The way the Shadow Book tells it, once the running competition between the Earthbound Quincy and the azata hunter got going, the bralani - Ivar Windstrike, by name - may have gotten a bit sidetracked by the contest. He may have done this deliberately, taking the opportunity to thumb his nose at the rules of the high-and-mighty Powers by drawing his hunt for the wizard-conjurer and the Elysian hydra out as long as he could, but it's also possible that he was just having a really good time with the archery matches.
Incidentally, Ivar did not win all of those bouts, and more often than not the results of a given match were rather close - but that really only made things more interesting for both sides.
In any event, with the Quincy calling their cousins to be on the lookout for a "man made of clouds" who might drop in to offer them a friendly challenge, news of the unusual being's existence and purpose eventually reached the Wandenreich. Initially, as Ivar meandered all over Europe, down through parts of Africa, and then up through the Middle East and into mainland Asia, he was not deemed a danger and nothing was done about him, but as his travels and visits carried him closer to the eastern side of the continent, a response came together. Whether through intelligence acquired on the ground or a vision of the Grandmaster's, the next time the bralani descended to face off with a Quincy, he was informed that "one of our kinsmen" had come across rumors of a creature that might be the hydra Ivar had originally come to Earth to hunt.
Ivar was so pleased to hear this that he almost didn't win the subsequent shooting match - but only almost. Afterwards, he got directions and flew northeast, bypassing Japan by a thousand miles and more as he headed for the Bering Strait, crossed into North America, and then flew further east. The azata's ultimate destination was the Great Lakes, specifically the cities of Sault Ste. Marie in Canada and the United States.
"Wait, what?" you ask, frowning at that.
"Haven't covered that in social studies?" Balthazar asks. When you wordlessly shake your head, he explains, "They used to be one town, until the treaty signed after the War of 1812 declared the border in that area would run along the St. Mary's River, which cut the settlement in two."
Huh.
Anyway, the wizard had established himself in and between the two cities, exploiting certain mystical anomalies about residing in "one" location while also not being a permanent resident of either country, and likewise not dwelling permanently on land or on the water - he owned buildings on either side, as well as a boat just big enough to live out of, and also maintained a not-quite-floating cabin in the marshes along the river. The hydra's lair was located near the latter, and the wizard would periodically allow the monster to roam and hunt in the river and the wetlands.
Ivar put an end to both of them soon after his arrival in the area, with some assistance from a Wandenreich operative who was "undercover" as an Earthbound Quincy. As part of that disguise, the Soldat left behind his more modern spirit weapons and used some of the traditional equipment, which included a few solid projectiles called Seele Schneider.
"...my German is still not great without magic," you say slowly, "but doesn't that mean 'Soul Cutter'?"
"Don't look at me," Urahara says, even as you're doing so. "I had nothing to do with naming EITHER weapon."
Having seen that Quincy didn't JUST use pure energy projectiles, and as a show of gratitude for that man's help in finding and putting down the slaver and his beast, Ivar gave the Soldat his own Efficient Quiver. With his original purpose in coming to Earth completed, Ivar's excuse for staying had worn out, and the agents of the Powers "encouraged" him to be on his way.
As for the Quiver, the item never really got used after that, although the Quincy who "owned" it seems to have been a decent enough sort to feel kind of bad about that.
Gained Ivar's Efficient Quiver
As you pocket the item, Shadow Alex informs you that his mana is starting to run low. He could manage another four Literary Visions, but after that he would be pretty close to the point of dissipation.
"This would probably be a good time to start copying all this information into a more permanent form, then," you say, looking to your host of the day. "Ambrose, do you have a few spare notebooks I could-"
"No," the wizard interrupts.
"...huh?"
"No, I don't have a FEW spare notebooks."
You sigh, and then venture: "You have ALL the spare notebooks?"
"I have ALL the spare notebooks," the old man agrees with a grin and a nod, before heading for the door. "As it happens, I actually have a few proper blank books laying around, as opposed to just notepads..."
As he leaves, you and Balthazar trade wordless, weary glances of mutual exasperation with the old man.
"By the by," said old man adds, leaning back around the door frame, "why didn't you think to ask me for a book earlier?"
You look at your Shadow.
He looks back at you.
Ambrose leaves for real and returns shortly with three separate hardcover books, their covers bound in plain but quality leather and the pages good enough to serve as spellbooks, which is probably what the wizard picked them up for.
You hand your newest purchase off to your Shadow, along with your Conjured Book, and he heads out to Ambrose's spellcasting chamber.
"Why not do that in here?" Urahara asks curiously. "After all the other spells he's already cast, I can't see one more being an issue for these items." He gestures at the room of random stuff all around you with his cane.
"Normally, that would be the case," you agree. "Especially when the spell I learned for copying text is only a cantrip. The problem is that the Spell of Amanuensis works at about two hundred and fifty words per minute - which isn't slow, by any means, but would still take a while to copy the amount of information we've pulled up so far today. So, my Shadow's going to use a ritual to speed up the process, and rituals are a bit less discriminating than proper spells with specific targets."
Anyway, while your Dark Self is making like a scribe, you turn to the collection of shiny, not-so-shiny, and honestly drab rocks that's been set out to one side. Some of these appear mundane, apart from their obvious magical auras, but a few of the things are floating several inches above the surface of the table.
"Floating gemstones?" Urahara asks.
"Ioun Stones," Ambrose replies. "Also known as Ioun's Stones or Congenio's Pebbles after their creator, Congenio Ioun, an ancient archmage from another realm. There are literally dozens of different varieties, and each one bestows a different magical boon on its owner - at the mild to moderate inconvenience of the Stone having to constantly orbit around the owner's head."
"...why?" the Shinigami asks.
"It has to do with how the Stones transmit their power," the wizard says. "For my part, though, I think old Ioun just had an odd sense of aesthetics..."
One of the floating stones is a transparent spindle-shaped crystal which radiates a strong aura not specific to any of the schools of magic. It would be rather pretty, if not for the irregularly shaped off-white smudge near the center.
"This sort of Stone normally removes the bearer's need for food or water," Ambrose informs you. "Unfortunately, this one's flawed. It still keeps you from needing food, but you have to drink twice as much water."
At first glance that doesn't seem like a particularly problematic trade-off, at least not for someone like you who can magically obtain fresh drinking water pretty much at need. But then it occurs to you that if you're drinking twice as much, you'd have to go to the bathroom more often as a result, which is... more of an inconvenience.
Also, you LIKE eating food.
Next among the floating rocks is an incandescent blue sphere whose interior is filled with spiderwebbing cracks. It should be beautiful, but instead, it just looks fragile.
"Normally, this type of Stone would improve your sensory awareness, judgment, and intuition," Ambrose says. "The cracks in this one have greatly reduced its utility, however. All it will do is give someone a slightly better insight into other people's feelings."
"Too many shiny things."
You're usually pretty good about being able to split your attention between multiple tasks, but when "one" of those tasks involves deciding which of dozens of shiny new (to you) magic items are worth taking and trying not to get too distracted by idle thoughts of how to use them in the future, even your powers of concentration wear thin.
"What about you?" you return to the wizard. "Why didn't YOU bring it up earlier?"
Ambrose shrugs. "I was hoping for a funnier reaction from you when the penny finally dropped. Alas!"
While you could just have Shadow Alex copy the Literary Visions that he's been steadily filled his first Shadow Conjured Book with into one of the books Ambrose is offering you and leave it at that, there is a part of you that likes the idea of putting all of this information - including the tales that you, yourself, took off of the items you were investigating earlier - into a single text. Enough was written in your Conjured Book that adding those stories to the results of Shadow Alex's efforts might over-fill one of the new books, and you DO mean to perform more Literary Visions on the items you take - perhaps not today, and certainly not on everything, but eventually, on the items that prove viable for it.
If that's the case, there are enough items still to come that you could end up filling two books, which means buying all three to make sure you don't run out of paper again would just be sensible - and if you don't fill two whole books? Keeping the third as a spare for future uses of the Spell of Literary Vision, unrelated to your plunder from Silbern, is a perfectly valid option.
Spent $75
Gained Leatherbound Books
You'll keep both Stones. Whether or not you'll ever USE them is an entirely different question...
Gained Ioun Stones
The next Ioun Stone that catches your eye does so because of the iridescent play of colors along its otherwise grey surface. Spherical and smooth, its aura is of the School of Abjuration and Augmentation, reminding you, startlingly, of the Spell of Age Resistance.
"Good guess," Balthazar congratulates you when you voice that, "because it works the same way. Whoever is attuned to that particular Ioun Stone will not feel the physical detriments of advanced age, unless or until the Stone is magically suppressed or physically separated from them."
"What about when they sleep?" Briar asks.
"Ioun Stones can still be used then," Balthazar says. "They take up a more or less fixed position above the owner's head until they're back on their feet. That said, a lot of people who own Ioun Stones prefer to stow them somewhere secure when they go to bed. Some are old hands from the adventurous school of magic, who worry about the Stones being stolen by some passing thief or giving away their owner's current state of consciousness to a potential ambusher. Others have pets, familiars, or small children who'd take the opportunity to make off with the things."
At that, it is entirely too easy for you picture yourself asleep in bed, three Ioun Stones hovering in the air above you, Briar tip-toeing out of her dollhouse and Zelda tip-toeing into your room, both of them making a beeline for the shiny magic rocks.
Shaking that off, you wonder if you should take this Stone. If not for the head-orbiting issue, it would make a good gift for Lu-sensei.
"It actually IS possible to create 'containers' for Ioun Stones that let you employ their powers in a more subtle fashion," Ambrose notes. "I have a sneaking suspicion that the Quincy figured out their own version, because if you'll note" - he gestures at the small handful of floating gems - "most of these Stones are cracked, flawed, or burnt out."
You point at the Gray Sphere.
"Or have an effect that our unfriendly spirit archers weren't well set-up to notice," he adds.
...point. If they'd realized what this Ioun Stone did, you have to imagine that it would have been entrusted to an Elder like Catherine Adler.
Anyway...
Speaking of "burnt-out" Ioun Stones, there are a few dull gray Stones with weak auras hovering towards the back of the collection of crystals. Balthazar explains that, whether through damage, exhaustion of a limited energy supply, a long-term design flaw, or simple mischance, these Ioun Stones have lost their greater powers. They still retain the ability to float and orbit their owner, and they're not entirely useless, but...
You definitely think that one of the older members of your circle of acquaintances could get some mileage out of this Stone, provided you can put together one of those containers Ambrose mentioned to keep the obvious magical effects under wraps. Also, studying the floating crystal will open up the possibility of you making more of its specific kind down the road - possibly a LOT more of them, because aside from the folks you know who are currently legitimately elderly, the middle-aged adults in your life might appreciate not having to put up with the various physical drawbacks of advancing age.
Of course, most of the people you know are still subject to the eventuality of old age, so in the long run, you might well end up making Nacreous Gray Spheres for your entire circle of friends. Mass quality of life improvements would be much easier to pull off and get you into much less trouble with the "natural order/cosmic balance" crowd than handing out magical life-extension or immortality to everyone who wants them.
Which isn't to say that you AREN'T going to look into those things, eventually, but there is long term and then there is REALLY long term...
Gained Nacreous Gray Sphere Ioun Stone
If nothing else, these dimmed crystals will make for useful experimental fodder, and maybe amusing toys for Zelda. You'll just have to remember to make sure that she doesn't leave the house with them, if you go with that.
Gained Dull Grey Ioun Stones (x3)
Shadow Alex returns shortly after you've staked your claim on the magical floating gems.
"Done already?" you ask.
"It turns out if you throw an amount of mana equivalent to a fifth-circle spell into a ritual derived from the Cantrip of Amanuensis, you can get a lot of copying done very quickly," he replies, handing over your Conjured Book and one of the Leatherbound Books. "For a moment there, the pages were turning so quickly that I was a little worried I might have damaged the Book."
Gained Leatherbound Book of Literary Visions
"Something to keep in mind if we attempt similar rituals in the future," you state, while leafing through the two tomes and comparing the words of the Visions. They seem to be one-for-one copies, albeit only of text, but then again, that might be because your Literary Visions only provided words to begin with. Whether your Shadow's "Ritual of Photocopying" could copy images - and whether it would be capable of doing so in color - is a question that will need further investigation, just like the other aspects of its function.
On that note, the bindings of the Leatherbound Book appear to be intact, but that could be a result of their quality manufacture. Would a cheaper book have been so fortunate?
You set aside that curiosity for later and flip to the end of the Leatherbound Book, seeing how many pages are left to be filled. There's enough for the contents of a couple of Visions, you'd say, and Shadow Alex says he has enough mana to cover two more castings of Literary Vision without risk to himself - though a third might undo him, and a fourth attempt definitely would, probably failing in the bargain.
So, you let him get on with that.
First up is the Flawed Clear Spindle Ioun Stone. You and your Shadow are both a little uncertain if having the crystal floating above the three Goddess figurines counts as it being "in" the circle for this little rite, but Ambrose and Balthazar state that it'll be fine as long as the spell's caster focuses on the target.
Your Dark Self does that, and some of the remaining pages of the Leatherbound Book are filled.
The Ioun Stone that eliminates the need for food was created by a wizard who found the need for food, drink, and sleep to be bothersome distractions from his studies, and somewhat offensive besides. After all, went his reasoning, why SHOULD a master of sixth-tier spellcasting have to continue to suffer from such mortal frailties? How did spending a third of every day unconscious help one to advance his own magic or make a proper contribution to the greater state of the Art? Where was the dignity in shoveling things into one end of the body and shitting them out the other like an animal? Surely a wizard was better than that?
"Sounds like the sort of fellow who ends up turning himself into a lich," Ambrose observes sourly.
The idea of undeath did not appeal to this arcanist-
"I stand corrected."
-for as disgusting as the fleshy failings of the body could be, shambling around as a withered corpse was no better, and mucking around with your soul to get to such a state was simply stupid. And so it was that, instead of trying to leave his mortality behind, the wizard turned to magic to address his bodily limitations.
