and how they would speed things up. Conversations right this very moment are about what they could take.” - Excerpt from Let Slip 20.8</ref><ref>“As is, we’ve pooled instruments together. Thea was kind enough to provide a great number of quality instruments. Nadine brought over some measuring tools. Sourav had some. We have people keeping constant eye on each of the instruments. Taking turns. If something goes wrong, if the levels of echoes rise, scales tip, or cards start agitating, they’re to call for help immediately.” - Excerpt from Wild Abandon 18.8</ref><ref>Diagnostics. Assessing a town.

She brought the thermometers out. Abyss-tainted mercury, the tear of a god, a gilded leaf on a bead of water, and other similar devices let her track the ‘temperature’ of certain influences. Abyssal, Ruins, Faerie, Goblin… - Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.a</ref>

A direct example is a barometer, meant to monitor changes in a practitioner.

References

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