He flubbed the attempt, spent a couple of weeks trying to settle for only having to drink a lot more water, and finally threw the Flawed Clear Spindle away after creating a proper replacement. The Literary Vision grows vague about the Stone's exact fate after that, mentioning only that it passed between numerous owners: some desired to own the "obviously powerful magical artifact" and then flew into rage or despair when they discovered that its "awesome powers" forced them to drink and use the bathroom twice as often as normal; others found this a fair price to pay for not having to eat anymore; and plenty were just happy to sell or trade the thing to the next sucker prospective owner.
Eventually, the inferior gem ended up in the hands of a wandering sorcerer whose particular demonic bloodline had freed him of the NEED to drink, handily bypassing the Ioun Stone's drawback. He happily kept and used the item for years, before making himself an enemy of the Wandenreich by killing one of their agents. Retribution was swift.
For their part, the Quincy tested the utility of the Stone for a time, passing it between three or four prospective owners, before it was finally deemed not worth the bother and put on display.
Shadow Alex takes the Clear Spindle out of the ring of statues in order to make room for the Blue Sphere, and then lets the first Stone go-
!
-at which point you have to lean back slightly as the mostly-transparent crystal begins orbiting his head at a distance of about two feet.
You can FEEL the fairies and Urahara joining you in tracking the thing's movement.
"That IS distracting, isn't it?" the Shinigami notes to no one in particular.
"Now try to imagine someone with a dozen of the things orbiting his head, each one a different shape and color from the rest," Ambrose wryly suggests.
Urahara does that, and nods. "I can see why people would be worried about pets and children going after these things."
...
"You're thinking of getting one just to mess with Yoruichi, aren't you?" you ask.
"The thought had crossed my mind," he admits. "Intelligent as my fine furry friend is, cat instincts are still cat instincts."
The next Literary Vision speaks of a priest of-
Shadow Alex frowns at the Leatherbound Book and holds it up for the nearest adult, who happens to be Balthazar. Pointing at a particular word, he asks, "How do you pronounce that?"
The sorcerer reads. "Quetzalcoatl."
"Gesundheit."
-the Aztec God of Life, Light, and Wisdom, Lord of the Day and the Winds, back in the late Fifteenth Century. Fittingly enough, the priest sought to create a "perfect" Incandescent Blue Sphere Ioun Stone, which would have enhanced his wisdom and let him more fully understand and embody that aspect of his patron, thus enabling him to better serve the Feathered Serpent's will in the world and safely channel more of the deity's power. Unfortunately, the gem which the priest acquired for his work was too fragile to contain the power required for the job he'd had in mind, and it fractured in the process of enhancement, resulting in this limited Stone.
Where that wizard threw away a "failed" Ioun Stone as soon as he had a working replacement, this priest kept his flawed work as a reminder of his limitations and fallibilities as a mortal - and, once HE had the superior form of the Ioun Stone that he'd desired, as proof that improvement was always possible.
The priest passed away some decades later, missing by a few years the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors under Hernan Cortez and their subsequent conquest of the Aztec Empire. His Ioun Stones, bequeathed to his successor in the priesthood, were plundered at some point during these years, and the broken blue gem now before you passed through a number of hands thereafter. Most of these eventually lost the Stone or discarded it as near worthless, but it was eventually claimed by a thief, thug, and general ne'er-do-well named Gorg the Runt.
"'Who was seven and a half feet tall'," your Shadow reads off, with a note of mild puzzlement.
"How is THAT a runt?" the Briars protest.
"One of his parents was an ogre," comes the reply.
"...okay, yeah, that works."
"Does it say was his other parent was?" Ambrose wonders.
"A half-demon human."
"How big is an ogre, again?" Urahara asks.
"About ten feet tall and six or seven hundred pounds on average," you reply.
"Assuming no mutations that affect their size or posture," Balthazar adds. "Which is... not infrequent."
Gorg kept the Ioun Stone and valued it quite highly because he owned one of those container devices, which he wore as an earring and whose inherent magic had a curious reaction with the "worthless" Stone. While this suppressed the normal function of the earring, it enhanced Grog's speed and reflexes in combat, making him slightly but noticeably harder to hit when he focused just right. Such a thing was understandably useful to one who made his way in the world via violent crime, though it did not save Gorg when he tried to smash his way into a Quincy home as part of an attempted intimidation tactic by the local gang boss.
Suffice it to say, that attempt backfired in just about the worst way. Gorg lost the ear on which he wore the Ioun Stone to a Holy Arrow, which ruined the earring itself beyond repair but left the gem intact, and when one of the Quincy children found it in the wreckage and pried the pretty Stone free of the bent and melted metal, it started floating around her head as it normally would.
There was some mild alarm and a quick family trip to the local Wandenreich branch, at which point someone recognized the Ioun Stone for what it was, if not for its actual power. That's where the entry ends, but you can guess that they must have separated the Stone from the unnamed child, tested it, shrugged at the limited utility of the thing, and then tossed it into storage.
You reach out, pluck one of the burnt-out Stones from its place above the table, and hand it off to Urahara.
"Clasp it firmly with one hand for about three seconds to link it to yourself," you advise him. "Then just open your hand, and it'll start orbiting on its own."
Urahara follows your instructions, and the Ioun Stone works as promised.
Gave away Dull Gray Ioun Stone
"Huh," the Shinigami notes, as the rock swoops out of his field of vision and swings around behind his head. "I can just feel that. Not quite a spiritual connection, but not entirely dissimilar, either." He watches the Stone pass in front of his face before glancing at you again. "And how do I stop it?"
"Just reach out and catch it. It'll avoid other people's attempts to seize it, as well as any other obstacles that might get in its way, but you can pretty much do as you will with it."
Urahara experiments for a bit before finally pocketing the Stone. "How much do I owe you for that?"
"I will take payment in footage of Yoruichi's reaction."
"I believe I can accomodate you."
An Ioun Stone capable of stalling the effects of advancing age is another of those magic items that sounds like it might have been made by the kind of wizard who eventually decides to cast off his mortality and become a lich, or else the sort that is seriously pursuing immortality.
Instead, the next Literary Vision reveals that this Nacreous Gray Sphere was created by a ghostbuster.
Urahara leans forward slightly.
While not a specialist in necromancy by talent or training, this wizard - Jeroen Hendriks by name - had a nasty encounter with a ghost as an apprentice that left him metaphorically and literally scarred - permanent unnatural streaks of white in your hair don't count as scars, apparently, but pallid claw marks on your face do - and nursing a serious grudge against the undead. This led to a certain focus in his studies and subsequent efforts in the world, but not so much of one that he chose to ignore the advantages the other schools of magic could bring to bear against the restless dead.
Just because the undead are immune to most Spells of Enchantment doesn't mean such magic is worthless in a fight with them; it'll still work on living combatants just fine, whether to bolster their courage in the face of horror or interfere with some rotting abomination's mind control.
Having experienced firsthand just how debilitating the touch of a ghost could be, Hendriks was always on the lookout for defenses against attacks of that nature. Force spells such as Mage Armor and Shield to deflect the talons of incorporeal enemies were easily come by, and their offensive counterparts such as Magic Missile just as readily available, while various effects for increasing one's agility and vitality were likewise common. Yet even as Hendriks' career grew longer and his power and exploits more noteworthy, a means of fully preventing the havoc ghosts could wreak on living flesh - much less of healing the aftereffects of such attacks - proved elusive.
Still, with enough time and study and fortuitous encounters, the spirit-hunting spellcaster came to hear of a particular class of Ioun Stone that could completely shut down supernatural attacks that forcibly aged the victims - and which also held off the effects of natural old age, but Jeroen honestly considered that a secondary benefit. He spent some months confirming the rumors and legends and another year or so trying to find such a Stone, before eventually deciding that it would be less trouble to just make the thing.
Whether because of skill, luck, or pure obsessive focus, Hendriks succeeded on his first attempt at creating the Gray Sphere where the other two Stone-crafters you've been told about today both flubbed their initial efforts. His creation would not leave his side for the remainder of his mortal life, a span of almost fifty years in which he hunted ghosts all over the planet and in realms beyond it, learning more and more about how to combat the restless dead and acquiring more potent tools for doing so.
Such a focus eventually brought the wizard to the attention of the Wandenreich, for whom he became a contact, consultant on arcane matters, and occasional ally.
Although it undoubtedly made the later stages of his life easier on him, Gray Sphere was not nearly powerful enough to extend its master's life beyond its natural span, and Jeroen Hendriks finally passed away in his sleep at the age of a hundred and three - only to rise as a ghost himself the evening after his funeral, his lifelong obsession with and exposure to "the ectoplasmic evil" having left him a prime candidate for just such an outcome.
It is possible that this transition was intentional, for Hendriks certainly knew enough about ghosts that he should have been aware of the possibility that his unsettled grudge would turn out to be a LITERALLY undying one. Then again, it is also possible that the old man's hatred blinded him to the danger; certainly, Jeroen's spectral self refused to acknowledge that he WAS a ghost, either ignoring such claims or explaining them away with twisty arcane logic.
The wizard's Quincy compatriots were divided on how to handle this outcome. They didn't exactly dislike the fact that a friend's soul was still hanging around - and in an almost perfectly lucid state, at that, his refusal to admit to his undeath aside - and there were pragmatists among their order eager to study how a magically powerful ghost differed from the lingering souls of ordinary mortals and spiritually powerful entities like the Wandenreich members themselves. At the same time, being a ghost put Hendriks in danger, not just from Hollows and other spiritual predators, but from the degradation that afflicted every mortal soul that lingered too long in the mortal plane. If he did not move on, he would eventually, inevitably, turn into something that was a threat to the living, and then they would have to destroy him.
The Quincy, as a people, have never lacked the resolve to make that choice, but for once, they tried a gentler approach. Their own spiritual powers were not suited to exorcisms of the more ritualistic and less violent variety, but they knew where to look for individuals that could perform such feats, and they were entirely capable of using their powers to draw off the ambient spiritual energies that an angered ghost - even a wizard's ghost - would draw on and wield.
And so, on the first anniversary of his death, Jeroen Hendriks was sent into the afterlife by priestly intercession and a vigil of Wandenreich soldiers. Most of the gear that he had been carrying faded as well, being just ethereal echoes of the items that had been buried in the wizard's tomb with him, but the "specter" of his Ioun Stone somehow took on solidity and reality, the true orb phasing out of the burial site to float before the grave.
Everyone pauses and looks at the Nacreous sphere.
It doesn't do anything in response, but for your part, you're still...
"Okay," you say aloud. "Just what happened there?"
"Possibly nothing significant," Ambrose replies in a mildly thoughtful tone. "Ioun Stones are designed to interface with their owners' magical fields a bit more directly than most magic items. Once you've bonded to one, it acts almost like an extension of your aura, which is what allows you to benefit from the Stone's power while the Stone itself benefits from whatever magical protections you may have in effect - this despite the fact that you may be 'wearing' the thing up to three feet outside your magic armor or typical personal force-field or what have you."
You nod, following so far.
"Such a link also exposes the crystal to the complex energy patterns of the owner's magic, body, mind, and soul," the wizard continues, "as well as those of their equipment and active mystical augmentations. While this is almost never damaging, it can cause a residual charge to build up in the gem's personal magical field; should that charge reach a certain point, odd secondary effects may start manifesting."
"To put it another way," Balthazar sums up, "Ioun Stones exhibiting odd behavioral quirks and weird one-off magical manifestations isn't anything new."
Just something that occasionally happens with them, then?
"Pretty much."
But Ambrose said it was only "possibly" not significant?
"Well, I mean, the man DID use the thing for half a century straight, died and rose from his grave STILL linked to it, and THEN spent a year floating around undead with that connection intact, before finally being exorcised," the wizard says. "There's definitely a CHANCE that all of that might have affected the thing somehow, it just isn't GUARANTEED - and if there WAS such a change, it must have been a pretty minor one for Balthazar and I to have both missed it."
Something for you to look into on your own time, you suppose.
You collect your Ioun Stones take a minute to thank and dismiss your magically exhausted Dark Self, and then skip over to Ambrose's spellcasting chamber to summon his replacement-
"I LIVE AGAIN!"
-and subsequently get on with examining the remainder of the collection in the Room of Random Magical Stuff.
After the floating Ioun Stones, probably the most eye-catching of the gems and rocks on the table is an irregular cluster of uncut green crystals protruding out of a lump of rock. The whole thing is about the size of your dad's fist, and it radiates a powerful aura of Abjuration Magic and Chaos - and weirdly pure Chaos at that. It's not exactly devoid of the malignant energies you've grown used to sensing on the Hellmouth, but it's not overwhelmed by them, either; instead, the malice seems to come and go at random, sometimes making way for a playful benevolence, sometimes remaining to clash with it, and sometimes leaving the raw gemstone's aura to be suffused with sense of pure uncertainty.
Balthazar identifies it as a Chaos Emerald, a naturally occurring and then artificially enhanced focus for the conceptual force of chance, change, and unpredictability. He says it can be used to channel the essence of Chaos in a number of ways, but that it's dangerous to hold for anyone who isn't of a certain random nature themselves. A lot of demons and youkai would be fine, and so would most Fae, but you yourself would be in some danger handling the thing.
Not that it'll turn you into pudding or crush you with solidified improbability or anything like that. It's just that the Emerald is basically a "holy" artifact that won't take kindly to being touched by a "nonbeliever," which you qualify as despite your Dinnite leanings.
Next is what appears to be a normal river rock, except for the veins of pure white marble running through it.
"This is an Elemental Storing Stone," Balthazar says. "If you're carrying it on your person when you're hit by a blast of elemental energy, the Stone will absorb a portion of that energy as a charge, which you can use to unleash a ray of the same type of energy. Unfortunately, there are a lot of limitations on the power, not the least of which is that it offers you no protection from whatever hit you."
Hm. Sounds kind of useless, unless the energy blast is pretty strong?
"No," he answers.
Well, then.
After that is a black stone that has been cut into the shape of a scarab beetle and polished to a dark shine.
"A Stone of Tomb Warding," Ambrose says. "Place it above a door and mindless undead will not be able to pass through it. Sadly, it's not completely reliable against the more intelligent varieties, although if it DOES manage to keep them out, they're unable to try entering again until after the next dawn."
Oooh.
You've seen naturally occurring objects with magical potential many times before this, but none that were so potent as finished and functional magic items - not unless you count entire mystical LOCATIONS, which you personally don't. Issues of scale aside, too many lives and spirits are bound up in the places you've been to for you to consider them as mere "things."
Likewise, while you've encountered a number of potent magical items before today, none had a design that came close to being as... minimalist... as the lump of uncut, unpolished minerals before you.
The contrasts make you curious, and so, the newest Shadow Alex goes ahead and casts the Spell of Literary Vision.
The Chaos Emerald was unearthed in Columbia in the 1600s, after the Spanish had taken control of the surrounding area (and much of the rest of South America). It came out of a mine that had been opened by the native peoples centuries earlier, only to be abandoned after just a few years and subsequently avoided.
That part of the tale has it that the area surrounding the mine had always been considered unlucky, with rough terrain and erratic weather that shifted between hot and humid and short-lived but intense storms. These factors limited what could grow in the area, which in turn made the local animals hungrier, more nervous, and more aggressive than their counterparts elsewhere. The local wood was poor building material and prone to mold and rot, the hunting was bad, and trying to farm just wasn't worth it, and so for many generations, the people had no reason to reside there - but as the population grew, expansion into such unpleasant areas became unavoidable.
Then somebody found emeralds, and a local chieftain opened up the mine to try and get SOMETHING worthwhile out of this otherwise worthless territory. The lack of local sources for manpower, food, timber, and beasts of burden meant that all of these had to be brought in from elsewhere, which was costly enough without shipments being delayed or lost due to the inclement weather - which they occasionally were - or ruined by hungry animals, mold, and insects - which, again, was not unheard of. A few incidents of flooding, a fire, a couple of cave-ins, recurring animal attacks, and even an outbreak of disease only made things worse, and to top it off, the emeralds being found were largely of inferior quality and limited quantity.
Individually, none of these events would likely have registered to your Shadow's spell, but collectively, their significance to the Emerald's origins is such that you can see why they're mentioned.
In any event, the mine was ultimately abandoned and became a cautionary tale of greed overcoming good sense, a story which grew in the telling, as such things do, until a loyal priestly advisor who had merely been among those to first suggest abandoning the unprofitable venture somehow became a wicked sorcerer who claimed the mine for himself and cursed it so that no other could have its riches. When the Spanish took over the area and learned of the emeralds, they ignored the legend and reopened the mine. It went almost as badly for them as it had for the natives, but with the resources of an empire behind them and overseas markets to tap into, the Spaniards were better able to absorb the costs.
Then an ACTUAL sorcerer turned up, drawn to the area by the story of a fellow practitioner's curse. While that turned out to be so much bunk, the combination of the elemental influence of the region's unpredictable weather, the string of misfortunes suffered by the mine's workers, and the long-held beliefs of the locals HAD left their mark on the mine and the stones pulled from it. As "compensation" for his troubles, the sorcerer stole the mineral cluster before you, one of the more mystically charged and materially valuable samples to have come out of the site.
He also made a group of guards that tried to stop him think that they were animals for a while. Some variant on the Spell of Confusion, apparently, which probably further contributed to the Emerald's nature.
The unrefined gem cluster remained in the sorcerer's possession, unused, for some time after its theft, as its new owner first made his way across the ocean to Europe-
"Five WEEKS?" your Shadow exclaims.
"Not everyone can go on trans-continental or trans-oceanic trips at the drop of a hat, you know," Ambrose chides.
"That must be terrible for them," your Dark Self replies.
-and then headed far inland, to a sanctum in the Pyrenees, a mountain range running along and largely defining the border between Spain and France. Here, the sorcerer offered the raw mass of crystals to a devotee of Chaos to whom he had owed a considerable favor, hoping that the stone's affinity for disorder would appeal to a worshipper of change and uncertainty. It did, although the sorcerer was obliged to contribute to the crafting of the Chaos Emerald to fully clear his debt, a process that took about half a year as the pair hunted down the other materials and performed the various rituals necessary to fully empower the object.
The priest's choice to turn the mass of chaotically aligned crystals into a proper Chaos Emerald was driven by a few factors.
Firstly, although not truly sacred to the followers of disorder, a Chaos Emerald is still a conduit and reservoir for the power they honor, as well as a potent tool against the forces of Order; thus, the creation or recovery of one is a worthy goal and respected achievement for any faithful degenerate son.
Secondly, although organized Chaos worship is something of a contradiction, there are certain recurring schools of thought among its adherents. This priest happened to belong to an extremist faction that opposed the separation of the mundane and magical worlds, on the grounds that magic - with its power to transform objects and creatures in a countless variety of ways, upend the status quo, and grant an individual the freedom to do whatever they chose - was one of the greatest tools of Chaos in the world, and that being denied knowledge of its existence had driven humanity into the arms of Order and stagnation. An extra weapon to wield against the agents of the Powers That Be who invariably showed up to ruin his and his allies' attempts to remind the world that magic existed could only be a good thing.
Thirdly, part of worshipping Chaos is taking chances when they present themselves to you, especially the ones that turn up at random - and when a sorcerer already in your debt turns up offering you a chaos-infused mass of emerald, well, that goes a bit beyond mere chance, and is more in the realm of outright signs from above, below, and/or wherever else one's particular Chaotic patron may happen to reside, cosmically speaking.
Once armed with his shiny new Chaos Emerald, the cleric did not delay in making use of it. Descending from his hideout in the Pyrenees, he travelled to a small town on the French side of the border and made ready to perform a ritual that would invoke the power of Chaos and spread magical phenomenon throughout the town. Good, bad, or simply strange, it mattered not what form the effects took, so long as people saw and believed and were changed by their experience.
In the process of setting up, it occurred to the priest that he could include the Chaos Emerald as an additional source of power for his spell. True, it wasn't what the stone was intended to do, but Chaos being Chaos, it wasn't impossible or even hugely difficult to convert a pure example of its power to other forms. Uncertain as to what to do, he flipped a coin: heads, he would add the Emerald; tails, he would leave it out; and edge-
"What?" you and Urahara exclaim together.
"It happens around serious Chaos worshippers, sometimes," Balthazar admits.
"But only SOME times," Ambrose adds.
-he wouldn't add the Emerald to the ritual array directly, but would keep it on his person while performing the ceremony, thus giving the gem a chance to contribute something.
The coin came up heads, the Chaos Emerald was plugged into the altar of the priest's hidden shrine to Chaos, and the added power enabled the caster to complete his spell just as the expected group of meddling mystical Law-enforcers - including an actual Enforcer of the Clock Tower - knocked down his door.
When the flaring power faded, the priest found himself unaffected by the ritual, whereas the band of intruders had been turned into animals. Bipedal, intelligent animals, perhaps, still possessed of speech, reason, and whatever intelligence and learning they'd had beforehand - but animals even so. A quick check confirmed that the same fate had befallen most of the rest of the town, with those outside the area of effect, a couple of heavily protected individuals within it, and some apparently just plain lucky souls having escaped.
This was not as planned, but as an experienced servant of Chaos, the priest just laughed and rolled with it.
Proper spells and rituals of the School of Transformation grant their targets instant familiarity with whatever new form(s) they happen to acquire, enabling them to use inherent abilities like locomotion and heightened or altered senses without issue. While this doesn't eliminate the shock and discomfort of suddenly finding oneself wearing a different body, it's vastly preferable to compounding those issues by leaving the subject thrashing around on the floor, unable to properly control their limbs or deal with a sudden deluge of alien information.
Chaos Magic is not Transformation Magic. It can have transformative EFFECTS, but it lacks the structure, control, and safety of the school.
Consequently, when the flare of the ritual ended, most of those affected by it were effectively paralyzed, their confusion over what had just happened and their strange new appearances magnified by the difficulty of moving their bodies or dealing with the sensations bombarding them. The would-be heroes of the piece were no exception to this, and the Chaos priest was able to walk out of his sanctum, Emerald in hand, while they were literally tripping over themselves and each other trying to stop him.
The clumsy phase passed eventually, as did the one where everybody blamed everybody else for getting in their way and/or failing to stop the ritual - though that was perhaps helped along by the appearance of a band of Inevitables seeking the source of the outburst of raw Chaos.
"Uh-oh," Urahara mutters.
You turn to the shopkeeper with some surprise. "'Uh-oh'?"
"Inevitables are outsiders that serve as defenders and enforcers of conceptual Law," Urahara replies. "You can think of them as the equivalent of angels, demons, or Shinigami, just associated with Order instead of Good, Chaos, or the Balance of Life and Death. They're living machines, built and programmed to pursue specific goals, and while they're as sapient as the next entity, they can be... rigid... in their thinking."
"Had the pleasure of meeting one, have you?" Ambrose says lightly.
"One of them paid a visit to the Shop a few months after Tessai and I had first opened for business, asking questions about our business on Earth," Urahara admits. "Convincing it that we were legally exiled and not just escaped criminals took some doing." He frowns and unfolds his fan, giving it a few swipes. "Now that I think about it, I should probably talk to Isshin and make sure he knows what to say and what NOT to say if one of them visits him, now that his powers are starting to recover."
Back to the tale.
A major working of Chaos Magic was anathema to the mechanical guardians of Order, and it also violated the agreements and policy of the Powers That Be, further provoking the Inevitables and their makers. Since the Powers' mortal proxies had failed to prevent the incident, the Inevitables descended to capture the chief offender and ensure that he could not cause any further disturbances.
When it was understood that the Inevitables would not permit the use of the Chaos Emerald to undo the mass polymorph of the townsfolk, the transformed human champions found themselves in direct conflict with the robotic outsiders to take the Chaos priest and his creation into custody. The priest naturally had no intention of "going quietly" and freely used the Chaos Emerald to defend himself, pulverizing two of the Inevitables. This made things even harder for the animal-people, as if the Chaos Emerald's power was drained too far, they would not be able to use it in a counter-ritual, and the longer they and the townsfolk remained in their new forms, the more likely it was that the Clock Tower or some other agency would take more severe "corrective measures" to preserve the secrecy of magic and the supernatural - and to acquire a few specimens of entirely new species for research purposes.
It was a close thing, but the transformed heroes managed to seize the Chaos Emerald and return it to the altar, where some of their number had re-written the priest's ritual circle to undo his spell. The remaining Inevitables were not pleased by a second massive burst of Chaos Magic, but as it had reversed the effects of the first and drained the Chaos Emerald's remaining power, it was technically a victory for the forces of Order. As the outsiders' presence had been justified by the "failure" of the mortal champions, this success forced them to depart, even though they had neither the Chaos priest nor his Emerald in their possession and had taken casualties besides.
Speaking of the priest, he HAD been believed killed in the fight for the Chaos Emerald, his skull introduced to the magically enhanced and clawed fist of the transformed Enforcer. This was a deception, enabled by his magic, and when his opponents dropped their guard in the wake of the incident, he was able to recover his creation and escape. It would be months before he could attempt his ritual again, however, for the Chaos Emerald - which normally recharges within days of its power being exhausted - had not only been drained by the two great spells, but physically damaged besides. The priest would thus spend much of the next year trying to affect repairs to his precious creation, while also evading pursuit and capture by his once-again-human adversaries.
Although the priest used every means at his disposal to break his trail, his pursuers kept after him with dogged determination, and if they never quite managed to catch or kill him, they did succeed in preventing him from repairing his Chaos Emerald, and even in forcing him to waste some of the item's energy. Normally, the latter would not be too great a concern, for despite having a limited number of charges, Chaos Emeralds are able to replenish their power over time without assistance from their owners - albeit at a somewhat unpredictable rate. The stress damage inflicted by the two rituals had greatly reduced the speed with which this gem was able to recover spent energy, however, needing weeks to accomplish what had previously been doable in days, and every time its owner was forced to tap into its reserves, that was weeks of conservative effort wasted and weeks of increased vulnerability added.
Before long, the man concluded that he would not be able to repair his creation by himself, and so, after fashioning a convincing but powerless decoy, he sent the true Chaos Emerald away to others that could restore it, while continuing to lead his opponents around by the nose.
The hunters figured out the ruse a month after that, when one of their number managed to seize the Fake Emerald and realized what it was and what it wasn't, but by then the true Chaos Emerald had been restored and was being prepared for use in another ritual. After the intervention by the Inevitables, the priest had urged his fellows to seek out the assistance of any faithful demons and monsters they could find, just in case the clockwork agents of Order made a second showing; with the prospect of an entire town being plunged into Chaos for them to play with, to say nothing of the rare chance to bring Inevitables to open battle in the mortal plane, many such creatures were willing and even eager to set aside their usual divisions and work together to ensure the ritual's success.
For the second time that year, Chaos engulfed a town, this time in northern Greece. Instead of turning people into bipedal animals, this rite caused an earthquake to strike the down - a low-level but ongoing series of tremors that did not stop until the building where the cultists had established their ritual circle was torn free of the Earth, leaving a bunch of humans, demons, monsters, and freshly-arrived Inevitables - none of whom seemed to have been expecting such an outcome, given the distinct lack of flight-capable individuals involved - to look on in bemusement as the small flying island vanished into the night sky.
It was later determined that - whether by the will of its casters or the random influence of Chaos - the ritual had been attempting to drag the ENTIRE town into the air, but even with the boost from the Chaos Emerald, hadn't had nearly enough power to lift such a large mass or keep it intact in the process. Yet the ritual wasn't shut down and so kept on TRYING to move everything, until the forces involved tore that one small plot of land loose and cast it aloft.
"Does it say what happened in the rest of the town?" Urahara asks curiously.
"It does not," your Dark Self admits.
As it happens, the island did not persist for very long. Being in Greek airspace, it was technically intruding upon the domain of Lord Zeus, who has never taken kindly to such things. Frustrated by centuries of his fellow Powers refusing to allow him to smite annoying mortals or disgusting demons, the King of Olympus seized upon the pretext of removing a potential threat to the secrecy pacts as an excuse for his direct and personal intervention and blew the island apart with a single almighty thunderbolt.
For some reason, this part of the reading starts Ambrose laughing again.
By chance - ahaha - the Chaos Emerald survived the godly lightning strike, falling into the Ionian Sea. It might have been lost forever then, if not for the traces of Zeus's divine power clinging to it and drawing the attention of Poseidon, who sent an agent to investigate his brother's apparent trespass upon his oceanic kingdom. When the sea-god's follower reported that he'd found only a strange gemstone that had been the recipient of Zeus's WRATH rather than his blessing, Poseidon lost interest in the matter and let his acolyte do as he would with the Chaos Emerald. The priest kept it, and-
"Oh," Shadow Alex exclaims.
"Yes?"
"You remember those two sea-cults that we heard about when we took a Vision off of the Trident?"
You do, and if he's mentioning them... "One of them killed Poseidon's priest and took the Chaos Emerald for themselves?"
"And then the Wandenreich picked it up as part of their loot when they cleared up what was left of the war between those two groups," Shadow Alex concludes.
Well. That's a bit of an underwhelming resolution.
Gained Chaos Emerald
Any thoughts on this tale?
"Okay, Ambrose," you sigh. "What set you off this time?"
"It's... it's just Zeus... being Zeus!" the old man gets out between giggles. "If he isn't thinking... with his little head... then he's thinking... with his throwing arm!"
Frowning, you turn to Balthazar in the hope of a more coherent response.
"Zeus has never been famous for his self-restraint," Blake answers wryly. "Before the injunction against divine intervention came down, he did what he wanted, and the rest of the world dealt with the fallout as best they could. If Zeus liked the look of a woman, he chased her - even when he was already married; if a mortal offended him, he punished them; and if someone challenged or threatened the King of Olympus directly..."
"Zap?" you venture, pointing with one finger.
"More like ZAP," your fellow sorcerer replies, raising his right arm with the fingers curled as if holding something the size of a javelin or spear, before making a throwing gesture. As he lowers his arm, Balthazar frowns thoughtfully. "A lot of people have wondered over the last millennium just what the other Powers did or HAVE been doing, to keep Zeus on his best behavior for all this time. One of the more popular theories is that somebody managed to get him to swear an oath on the River Styx, but I have my doubts about that."
"The Styx is kind of like the Sanzu River, isn't it?" Urahara interjects. "A boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead?" When you and Balthazar nod, he continues, "Why would that help to enforce an oath?"
"Styx is also a goddess, the nymph who embodied the river," Balthazar explains. "According to legend, she was the first to support Zeus when he declared war upon the Titans, and after the war was won and Zeus was crowned King of the Gods, he repaid Styx's loyalty by decreeing that the gods would swear their strongest oaths in her name. Such vows were considered to be binding and unbreakable, even for the Olympians; Zeus himself ran afoul of at least one and couldn't get out of it - which is why I doubt that it's the method the other Powers employed to enforce his good behavior. He wouldn't have let himself be caught in such an oath again if he could help it."
Hm.
Gained Greek Theology
Getting back to your sorting of items, the Elemental Storing Stone seems kind of pointless to you. If it actually offered you a degree of protection, charging itself up by draining away the power of an attack before it could harm you, then it would be another story, even with the limits on how often it could be used and how strong its subsequent attack was - because you could always study the Stone's design and come up with your own superior versions. As it is, though, you just can't see this item being useful.
As a result, you leave it.
THIS item, on the other hand, has potential. True, it's not ideal for use in Sunnydale; say what you will about corpse-demons - and you can say quite a bit - they ARE intelligent, meaning that sooner or later one of them WOULD be able to overcome the protective power of this scarab-shaped stone.
But that goes the other way, too; sooner or later, the Stone WILL succeed in repelling a vampire that tries to pass through the doorway it's protecting. That's distinctly better than the things being able to pass through freely, and there's still the guaranteed barrier against mindless undead.
Not only that, but this is DEFINITELY an item that you could improve upon. Just making it more powerful and more likely to turn away a vampire would be the most straightforward approach, and judging by the limited power of the item's aura, it should be pretty easy, besides. Beyond that, there's the question of how the Stone's active undead-repelling ward would interact with the passive ability of a house's threshold to repel corpse-demons; or what might happen if you linked multiple stone scarabs together, whether over a single portal or in a ward around the house; or maybe...
The point is, you can think of a number of ways to make good use of this item. As such, you do not hesitate to claim it.
Gained Stone of Tomb Warding
None of the remaining magical rocks in the collection are yours to claim at this time, so you move on to the next set of plunder that catches your eye - which happens to be the Quincy-made "magical" items you picked up, such as the Ever-Burning Brazier of Quincy-made spirit-metal standing next to the table of shiny minerals.
Its current state gives the lie to its name, for the pale flame you recall has been extinguished.
"Don't worry, it still works," Ambrose replies, waving off the concerned look you send his way. "You just have to channel a bit of spiritual energy into it and give it a twist in the direction you feel."
You frown, place a hand on the Brazier - specifically on the pole rather than the "bowl" which contains the cold, non-consumptive flame - and do as instructed. No sooner do you push a thread of spiritual power into the device than you feel... well, as Ambrose implied, it's like there's a switch inside the thing that can be turned just so-
*Poof*
-and lo, there was light. The color is different from what you remember, a faintly red-tinted white instead of that cold blue-white the Quincy tend to throw around; at the same time, the feeling of that switch has shifted, as though it could now be turned in the OTHER direction-
*Poof*
-and lo, there was no more light.
*Poof*
And then there was again.
"Interesting," Urahara muses. "That flame feels a bit like your spiritual energy."
It does, doesn't it? Specifically, it feels like the residual traces you leave on objects and locations you exert your soul around.
"The Brazier seems to do that for everybody, or at least everybody able to control their spiritual energy well enough to activate it," the wizard states. "It doesn't appear to meaningfully change the function of the device, which is the spiritual equivalent of the Spell to Create a Continual Flame, but that might be because none of us are Quincy. Still, from the analyses Balthazar and I ran, it doesn't seem likely that there are any hidden functions to the thing."
"There may be a hidden USE for it, however," Balthazar adds. "Aside from being a reliable light-source, I could see it being a prop for some kind of control exercise, as bait or a distraction for Hollows and other spiritual predators, or for creating a more comfortable environment for ghosts and other spirits - or maybe a more hostile one, if it was charged with Quincy energies."
You nod.
Standing next to the Brazier is the Quincy Mirror, which you note is covered by a tarp.
"Functionally, it's a Mirror of Communication," Ambrose informs you. "Similar to a Mirror of Scrying, except that it creates a two-way real-time image between you and whoever you're using it to speak with. It can do that with anyone you're able to identify precisely enough - by name, by description, by personalized magical signature - but it works better with other Mirrors, and best with those that have been attuned to it. That's what these markings here on the frame are."
"So, it's basically an oversized cellphone with video capability, and these are the numbers in its calling list?" you sum up.
"Damned things even ring or hum to get your attention when you've got a call incoming," the wizard confirms.
"Has anybody tried to call this one?" you ask.
"Not that anyone has been in the room to hear or that my security wards have noticed, but we've kept it covered anyway."
Entirely reasonable.
Hanging on the wall behind the Mirror is a banner bearing the Wandenreich emblem in the standard Quincy colors, but with an aura of mingled Abjuration and Enchantment Magic.
"This is a fairly standard enchanted combat banner," Ambrose says with the surety of an expert on the subject. "Where a mundane banner in the hands of the right bearer can fire up a fighting force's morale, this one's been empowered so that any idiot able to hold it upright and walk forward at the same time could do the same. It'll function better in the hands of a bearer who knows how to work a crowd, of course, and it has some protective enhancements to keep the wielder safe."
Not only is the Brazier an example of Quincy spiritual technology, it's also one that is basically identical in purpose and end result to a spell that you have studied - and not a particularly powerful spell, at that. This makes it excellent reference material for comparing and contrasting magical items and spiritual items, and was a big part of the reason why you grabbed it in the first place.
Why would you give it up now?
(Re-)Gained Ever-Burning Quincy Brazier
While the Mirror's function isn't so directly analogous to spells in your repertoire as the Brazier is to the Spell of Continual Flame, it does have similarities to a few, such as the Spells of Scrying and Sending, which should make it another helpful point in your investigation of Quincy technology.
Quite aside from that, if any of those "numbers" etched into its frame correspond to other Mirrors that still exist, you could potentially use this Mirror to determine the locations of its counterparts, and by extension, the locations of other Wandenreich outposts on Earth. A Spell to Locate Objects, modified for maximum range and incorporating this Mirror and its sympathetic links, seems likely to do the job, though you'll have to be careful not to disturb the connections in the process of tracing them; you aren't sure how well the Wandenreich can monitor their "network," especially now that Silbern and its resources are gone, but if they realize that someone is investigating their Mirrors without authorization, they could break the links, or even backtrack them.
A Mind Blank spell protecting YOU won't conceal a freestanding Mirror that you're operating, much less the area around said Mirror.
(Re-)Gained Quincy Mirror of Communication
It takes a bit more work than you've gotten used to doing to set up for the next Spell of Literary Vision, as the Quincy Banner was a little too close to the wall for you to count it as "inside" the circle of your Goddess statues, and you didn't want anybody here holding it up: the only people in the room who aren't GUARANTEED to trigger Visions of their own and complicate getting a reading from the Banner are the Briars; and even the fairies might set something off due to their familiar bonds with you and your Shadow.
Ambrose resolves the issue by ringing up one of the staff and having the first puzzled and then mildly nervous young man hold the Banner up while standing outside your ring of figurines.
"This won't do anything to my arm, will it?" he asks uncertainly.
"The spell won't even notice you," Shadow Alex assures him. "Unless you happen to have the arm of a legendary figure?"
"...I mean, not right NOW, but a man's got plans for the future, you know?"
Your inner Dinnite and Farorean approve of that answer, while your inner Nayrian notes that since this spell is designed to look BACK in time rather than ahead, it's not a point of concern.
Shadow Alex makes with the spell, and history once again reveals its secrets on the pages of a Leatherbound Book - the first few pages of the second one in the set.
Updated Leatherbound Books
The Banner was created about three centuries ago, when standards of this sort were still carried into battle. Its maker was a wandering entertainer and jack of all trades-
"Oh, good grief," Ambrose groans. "Did they manage to find a bard?"
-whose wide-ranging travels had brought him into contact with the Quincy on a number of occasions. While not always positively regarded by the archers due to a habit of being entirely too charming around unmarried young women-
"He certainly sounds like a bard," Balthazar sighs.
-and the occasional older and/or wedded lady, the traveler himself always thought highly of the Quincy, due in no small part to his first encounter with their people having been when one of them saved him from a nest of corpse-demons. Outgoing and inquisitive by nature and more than a little shocked by his brush with death, the spellcasting singer had been most eager to know more about his personal savior and managed to coax more information out of the Quincy than the archer probably should have given up to a stranger. Nothing about the Wandenreich, no, but enough of the history and culture of the Earthbound Quincy that most of his elders were not pleased.
Though that might just have been because of the nosy, overly good-looking fellow that followed him home and took weeks to get rid of.
"DEFINITELY a bard," Ambrose notes.
It would be the better part of twenty years after that initial meeting before the magic-making musician finally created this Banner, by which time he'd learned the Song of the Sleeping King, seen members of the Wandenreich in the field, and intuited the existence of the Hidden Empire, though perhaps not its full scope - and certainly not its purpose. Rather, he'd become fascinated with the epic narrative of an ancient king returning from the dead to reunite his people and lead them into battle against the terrible monsters that afflicted the worlds of the living and the dead.
The Banner was created in homage to that ideal and presented to the absolutely baffled commander of one of the Wandenreich's Earthside outposts, who quickly grew alarmed by just how much of the truth that the Quincy had managed to hide for most of a millennium to hide had been put together by one vagabond - and in less than a quarter of a century, at that! He'd even written SONGS about them!
"They do that," Ambrose, Balthazar, and the Briars agree.
The bard and his creation were whisked away to Silbern as a security threat - and then, some weeks later, the man was returned to Earth, having sworn a Geas-backed oath not to reveal the existence of the Wandenreich. What happened to him after that is not stated, whereas the Banner he made with the intent of being one day carried into battle by the Quincy army when their King returned would spend the next two hundred and sixty years or so waiting for its time.
Gained Quincy Battle-Banner
Do you have any comments or questions?
"...can I put this up, now?" the staff-holding staff member asks.
Once again, you turn to your elders in search of knowledge.
"Maybe it's just my limited experience with the Memorians talking, but aren't banners like this meant for keeping troop formations together on the battlefield?"
"For providing battlefield direction in general, yes," Ambrose replies.
"So, how was that supposed to work with the Quincy? I mean, given how fast they can move and what my Shadow saw of their preferred combat styles and tactics... it just seems like a mismatch."
"True, colors like this aren't much help for elite supernatural fighters," the wizard agrees with a nod. "They're always too busy picking out their counterparts among the enemy and rushing into the sort of 'private' deathmatch that levels any foot units or small buildings that don't get out of the way."
You wonder if he's referencing any incidents the Knights got up to with that remark? It seems likely.
"It's a different story for the rank-and-file troops, though," the old man goes on. "Despite hiding out in the Spirit Realm for as long as they did and all the effects that had, most of the members of the Wandenreich that I saw are still mortal. The Soldats definitely are, and mortal men and women can only last so long on a battlefield where monsters like the Sternritter and the Shinigami captains-"
Urahara affects a wounded flinch.
"-are throwing down." Ambrose waves off the shopkeeper's gesture without missing a beat. "If you're expecting opposition like THAT and you have any sense of self-preservation, you stack up every advantage you can get your hands on, even if some of them are only practical for reinforcing your staging areas and rally points."
Huh.
"It also depends on just how far-reaching the effects of the Banner are," Balthazar adds, looking at the device with a considering frown. "Some items of this sort have a fairly limited area of effect, but others work for anyone that's able to see them - and Quincy usually have VERY good distance vision."
Just another thing for the list of stuff to check, then.
Absently, you look around for some of the other Quincy-made items you picked up, but you didn't drop off the various files you lifted (whether they were in paper or electronic format), or that shattered Medallion. As for Yhwach's Crown, that wasn't in with the clothing and jewelry, which is where you would have expected it if it had any actual POWERS, as opposed to its mystical POTENTIAL.
"I have that one in a small room by itself," Ambrose replies. "The Knights insisted."
Ah.
There's another Wandenreich Banner hanging next to where the first one was, this time emanating an aura of spiritual power rather than arcane magic and suspended from a pole of spirit-metal somewhat darker and duller than the silvery sheen you've gotten used to seeing from Quincy weapons and tools.
"This is a much lesser example of a magical battlefield standard," Ambrose reports. "I don't know if it was an attempt to copy the bard's work or something developed separately, but it seems to be limited to shielding itself and its bearer from harm."
After that is another table full of stuff, this time various tools or bags and boxes thereof.
Ambrose directs your attention to a brown leather belt with a couple of satchels hanging off it. Inside these are a variety of lockpicking devices, ranging from actual picks and tweezers to a multi-headed screwdriver and mechanic's stethoscope to some small electronic devices. Everything in the kit is very well-made, and with the exception of the electronics, all of it radiates magic.
"La Renarde's?" you ask.
"La Renarde's," Ambrose agrees with a nod.
Next to that is a case of tools that remind you of some things you've seen in the back room at Urahara Shop, only made out of spirit-silver - and speaking of Urahara, he is giving the Quincy-made spiritual tools a look of keen interest.
If the enhancements on this flag were arcane in nature, you'd probably leave it where it is, as it would be a purely inferior version of the bard's work and something you're almost certainly already capable of recreating, and in a more convenient form at that.
But far from just bearing the colors of the Wandenreich, this Banner is clearly also of Quincy manufacture - the spirit-metal pole and the aura of Quincy-touched energy bound up in the threads make that clear. That would make it worth taking just as another example of their craftsmanship for you to study even without taking its similarities to and differences from the greater Banner into account - and when you DO take those qualities into account, well...
If Ambrose was right about the Lesser Banner having been an attempt to copy the powers of the greater one, converting their "format" from arcane to spiritual along the way, it would be very appropriate for you to reverse the process.
Gained Lesser Quincy Battle-Banner
Once more, le yoink.
Gained La Renarde's Thief's Tools
Into the ring of statues goes the box of spiritual screwdrivers, scanners, and spinners, and out comes another string of words on a page.
The oldest of the Quincy Tools were created all of ten years ago, but the kit as a singular entity dates back the better part of thirty years, which is when it was created by a member of their Technical Division who had just been promoted from "can be trusted not to make a hash of most simple jobs with supervision" apprentice level to "can be trusted to do most simple jobs with supervision" advanced apprentice level. He'd commemorated the occasion by creating a few personalized pieces that better-suited his style than the modified standard-issue equipment he'd had to work with before that, and his inventory gradually expanded over the years as he was assigned to a broader range of tasks and given more and more freedom to act on his own initiative.
Most of his work was maintenance, and much of it in various Earthly outposts where wear and tear couldn't be fixed as easily as shifting around some spiritual particles, but after a decade or so of proving himself, the Quincy technician started getting called in to the workshops in Silbern, to produce, modify, or repair various pieces of equipment that the lab-rats needed to bring their latest brainstorm to LIFE!
The dramatic emphasis is merited, because about six years ago, the Tools' owner was assigned to a project that involved one mad Quincy genius with access to Soul Society's data on creating Artificial Souls-
Shadow Alex stops reading as everybody turns to Urahara.
"Bit of a story, there," the Shinigami replies. "For context, if you inject a sufficiently potent and coherent mass of foreign reiatsu into a body at one time, too much for a spirit already present in the body to assimilate and at a specific frequency that prevents you from harming it, you can forcibly eject that spirit," the Shinigami explains. "The technique was originally developed to deal with stubborn Pluses that wouldn't abandon their corpses after death and certain Hollows that would possess bodies, and since it was difficult for low-ranking Shinigami to utilize, it was later adapted into a device known as the Spirit Apprehension Glove." Holding his cane in his left hand and with his fan tucked away somewhere, Urahara raises his right hand, fingers spread and flexing slightly. "Bright red things with a spirit flame emblazoned across the back of the hand. Fingerless, to better maintain one's grip on a zanpakuto, in case violence ensues before the Glove can be removed. Give a quick, solid push" - he thrusts his hand forward - "and you can pop a soul right out, dazed but unharmed."
"With you so far," you say.
"A little spooked," Shadow Alex adds, "but with you."
"Gigai were later developed as a way for Shinigami to remain on assignment in the Living World for much longer periods of time. Previously, missions had to be kept short, as most parts of the planet don't have enough ambient spiritual energy to sustain a Shinigami for long, and most of us can't control our spirit pressure very well when we sleep. A gigai converts Earthly food into something a Shinigami can use and recover with, it helps restrain and conceal our spiritual pressure, and it allows us to interact with people, which is more comfortable, psychologically speaking, than spending weeks or months on assignment with nobody to talk to."
"Still with you," you note.
"The problem with gigai," Urahara says then, "is that they can be tricky to get out of, especially for those same low-ranking Shinigami who don't have great control over their spirit energy. If you can't relax the links between physical body and spiritual body when needed, the exit process can be very slow and awkward, even potentially damaging to one or the other. Needless to say, this isn't great when there's a Hollow attack in need of an immediate response. The Spirit Apprehension Glove CAN be used to force a Shinigami out of a gigai, but the Glove relies on the reiatsu of its user to function, so it's difficult to use on yourself, and the Thirteen Divisions don't have the manpower to assign partners to every long patrol. Because of that, a prior head of the Twelfth Division used the underlying theory of the Spirit Ejection Technique and Spirit Apprehension Glove to develop something more convenient for single-person use."
He then describes the Artificial Soul, more commonly known as "Soul Candy," which can be easily ingested to eject a Shinigami from their gigai and leave the physical body under the control of a temporary artificial persona.
Ambrose frowns. "What happens if you pop one of these 'Candies' into a body that doesn't have a soul in it?"
"If the body is intact, the Artificial Soul can animate it for a while," Urahara admits with a sigh. "That, unfortunately, was the genesis for Project Spearhead, which intended to insert Modified Artificial Souls into fresh corpses and use them as disposable troops to make up for the difference in numbers between Shinigami and Hollow. The researchers granted each Mod-Soul a one-off special ability like enhanced strength or speed or a personalized kidou, but they weren't really capable of defeating any but the weakest Hollows, and the whole Project was shut down on ethical grounds before they had a chance to try developing anything more... effective." He frowns. "But that was a century ago. If the Wandenreich HAD that research..."
Shadow Alex quickly goes back to the Leatherbound Book and finds that the Tools were used in three separate attempts at creating spiritual constructs. Where this Project Spearhead that Urahara mentioned used dead bodies, the Wandenreich researchers used their ability to condense spirit particles into metal and skipped straight to killer Quincy robots - or at least, they tried to.
None of the three projects the Tools and their owner participated in were successful. The first robot simply did not function, the second tore itself apart particle by spiritual particle trying to use its powers, and the third seems to have gone full Frankenstein's Monster-slash-rogue golem-slash-killer A.I. and turned on its creators.
A fourth project was in the works, but that was before your little army hit Silbern.
Gained Quincy Spirit Tools
Do you have any questions or comments?
"Is anybody else hearing the theme from Terminator right now? Or is it just me?" you ask.
"I am," your Shadow replies.
"That might be our fault," the Briars say with a faintly apologetic note.
Everybody over three inches tall stops and stares at the fairies.
"...I was going to say that I heard the drum line," Balthazar says into the silence, "but now I'm curious."
"I caught the original when it first came out," Briar explains. "I won't say it was my favorite movie of all time, but elements of the plot really resonated with stories I'd grown up with, and I've always had a bit of a soft spot for it."
You turn that over in your head.
"What kind of childhood stories did you have?" Urahara wonders.
"Lots, but the important one was the Hero who traveled back in Time to try and save the kingdom from an unstoppable future menace," your partner answers.
So, Kyle Reese as Link - down to the part where he died in the end - Sarah Connors as Zelda, and Skynet and the T-101 as Ganondorf?
"Ambrose," you say then, "did you happen to collect anything that might qualify as a Quincy Death Machine?"
The wizard shakes his head. "Unfortunately, no. I can only assume that either the Wandenreich or the Soul Reapers beat us to it, or we all missed it and left it behind."
Recalling the annihilation of Silbern via Soul Society's Kido Cannon, you reflect that unless the robot in question had time-travel powers - or at least its own method of plane-shifting - you'll have to write it off as a total loss.
That feels like such a waste... but you'll console yourself with the rest of your plunder.
On that note, you get back to business.
There's another box of mostly spirit-metal bits and bobs on the table, although instead of proper tools, this seems to be a collection of random... parts. Wires, screws and washers, small thin plates of metal with squared or rounded edges, a lot of ball bearing-looking things for some reason - it's all neatly organized, every individual piece either in its own slot or pocket or fold-out mini-shelf, or else tucked away in a larger recess with a dozen more of its kind. There's a fair quantity of spiritual potential in there, all told, but not much that feels like it's capable of doing anything on its own.
You really can't make heads or tails of the collection, but Urahara is giving it another of those interested looks, if one markedly less intent than he gave the Quincy Toolkit.
There is also an old-fashioned drinking goblet made of spirit-metal sitting on the table. The material was made to a high standard and then polished further, giving it a sheen akin to proper silver, and the aura of Spirit imbued into it puts you in mind of Water-based Abjuration Magic.
"I'm not sure if this was someone's family heirloom or another attempt to adapt magical methods to Quincy techniques," Balthazar speaks up, "but the Goblet has two and a half abilities."
Odd notation.
"First, any water poured into it is purified of contaminants and rendered safe to drink, if uninteresting, as it filters out any flavored additives."
Maybe the creator didn't like sugar in their drinks?
"Second, if there was something poisonous in the water, the decorative pattern on the edge of the cup" - Balthazar taps the raised lines in question - "glows brightly, while a mark that identifies the poison appears here, on the side of the bowl. Finally, the Goblet seems to be able to TRY and create fresh water on command, but it was made too specialized for Silbern's environment."
Not enough free-floating spiritual particles to make that work, then.
Still, that's the Spell to Purify Food and Drink - or just the Drink - the Spell to Detect Poison, and an attempt at the Spell to Create Water, all reproduced in one vessel. A handy thing, if boringly practical.
Next up is that shattered Quincy Medallion you found.
"We're honestly not sure what this was meant to do," Ambrose says. "It doesn't have the functionality of a Quincy Cross, and it wouldn't even if it weren't in pieces. Those actual Crosses you picked up" - he gestures to the alternately melted, cracked, or pristine pieces from the Grandmaster's hidden memorial - "still at least REACT to ambient spiritual particles, even if they're too damaged to properly channel them, but this thing's virtually inert."
"How very curious," Urahara muses.
"Isn't it just?"
While there are some discrepancies - the Terminator movies have no analogues for the Golden Goddesses or the Triforce, and Skynet is perhaps better equated to the ancient Demon King Demise than to Ganondorf - you can see the associations between Hyrulean history and Hollywoodian fiction that might have endeared the movie to Briar.
It helps that the second movie recast Schwarzenegger's character as one of the good guys, as that is more in-keeping with your own personal circumstances, especially if you think of the original T-101 as the "previous incarnation" of the one from Judgment Day. Given Cyberdyne Systems used THAT Terminator's surviving components as the basis for the project that ultimately gave rise to the second iteration of Skynet, and in turn the unit that was reprogrammed by John Connor, there is a certain continuity there...
It occurs to you that you may have found your next Halloween costume. Of course, the question then becomes just how complete you want the look to be. Between polymorph spells, the Spell to Summon a Shotgun, and Major Creation, you're well prepared to pass yourself off as an Arnold look-alike, but if you REALLY want to sell the look, you may need to look into getting a good bike.
You sift through the Parts a bit, trying to make sense of what you're seeing without making too much of a mess of things, but given your lack of in-depth understanding of spirit-tech in general and the Quincy branch of the supernatural science in particular, it really is just so much junk to your eyes.
Well, worse comes to worst, you can sell it to Urahara and Tessai.
Gained Quincy Spare Parts
This, now, you have very little trouble making sense of. Between the cantrip-level effects and its function being so very, very close to that of a traditional enchanted item, you're confident you'll be able to crack the secrets of the Goblet with a minimal amount of fuss and bother.
Gained Quincy Goblet
Fortunately, whoever handled the broken Medallion after you dropped it off thought to get a small tray for all the pieces to sit on, making moving them a lot quicker and easier. As such, you pick the thing up and gesture for Shadow Alex to follow you to the spellcasting chamber.
"Going to try and fix it?" Ambrose guesses.
"It seemed like a better idea than trying to pull another tale from all the broken bits."
Once an item has been shattered like this, treating it as a single object - or all the pieces of one - gets a little uncertain. All the fragments still count as having been part of the greater whole at one point, of course, but that common history could get lost or buried under the events that a given piece has been part of since its separation from the rest. If that's happened here, trying to take a single Vision of any sort off of the shattered Medallion is likely to either latch on to a given piece or fail outright - and you really don't have the time or the energy to go through all these pieces separately.
"Are you sure you can muster the power?" the wizard asks. "Half the reason Balthazar and I left it alone was that we weren't sure if either of us could get the Greater Spell to Make Whole working well enough."
"That's why my Shadow is going to help!" you call back.
"I am?" your Dark Self wonders. "I mean, I am!"
"Also, Urahara, if I could ask for your input...?"
"You've got it, but I should warn you that my knowledge of MODERN Quincy spiritual technology is decidedly lacking..."
"Still better than what I've got!"
You spend the next ten minutes or so going over the shape and structure of the Medallion with Urahara, figuring out where all the little bits and pieces should fit and connect to one another. The fairies get involved as well, not for any particular insights into this sort of supernatural device, but more for having tiny hands and a much closer perspective, which together make it easier for them to see what they're actually doing with the pieces of the three-dimensional metallic puzzle - and also to hold some of those bits together without crowding each other or blocking the view of the big people involved.
After putting the thing "together" by hand, taking it apart again, and then repeating the process, you think you have a good enough idea of where all the parts are supposed to go to visualize the repair process. As an added bit of good news, whatever it was that broke the Medallion seems to have happened very quickly, with no real heat or any corrosive elements involved, leaving the circular emblem shattered, but not melted or warped.
Urahara has some concerns about possible spiritual deformation of the metal, but if that's the case, it's not something you'd be able to fix regardless.
Once you're prepared, everybody else stands or flies back, and Shadow Alex begins casting the Spell of Sharesister-
"Oooh, witchcraft," Ambrose muses.
-using the boosting effect of a ritual casting to shore up his own necromantic abilities before taking a deep breath and dumping a big chunk of his power into your system.
You take a deep breath of your own as your power SOARS-
"Erk!"
*Poof*
-for all of a moment, before a white-faced Shadow Alex makes a sound of shocked distress and suddenly disperses.
...
"Was... that SUPPOSED to happen?" Urahara asks slowly.
"Did- did he just accidentally KILL himself!?" Briar exclaims in alarm.
"Alex, you idiot!" Shadow Briar shouts. "Never kill yourself for power! That's like, the BASICS of basics!"
...ooookay. It would appear that using the full-powered version of Sharesister is hazardous to your health.
Important safety tip; thanks, Dark Self.
In light of this discovery...
"Right," you say after a moment. "Let's... let's try that again. Shadow Briar?"
"I'm out!"
*Poof*
Still a little startled by the sudden and inadvertent self-destruction of your Dark Self, you take advantage of a ritual casting of the spell to restore him not just to save mana, but also to give yourself time to calm down.
"I SUMMON YOU ANEW! RISE, MY SHADOW! ...and try not to kill yourself this time."
*Poof*
"That was YOUR idea!" Shadow Alex protests as soon as he finishes coming into existence, pointing accusingly at you.
"But YOU didn't consider the danger, either!"
"Well, YOU-"
"No, YOU-"
"HEY!"
You both turn to the fairies.
"Stop blaming yourself-" Briar begins.
"-accept that you overlooked something and made a dumb call-" her Shadow continues.
"-and get over it already!" they chorus.
Your two selves trade glances.
"Bah," your Shadow offers.
"Bah!" you agree.
Turning to the fairies, you exclaim, "BAH!" and then get back to work.
Shadow Alex performs another ritual casting of the Spell of Sharesister, only this time instead of trying to amp up its output directly, he chooses to offset the mana cost. In lieu of potentially killing himself, he makes the ritual more dramatic-
"THE POWER... IS YOURS!"
Ambrose and Urahara seem duly impressed by the light-and-sound show.
Balthazar gives the two of you a dryly amused, knowing look.
-to try and eke out some extra oomph.
You think it worked, although you aren't sure by how much. As the spell will persist for a quarter of an hour and Shadow Alex shows no signs of dispersing - though the strain of bearing up under Sharesister's willing energy drain has forced him to take a seat on the floor - you have plenty of time to complete the ritual required to enact the Greater Spell to Make Whole.
As it nears completion, you extend your hand towards the Medallion and declare: "BY MY POWER COMBINED, YOU ARE CAPPED AND PLANNED!"
Gained Words of Power B (Plus)
The pieces of the Medallion have been rising from where they lay atop the tray and floating into position in a hands-free, slightly wobbly re-enactment of your previous attempts at reassembling the Quincy artifact. The conclusion of your spell causes the still-visible cracks to flare with silver-blue light - flecked with motes of gold - and when the brilliant shine has died down, you seem to have a repaired Wandenreich Medallion on your hands, if not actually in them.
"We good?" Shadow Alex asks.
"Not if Ted Turner gets his hands on you," Balthazar drawls.
"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about," you deny calmly, as you reach down and pick up the Medallion. You turn it over in your hands, considering its generally smooth and whole shape, the lack of leftover bits, and other facts, and then nod. "I think we're good."
"Oh, good."
And with that, your Dark Self dismisses the Spell of Sharesister.
"...you need a minute?" you ask considerately.
"Make it two," the Shadow answers.
You go ahead and do that, handing the device to Urahara. "What do you think?"
The Shinigami scientist takes the Medallion and inspects it as best he can with only his hands, his eyes, and some analytical kido to work with.
"Looks intact," he reports. "Still some traces of damage from whatever broke it originally, and I'm not about to try running spiritual energy through it until I have a better idea of what it was meant to do and why it failed, but on the whole? A very impressive bit of spellcasting. How big a broken thing can you fix that way, and how complex can it be?"
"It depends on which version of the Spell to Make Whole I'm using," you begin, before describing the three tiers of the spell to which you have access-
"'Three'?" Ambrose comments.
"You mean you haven't come up with an advanced form yet?" Balthazar says to his sometime-teacher, shaking his head in mock-pity.
"And when did you-"
"1935," comes the remarkably specific answer.
Ambrose blinks at that.
For your part, you suspect that's the year that Balthazar bought his Rolls-Royce Phantom.
-as well as the Spell of Mending for the sake of reference, and how they all stack up to one another. You also note that, currently, you can only cast the Greater and Even Greater Spells to Make Whole via rituals, which makes them take a lot longer than they'd otherwise require, and also introduces a degree of uncertainty into the results - a minor one, given your skill with Transformation Magic, but still worth mentioning.
Urahara looks thoughtful during all of this, but instead of making further comments, he seems content to tuck the information away in his brain while handing the Wandenreich Medallion back over to you.
Once Shadow Alex has finished his brief resting period, you get out the Goddess figurines and he casts the Spell of Literary Vision once more.
This Medallion was created as part of a long-running project to draw out the full potential of the foundational Quincy ability to gather and control spiritual particles from their environment. Normally, this process is destructive to the source of said particles, breaking down the bonds between them and stripping them of extraneous features as they are converted into ammunition for the Quincy's weapons. Looked at from another angle, it could be considered an extreme form of purification, one that forcibly reverts spiritual matter to its most basic and malleable state - and like purification, it can be resisted, IF the target is powerful enough, IF it has a sufficiently significant "identity," if, if, if.
That said, it is possible for Quincy to control spiritual particles without damaging them or their original source. This is how the technique known as Ransotengai works-
Shadow Alex pauses and looks up at Urahara. "'Heavenly Puppet'?"
"'Heavenly Wild Puppet Suit'," Urahara corrects him, "and no, I don't recognize the name."
Huh. Something to ask one of your Quincy contacts about, maybe?
-enabling a Quincy to guide their physical body by manipulating the spiritual one, and thereby enabling them to fight in spite of crippling wounds, physically debilitating toxins, or advanced age. Since it is the Quincy's own soul, perfectly attuned and accustomed to their power, there is no danger to the user, but the technique does require exceptional skill and practice to utilize in combat. Manipulating OTHER souls in such a fashion should be theoretically possible, but in practice, it was never seriously considered as a viable combat skill. A certain level of spiritual strength would be required to overcome the resistance all intact souls possess to being directly affected by a Quincy's power, as well as to move that soul move in accordance with the Quincy's will, and yet, exerting too MUCH force or doing so in an uneven manner would unavoidably damage the spirit, rendering the entire effort pointless. Furthermore, to make such a technique effective on the sort of enemies the Quincy would most desire to use it against - which is to say, the greater Hollows and Shinigami - would require even MORE power and skill.
Yhwach himself might be able to do it, as might a Sternritter whose Schrift-
"Huh?"
"It means 'Script' in Quincy," Balthazar notes. "I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean in this context, though."
-was designed for the process. For anyone else, it would be an improbable feat, at best.
But the Wandenreich had a thousand years to develop their techniques and technology, all the while stealing notes from Soul Society's own progress in the spiritual sciences and observing various shikai, bankai, and kido as they were developed, refined, defeated, and rebuilt. If the native skills of the Quincy were not equal to the task, surely a tool or weapon could be devised to assist them in the process, even manage it entirely independent of them?
The project had been in the works for over a century now, and the Medallion before you is one of its latest results, a weapon designed to restrain and control a spiritual entity in its entirety, forcing to fight on behalf of the Wandenreich whether it wished to or not. Technically, it does work; when tested on volunteers, it proved capable of compelling physical obedience to the Medallion-holder's will. Its ability to compel spiritual or mental servitude is far from complete, however, as none of the test subjects could be forced to utilize their spiritual abilities without the Medallion-user directly walking them through the process, and several were able to resist the physical control as well.
Something vaguely similar to the Spell to Dominate a Person, then? Only in spiritual device form, rather than as a spell.
While you have some qualms about what this device was meant to do, it ultimately isn't any worse than certain spells you're already capable of performing - and have used at least once before, in the case of the Spell to Dominate a Person.
Honestly, the Medallion is arguably the LESS objectionable of the two methods of controlling someone against their will, as it appears to at least leave the target's free will intact...
That aside, as another data-point for your efforts to understand Quincy spiritual technology and how it compares to Soul Society's creations and your own magic, the device is worth keeping. So, you repress the urge to disintegrate the thing and pocket it.
At least proverbially, you're starting to run out of space in your actual Arcane Pocket. Good thing you have all those Bags of Holding to work with!
Gained Wandenreich Medallion
Returning to the Room of Random Magical Items, you take in what's left. There are a couple more kits of Quincy Spiritual Tools, but nothing about them looks or feels significantly different from the one you already picked out. Do you really need extra sets?
There is also a sewing machine on the table, a design that leans towards the old-fashioned, with the lack of an obvious electrical plug and the use of spirit-metal in so much of its frame and mechanisms lending a great deal to that impression. It's not an industrial machine or anything like that, just the Wandenreich's take on the sort of personal model that can be packed up in a hard cover case and carried off like a piece of heavy luggage. Said cover, incidentally, is also made of spirit-metal, but has a cloth cover fitted to it in the Quincy colors. No Wandenreich emblems or five-armed crosses, though.
"It is pretty much exactly what it appears to be," Ambrose says with a shrug. "One part hand- and foot-operated and one part reliant on the user's spiritual energy, admittedly, but otherwise not really any different from a vintage Singer model. It even has a name on it."
"Oh?"
"There on the side. No, the other side- the OTHER, other side."
Ah, there it is.
"'Property of Catherine Adler'," you read the words etched into the silvery spiritual steel aloud.
Silbern's old head of housekeeping, huh? Hm.
And then there is a collection of shovels, picks, hammers, and scrapers standing against the wall on the far end of the second table from where you started. Some are meant for use in one hand and others two; there are several different head-shapes within each category; and they all look as spotless as if they'd never been used. They've also been imbued with a measure of spiritual energy, most of which feels like it has things in common with the School of Abjuration and Augmentation - probably effects meant to make each tool last longer and perform that much better at its intended use.
They COULD be used as weapons, but they're pretty obviously not intended for it, which is probably why Ambrose and Balthazar had them in this room instead of the arsenal you were shown earlier.
Anyway, taking in the shapes of the various tools, you think they were meant mainly for clearing snow and ice, which has you recalling your short-lived glimpses of Silbern's frozen demiplane and wondering about its dominant weather patterns.
There are reasons why people keep spares and back-ups of important equipment, and the one that's particularly relevant to your interests is that it will let you switch over to the replacement(s), should the item(s) being used beforehand get damaged beyond repair.
Not that such a thing was hugely likely, given your access to the various forms of the Spell to Make Whole, but having a spare toolkit on hand will give you intact tools you can compare any accidentally broken or tested-to-destruction versions against when fixing them, or perhaps just use to replace the originals outright.
Gained (additional) Quincy Spirit Tools
"A sewing machine?" Urahara asks in bemusement. "Really?"
"That was my reaction," you admit, as you help Shadow Alex move the thing down from its spot on the table so that he has space enough to set up the Goddess figurines without worrying about catching something else in their circle. The machine isn't enormously heavy or anything, but it has enough mass to be a bit awkward; the extra hands just make the work quicker and easier. "And I'll admit that I'm pretty sure Mrs. Adler didn't use this to thump intruders over the head or... leave them in stitches..."
"Ha," Ambrose drawls.
"I'm probably just picking up on the residuals of her personal power and decades of owning the thing," you go on, "and it's likely that a Spell of Literary Vision will just talk about what significant outfits the machine was used to make, or times that Mrs. Adler used it while talking to important individuals - but if she had that casual a relationship with somebody important in the Wandenreich, that might be worth knowing."
You are aware that Mrs. Adler is close enough to that Bambietta girl your Shadow briefly took prisoner that the young lady can call her elder "Nana Kathy" around others and apparently not get scolded for it, even though her light-haired friend only addressed the older woman as "Mrs. Adler" - at least as long as she was in earshot.
The spell is cast, and Shadow Alex reads in silence for a minute.
"...well?" you ask.
"Seems like pretty much what we expected," he replies, before providing a summary.
The sewing machine was a wedding present to Mrs. Adler almost a century ago, and as you suspected, much of the item's "significance" comes from the fact that the lady has been using it ever since, making everything from wedding dresses and suits to Soldat uniforms and banners, as well as a host of lesser items. Such extensive use of a device that channels its user's spiritual power has likely given the machine an exceptional level of attunement to Mrs. Adler's personal energies, and you wouldn't be surprised to hear that her work could match or outmatch that of younger women using "more advanced" sewing machines - but the Leatherbound Book doesn't go into any detail about that.
A few names are dropped, and you learn that Nana or no, Mrs. Adler isn't actually related to Bambietta; rather, she was the personal maid of Bambietta's grandmother, as well as a close friend, and has been a part of the family ever since.
Also, your assumption about the sewing machine never being used as a weapon turns out to have been only MOSTLY accurate. Mrs. Adler certainly never bludgeoned anyone in the head with the thing or dragged their hands under the needle, but she did once take advantage of its strong attunement to her personal spiritual pressure to... sew someone to a wall?
"How-?" you begin.
"Apparently she used the machine to enhance her control, so that the needle and thread could reach out and... well, stitch," your Dark Self reports.
The victim of Mrs. Adler's displeasure and ingenuity was a low-ranking Soldat with an overinflated opinion of his own importance, who had been giving some of the other maids a hard time. She summoned the troublemaker to a meeting, laid down the law, and when he tried to throw his rank around, she stuck him to the wall.
"And he couldn't get loose?" Urahara wonders.
"The guy had an overinflated opinion of his own abilities, too," Shadow Alex reads. "Not incompetent, but not prepared to acknowledge that a 'mere servant' might be as good or even better than he was in some aspects of spiritual power use."
...
Well.
Gained Catherine Adler's Sewing Machine
You don't really have any use for a bunch of snow-removal tools, whether they're spiritually enhanced or not.
For one thing, you could undoubtedly reproduce whatever enhancements are on the shovels and such with very little effort.
For another, it doesn't snow in Sunnydale.
And for a third, you're not inclined to hand these things out to your circle of acquaintances, as it might draw Quincy and subsequent Wandenreich attention to them.
About the only use that leaves for these tools is as raw materials, and the spirit-metal used in their creation doesn't appear to be of a particularly high grade. That only makes sense: ice and snow removal isn't the sort of thing you'd need a weapons-grade alloy for, particularly not when you've got a whole army and giant fortress-city with other demands for the stuff; and having a bunch of weapon-quality maintenance and landscaping tools on hand would just be asking for somebody to steal them and use them against you.
...although, you don't THINK Link ever used a shovel...?
He DEFINITELY used a Hammer, though.
You have (by proxy) seen Soldats fight. They're not unstoppable juggernauts, to be sure, but they were good enough to throw down with the Shinigami seated officers that took part in the Silbern Raid, which is not a low bar to clear. The idea of a not-so-little-old lady taking down a combatant of that level - especially one with the sort of speed and reaction times your Shadow saw - using a machine-driven needle and thread?
That is honestly impressive.
Though at the same time...
"Hey, Ambrose?"
"Hm?"
"How jealous do you think Lucia would be after hearing about someone able to sew a man to a wall?"
Ambrose blinks, and then laughs. "Well, she wouldn't be jealous at FIRST; she'd be much too busy being impressed and trying to emulate the technique."
You nod. "But if she couldn't figure it out - or browbeat you into helping her cheat?" you add, as soon as the thought occurs.
"Then she probably would be jealous," the wizard agrees, holding up one hand with thumb and forefinger slightly apart. "Just a smidgeon."
Anyway, after the Soldat was removed from the wall and healed up-
"Wait, HOW did she stitch him to the wall, again?" you interrupt your Shadow.
He looks at the Leatherbound Book, then up at you. "Do you REALLY want to know?"
You're morbidly curious there was a hearing. Wandenreich maids, even senior ones, are not supposed to go around attacking members of the Imperial armed forces, after all. As it happened, Mrs. Adler had filed a formal complaint about the Soldat's behavior and subsequently had an unofficial meeting with his commanding officer, who had agreed to allow her to try and resolve the matter off the record before he had to step in and make everything official. Mrs. Adler wasn't JUST trying to protect her juniors from a young idiot, she was also trying to give said fool boy a chance to straighten out his act and save himself a fair bit of trouble.
Needless to say, he blew that chance.
Funnily enough, the sewing machine was present for part of the hearing, as some wit had taken the order to present the "tool of violence" used against the Soldat and run with it. Thus, there is a passage on the spell-scribed pages describing how Mrs. Adler was asked to demonstrate for the court the technique she'd used to subdue what was a seemingly superior attacker, and how said demonstration left quite an impression on her audience, as well as one of the walls.
In any event, Mrs. Adler was cleared of charges and permitted to return to her work, with an unofficial suggestion that she teach her little needle-and-thread trick to some of the other household staff.
"'Not that we want to encourage people putting holes in the walls or our soldiers, but if the rest of the young idiots are made aware that they could get themselves strung up if they gave any of the maids a hard time, we might avoid future incidents of this nature'," Shadow Alex reads off, quoting someone.
...
"Does it say if she did?"
"She did for a while, but not everybody was able to pick it up."
Ah. A shame.
Anyway, aside from more ordinary events like weddings, holidays, births, and the occasional funeral, that incident appears to have been the highlight of Mrs. Adler's career - or at least that part of it where her sewing machine was involved.
Shadow Alex nods and re-reads the part of the tale he just glossed over.
It would seem that, when she was considering how to deal with the problematic Soldat before requesting a meeting, Mrs. Adler acknowledged the possibility that he might resort to force. If things headed that way, she'd known that she would need to immobilize the young man as quickly and completely as possible, while also separating him from his Cross to limit his ability to retaliate. Doing so would require her to use multiple needles and threads at once, limiting just how well she could control any one of them.
Consequently, instead of being able to harmlessly pin the Soldat to the wall by wrapping him in thread and sewing through the edges of his uniform, Mrs. Adler anticipated that she would sew through his skin in at least a few places, which is exactly what happened. Arms, legs-
"Outer AND inner thigh," Shadow Alex notes with a shudder, which is shared by every man in the room.
The two fairies just cackle.
-and the fingers of one hand, in the process of taking his Cross away. The Soldat in question was sloppy in the use of his Blut-
"I have heard that term used before," your Shadow breaks off.
"We heard Masaki say it once," you remind yourself. "It was in response to Isshin saying something about a 'creepy blood trick'?"
Urahara explains that Quincy are able to channel reishi through their circulatory system to reinforce their bodies in two different ways: Blut Vene is the defensive application, rendering the user more difficult to harm and making it possible for them to prevent blood loss from significant injuries, as they literally hold themselves together; and Blut Arterie is the offensive form, enhancing the user's physical attack power.
"Gemischt Quincy can learn Blut like they would any other ability, but the Echt are able to use it almost instinctively," Urahara says. "Considering the Wandenreich's history and recruitment policy, it's almost a given that they'd all have the skill, but just because you have a natural talent for something doesn't mean you're immediately able to use that skill to its fullest extent."
-and combined with the surprise factor of being attacked by a servant in the halls of Silbern, much less with something as unexpected as sewing supplies, he was pinned before he had a chance to fight back. With his Cross taken away and a bunch of little wounds screaming for attention, the arrogant young man could not muster the focus to form a Spirit Weapon or break down the threads holding him in place - though given the spirit particles making up the latter were already under another Quincy's control, that would have been a fairly difficult task. He also didn't think to use Blut Arterie to tear himself free of the wall, although that might have had something to do with not wanting to worsen the damage to himself.
Or maybe he was just too spooked by the way Mrs. Adler hovered her bloodstained needles and thread in snakelike warning before his eyes.
With the conclusion of the tale pulled from Mrs. Adler's Sewing Machine, you wonder if the rest of her sewing supplies were among the loot. If they were, they aren't in this room, suggesting they lacked any particular enhancements.
You make a mental note to keep an eye out, and then get on with what's left.
There are some musical instruments set up on the next table. One of these is a six-stringed acoustic guitar with its own carrying case, both enhanced with Augmentation Magic that bleeds over into Abjuration, and with a touch of Transformation Magic on the case.
"A straightforward magic guitar, primarily focused on projecting clearer sounds to greater distances," Ambrose says. "It also has the usual minor enchantments for damage-resistance. The case, meanwhile, has a limited maintenance and repair function."
After that is a snare drum, the sort of thing that you might see in a modern marching band or a military unit from a couple of centuries ago. It's complete with a harness, a pair of sticks, and a small maintenance kit; with the exception of the last, all the pieces radiate a linked magical aura, the primary signature of which is a blend of Augmentation and Enchantment.
"The drum has the same kind of sound-boosting and preservation enhancements as the guitar," Ambrose continues, "but there's a further enhancement as well. When that's active, and for as long as the drum is played - and the tune doesn't seem to matter - listeners within about fifty feet or so become physically and mentally more resilient, making it harder for them to tire or grow bored. Something like this would have been handy for long marches, way back when."
You can think of a few other uses for such a thing.
And then there is an instrument with a reputation most dire, one that radiates menace, pain, and horror - and no, that's not just you being dramatic, you're ACTUALLY picking up an aura of supernatural dread from the bagpipes.
"These belonged to the Scotsman, didn't they?" you ask.
"They WERE with that Sword," Ambrose admits, eyeing the pipes warily. "Again, there are spells for improved durability and sound projection, but the latter seem to be able to go up to a much higher degree than the other instruments - it reminds me a bit of the aura of a Horn of Blasting, if I'm being honest, which is... worrying."
"How so?"
"Horns of Blasting have been known to explode if used more than once per day," Balthazar answers.
...okay, that is a little worrying.
"Aside from the possibility of mass destruction," the wizard resumes, "there's also a multi-layered Enchantment effect that seems able to induce or revoke several emotional states, including fear, courage, and blind fury. There may be some others, it appears to be reliant on player skill, and we don't exactly have anyone who fits the bill on staff. Plus, again, the risk of explosions."
Hm.
You pluck one of the Guitar's strings, getting a nice note, but you have to admit that you have next to no idea how to properly play stringed instruments in general, much less this sort in particular; on top of that, with all your plans and obligations in the months ahead, you really don't have the time to learn, even with Nayru's blessing easing you through the introductory phases of the process.
All in all, there's not much point in you keeping what is just a better grade of musical instrument.
You're honestly not much better off when it comes to playing the drums than you are with guitars, and that much only because Din favors you a bit more than her sisters, but unlike the Magic Guitar, the Drum of Marching has an actual power and purpose beyond simply sounding better that make it worth taking.
Granted, you aren't going to be leading any armies into battle any time soon, but you can't say that you never will. More immediately, you have Big Plans for building yourself a workshop in the not-too-distant future, which is a task where the Drum's ability to ward off fatigue and boredom could come in handy depending on the workforce you end up employing.
You might have to summon a drummer or something to make it work, but that's no great inconvenience, now is it?
Gained Drum of Marching
You decide to delay a bit on what to do with the potentially explosive bagpipes in favor of finding out more about them.
Rather than maneuver the pipes around and potentially activate them, Shadow Alex places the Goddess figurines around the instrument and moves some of its neighbors to ensure there's enough room to avoid any mixed Visions. Then he casts.
The tale of the pipes doesn't actually begin with the demon-hunting Scotsman. Their previous owner was a countryman of his, a young minstrel who'd lived in the mid 1400s, two full generations earlier. The fellow in question had a passion for the pipes and the skills to match, such that it was sometimes said he'd gained the affections of a leannan sidhe or made a deal with the Devil for his talent. Neither was the case, but an uncannily beautiful woman did one day take notice of the young musician and invite him to play at her father's court.
As the lady explained it, her sire was a lover of the arts who sought and would accept only the finest: the most life-like statues for his gallery; the most vivid paintings for his halls; the keenest and clearest of instruments for his galas; and to play the latter, the most skilled musicians. To that end, the lord's children were always on the look-out - or listen-out? - for new talent, and this daughter thought that she'd found a worthy candidate.
At least metaphorically charmed by the lady, puffed-up by her praise, and hopeful of gaining a grand patron, the minstrel accepted the offer to be taken to her father's home, not knowing that it would carry him away from Earth - not to Faerie, as you might have expected, nor to a Hell-dimension, as would be only too likely, but to a demiplane lodged in a corner of the Ethereal that abutted the Shadow Plane. Whether by virtue of its location, an uncorrected flaw in its makeup, or deliberate design, the murky atmosphere of the lord's domain had a debilitating effect on those who resided within it, gradually stripping them of their emotions, their will, their lives, and finally the very substance of their bodies, leaving only undead shadows. The environmental affliction could be held at bay by a strong will or great displays of passion and creativity, and it amused the lord of the place to bring mortal artists to the place and see how long they could endure before the plane stripped away their personalities and devoured them.
The Scottish minstrel held out longer than most, long enough that his body had faded to a darkened, ghostly state, and that the dismal gloom had crept into his performances and his pipes, which themselves retained physical wholeness by dint of the power and passion poured into them when they were played - for though magic had been used to repair them time and again when they wore down, it was their owner's love for his music, somehow undiminished even by the perpetual gloom, that led to those spells being cast.
It would not do for such rare entertainment to be spoiled by a mere mechanical failure.
And one day, into this grim land, there came the demon Plotcock, fleeing a mad Scotsman bent on vengeance...
At this point, it had been about seven months (subjective time) since the Scotsman's quest had led him away from Earth and into the planes. Though he was still relatively new to the experience of travel via planar portal, he'd learned to respect the fact that each realm was different from the rest - sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly - and held its own unique perils, many of which were not always best handled with a furious screaming assault right out of the Gate.
This time around, however, the Scotsman had been right on Plotcock's clawed heel as they entered the portal, bursting into the shadowed plane just seconds behind the demon and thus being in no mood to mind his manners or even slow down.
In many other realms, the sudden and uninvited entry of a panicking demon and a howling berserker would not have gone well for the new arrivals, but the unexpected addition of "fresh talent" for his ongoing "contest" delighted the lord of the place, who relished in Plotcock's fear and the Scotsman's rage. Using his control over the demiplane, the shadow lord sealed the portal so that neither of his new guests could flee, and then rearranged the terrain to give the demon a brief reprieve, so that the fun would not be ended too soon.
Abruptly separated from his quarry and with Plotcock's trail muddled beyond his means to track for the first time in many months, the Scotsman stalked the plane in seething frustration for a short time before receiving a summons to meet with the master of the plane, which he grudgingly heeded. When questioned about Plotcock's fortuitous escape, the lord of the land denied responsibility, claiming that the shifting landscape was a natural feature of the domain and beyond his ability to control, outside of the wards that kept the structures of his home stable. He also stated - this time truthfully - that he could and had sealed the gate, ensuring that Plotcock would not be able to flee.
Encouraged by the thought that his years-long pursuit might have driven the demon into an inescapable corner at last, the Scotsman allowed himself to succumb to his fatigue and hunger and accept the lord's offer of hospitality - though after a previous deal gone sour, the warrior was careful only to ask for a single meal and to specify just ONE use of a bed, rather than "a night" or "an evening," as he didn't yet know how long such times might last in that plane of shadow.
"Does it say anything about that previous deal?" Briar wonders.
"It doesn't," Shadow Alex replies.
Hm. The lack of information suggests that the deal, who- or whatever it was with, and the consequences of making it were all minor enough not to register to the Spell of Literary Vision. That WOULD go some way towards explaining how the Scotsman was still alive and in full possession of his faculties and equipment after making the bad bargain...
Naturally, when dinner came around, the shadow lord arranged for his new guest to have a proper taste of home, and had the ministrel play. Although the bagpipes are not an instrument unique to Scotland, it had been over a year since the Scotsman had last heard them played, and almost half a decade since he was graced with any of the songs of his native land. To see a countryman in such a strange place and to hear the skirl of the pipes once more came as a great shock to the demon hunter, and for a moment his rage was truly quelled, thoughts of injury and vengeance pushed aside by those of homesickness, loneliness, and loss.
Given the nature of the shadowed plane, these were dangerous emotions for a man to indulge in, and even one so resolute as to pursue a demon sorcerer into the vastness of the planes with naught but the sword in his hand and the fury in his heart might have been in for a bad time as a result.
But then the minstrel played a new song, one that had no special meaning to lord or his court, but which both sons of Scotland knew well: Hey Tuttie Tatie, an air said to have been played at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, where the army of Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots, defeated the forces under King Edward II of England, the largest army to ever invade the northern country. It was a major turning point of what is now known as the First War of Scottish Independence, contributing to the eventual restoration of Scottish self-rule.
A call to arms, a battle for freedom - a warning of impending danger and a plea for aid.
The Scotsman heeded the unspoken message and looked closer at his fellow, realizing that what he'd taken for the murk of the plane playing tricks on his eyes was in fact the ministrel's body having been reduced to a spectral state - another kinsman, however distant, brought to grief and ruin by a supernatural menace.
Though his rage was rekindled, the Scotsman restrained himself from attacking his host. He made sure to eat well, to carefully deflect offers of assistance in his hunt or further entertainment to partake in, and to seek his promised bed at the earliest polite opportunity. All the while, his mind was turning over this grim discovery and how best to respond to it.
Then the ministrel arrived to speak with him in private, explaining his circumstances and how, in his current half-shadow state, the lord of the plane could not easily track him. Were he still wholly of flesh and blood and so an intruder upon the demiplane of shadows, his movements could have been easily monitored, and were he wholly of the substance of the place, he would have been bound to the lord's will and unable to act freely; in-between as he was, he could blend in with his surroundings so long as he took some care. The musician also revealed what he knew of their "host's" plans for the Scotsman and Plotcock, for the demon, too, had been invited into the dark house, hosted at a separate and earlier dinner where the minstrel had been called to play to annoy the demon, who was well and truly sick of Scotsmen.
A plan was made, and the following morning, when the Scotsman met the lord of the dark domain again, he thanked him for the dinner and lodgings, declared his resolution to hunt Plotcock down - and when the demon suddenly appeared alongside the plane's startled master, courtesy of a bit of sorcery the minstrel had acquired over his long imprisonment and slow transformation, the Scotsman instantly drew his weapon and attacked.
A sweeping sidelong blow that would have buried itself in the demon's ribs instead phased through the shadowy illusion like it wasn't there, momentum carrying the strike right into and through the surprised lord.
The VERY unexpected death of its master caused the demiplane to start falling apart, as the shadows - both environmental and independent - began to run wild.
While the demiplane was going to pieces, the remaining residents fragmented in their own way. Some began to fight for dominance, hoping to claim rule of the domain in time to stabilize it; others fled for the portal; several tried to take revenge upon the Scotsman; more than a few sat back to watch the mayhem and laugh; and all of these and more were eventually forced to defend themselves from the shadow-spirits that had been set loose by their master's death.
The two Scotsmen were naturally among those seeking to exit the demiplane, hacking or casting their way through whatever tried to get in their way. The shadows, by and large, let the two men go their way unmolested, perhaps recognizing the ones that had set them free at last and repaying their debt accordingly, or perhaps being too focused on taking revenge on those of their tormentors that yet lived to give a half-shadow and uncorrupted mortal any consideration. Whatever the reason, the pair fought mostly angry guards, panicking courtiers, and one scion of the plane's late master - not the daughter that had originally lured the minstrel into the trap, incidentally.
Reaching the gate, the humans found the demon Plotcock there ahead of them, fending off a few of the locals with his claws while using his magic to force open the portal, now that its former master was no longer around to will it shut.
As was his way, the swordsman leapt into the battle without hesitation, howling for the demon's head. Plotcock likewise did not hesitate to throw himself into the still-unstable portal, clearly feeling that the risk of death and planar displacement was preferable to the certainty of death on the edge of the Scotsman's sword. Had the demon hunter been alone, that might have been his death-knell, for he had no way to prevent the portal from closing or to re-open it afterwards and would not have been able to fight through the crowd of confused soldiers and would-be escapees in time to enter the gate before it slammed shut.
Fortunately, his new ally's magic was sufficiently in tune with the nature of the demiplane that he was able to keep the portal active even after Plotcock's magic was no longer forcing it open. Though it taxed him greatly, the half-shadow minstrel held the gate while the swordsman cleared the way, and then kept the planar passage stable as the two of them passed through it to the realm Plotcock and the Scotsman had previously entered from - and then, he simply let go, allowing the gateway to collapse and seal off the demiplane, trapping the surviving denizens and dooming them to annihilation.
The two countrymen would thereafter travel together for over a year, combining magic, music, and mayhem to make Plotcock's remaining time in the worlds of the living all the more miserable, and to wreak greater havoc on the other evils that crossed their paths. In that time, many a demon and other strange creature came to dread the sound of the bagpipes, especially in one plane where silence was sacred, quiet enforced by law, and music of all sorts a forbidden blasphemy whose instruments must destroyed upon discovery - including the voiceboxes of humans and other outsider races that were not very careful about the sounds they made in the exceptional hearing range of the natives.
This absolute prohibition turned out to be for... not a GOOD reason, given the sort of actions the demons were using it to excuse, but a very rational one. When the Scotsmen learned the truth of how and why people were "silenced," the minstrel swelled up with such a fury as to make his companion blink in surprise, and fired up his pipes in a protest of such intensity that any nearby native demons EXPLODED to hear it.
Thus began the Wailing, the long-prophesied doom of the denizens of that place.
"...well," Ambrose says. "I guess we know how the pipes gained the power to break things and inspire terror."
Apparently so.
The planeswalking partnership was brought to an end by the long-term consequences of the minstrel's captivity upon the shadowy demiplane. While his transformation into a shadow had been halted by his escape from that place and its late master, this did not cause him to start reverting to a normal state of human being. Perhaps if he'd returned directly to Earth and limited or ceased the use of his shadow magic, that might have happened, but continuing to travel the more magically active realms of the multiverse while wielding his powers did the musician's uncertain physical state no favors. The greater Plane of Shadow does not touch all the realms of existence, and when cut off from it, the piper had only his own reserves of shadow magic to call upon - and nothing to replenish them with.
Alas, the two men lacked the necessary lore to recognize the danger before the damage had been done, but their other "companion" in the long hunt did not. A trained sorcerer, Plotcock saw the signs of the minstrel's slow death over several encounters and soon enough discerned the cause, which he immediately tried to leverage for an advantage, catching the piper in a trap that could drain him of the last of his shadow-essence, and then the soul-stuff beyond it - or, at its master's command, reverse the process, restoring the man's health and power.
The Scottish swordsman had proven BEYOND relentless in the pursuit of vengeance for lost friends, so what extremes might he go to in order to SAVE one whose life was not yet lost?
Sure enough, when presented with the choice, the hunter hesitated.
Unfortunately for Plotcock, the minstrel had long since guessed himself to be dying, if not precisely why, and was prepared for his end. Rather than allow himself to be used against his friend, he called up all the power left to him and played the pipes for a final time, pouring his literal soul into a song that shattered the binding circle and smote the demon sorcerer - but was not quite enough to kill him or keep him from once again casting a spell to teleport away before the Scotsman's blade ripped him open.
Quarry escaped, the Scotsman turned to his friend, but could do nothing except hear the man's last words as his body faded away like the shadow it so resembled. When it was over and he was alone once more, the warrior gathered up the bagpipes - the only thing of the minstrel's to remain - and tucked them into a Bag of Holding for safekeeping. He would mourn his brother in arms, but he would also honor his resolve and wishes, and not abandon the hunt.
What will you do with the pipes?
You bow your head for a moment of silence-
"Did the minstrel actually exterminate an entire PLANE'S worth of demons with those pipes?" Shadow Briar asks doubtfully. "Because that sounds like the sort of job that should have taken years at the very least, unless we're talking about a really tiny plane."
-which is very brief.
"He didn't, actually," her partner answers. "From what's written here, the minstrel inspired the other residents of that plane to take up the bagpipes themselves, and they're the ones who hunted down the demons."
Ambrose frowns. "Does it say anything about how long our wandering Scots were on that particular world?"
"About three weeks, why?"
"The bagpipes aren't the easiest instrument to learn how to play," the wizard replies with a slightly troubled expression, "much less to learn how to play WELL. I recall hearing somewhere that it takes six months to a year for a student to learn enough to actually begin playing a proper set of bagpipes, instead of just a practice chanter - the chanter's the recorder-like bit, there," he adds, gesturing at the instrument. "Pipers have separate ones for training."
You consider that. "So, what you're saying is, unless the minstrel was an almost impossibly good teacher or somebody was using magic to help things along," you say slowly, "there may be a plane of really BAD pipers out there?"
"I would hope that if they're still playing the pipes after all this time, they'd have learned how to make actual harmony by now," Ambrose says, shaking his head, "but it's also possible that they did something painfully silly like enshrining bad playing as a cultural legacy."
You would like to say that such a thing wouldn't happen, but who's to say that badly played bagpipes weren't especially effective in killing those particular demons, or perhaps in driving away other planar predators in the centuries since? Either would be a reason to commemorate the practice - maybe not a GOOD reason, but still.
While you have no idea where to even begin trying to play the bagpipes and probably can't afford the time or space it would take to learn, you really want to get a closer look at the magic bound up in the instrument. More than that, though, after hearing what the pipes and their previous owner went through, you'd like to make sure that wherever and whoever they end up with next is worthy of them, or at least has the potential to become so.
Gained the Wailing Pipes
Among the last few items for your consideration in this room is an old-fashioned and rather large key, about six inches long from the tip of the stem to the end of the bow. At first glance, you could mistake it for being made of spirit metal, as it has a similar bright, silvery sheen, but the aura about it is clearly arcane in nature, a mix of Abjuration and Summoning Magic. Another misleading first impression is the shape of the bit, which seems to be one solid piece that protrudes half an inch from beneath the shaft yet reveals very fine markings along its edges and sides when you gaze at it through Mage-Sight. Similar markings run the length of the shaft and about the bow, which is a solid trapezoid. The "hidden" lines are not quite straight, nor do they run to sharp angles, instead twisting and curving about, blending together and dividing again.
"That thing is somebody's idea of a joke," Ambrose mutters, "and not a very good one. It's a portal key, meant to open and close a specific planar passageway - by the markings, the way in question leads to one of the more chaotic realms, although the lack of an unholy aura suggests that it isn't a Hell-dimension or anywhere comparably nasty."
You nod. "And what makes you call it a bad joke?"
The wizard blinks. "A Silver Key? A key to the planes? Oh, wait, have you not read Lovecraft?"
Should you have?
"I find him to be an acquired taste. Paranoia, bigotry, and enough purple prose to choke your average romantic - and of course, weird tales of eldritch horror from beyond the fringes of logical space-time, which I have to deal with often enough as work, and don't particularly care to read about for leisure." Ambrose waves that off. "One of those stories, 'The Silver Key', involves a man using the eponymous artifact to travel back in time, and a subsequent story implies it allows him to cross space or other dimensions as well."
Ah. "But this Key doesn't do that?"
"No, it should just open the one metaphorical 'door', wherever it happens to be located."
Huh.
Finally, there is a stone tablet about ten inches to a side and an inch thick. The edges are ornately carved and set with gold tracery and a small gem at each corner, but the face of the thing is smooth, blank grey.
"A Tablet of Spell Storing," Balthazar says. "It works a bit like a Ring of Spell Storing, except that the spell or spells imbued into it retain the strength of their original caster, instead of being limited to their lowest functional level. It's also more difficult to use, and not just because of the size; activating whatever magic is contained within the Tablet requires you to be able to decipher Scrolls."
Seems like a lot of hassle for very little benefit.
The sorcerous shopkeeper shrugs. "The main advantages are that it doesn't take as much skill to craft the Tablet as it would a Ring, and that the process is quicker and less expensive."
With that, you have finished collecting your take from the Room of Random Stuff. There are just two more chambers to deal with. Which will you see to first?
Key, get.
Circle, into.
Vision, invoked.
Tome, read.
This Silver Key was created in 1941 by a magic-using monster named Belleth, who had indeed read some of Lovecraft's works-
"Called it," Ambrose says.
-and found them to be amusing on multiple fronts. For one, they evoked the helpless, uncomprehending terror in the face of superior entities and cosmic mysteries that was - at least in this reader's mind - the only natural and proper state of existence for mere humans. For another, various characters' attempts to harness, withstand, or escape the aforementioned forces and the subsequent dooms visited upon them tickled Belleth's funny bone. Thirdly, the stories were often uncannily accurate - at least in the broad strokes - about those inhuman powers, such that the monster rather regretted not discovering Lovecraft's works when the man was still alive, as there was definitely some sort of missed research opportunity there.
Once more, you look to Ambrose and Balthazar for clarity.
"There's debate about how much Lovecraft really knew about the supernatural and how he found out about it," Balthazar says. "He was an incredibly prolific writer of letters, carrying on correspondence with fellow authors and members of the amateur press about a wide range of topics and under a number of pennames. It's entirely possible that someone in that circle either provided him with the information or directed him to sources. Another line of thought is that Lovecraft's knowledge goes back to stories told to him by his maternal grandfather as a child, the exact sources of which aren't known, while a third group thinks that the man was a latent talent that happened to be 'tuned in' to some of the things he wrote about."
"Has anybody ever tried summoning his spirit and just... asking him?" you wonder.
"Several attempts are on record," Ambrose says. "All of them failed, which is part of why some people think Lovecraft must have been in contact with something that's either shielding his soul from the inquiries, or just ate it. Others figure that someone warded the body against being disturbed, but I happened to be in the area about forty years back and decided to stop by to take a look at the grave. Didn't find a thing out of the ordinary. Personally, I half-suspect that old E'ch-Pi-El just refuses to come back because he doesn't want to be anywhere near his own rotting corpse - not that there should be much more than cracked bones left of it by now..."
"Etch what now?" Briar wonders.
"One of those pennames I mentioned," Balthazar replies. "His initials, just pronounced a little more... eldritch."
"Oh."
Whatever the truth of these matters, Lovecraft's writings were still in Belleth's mind when the inhuman arcanist discovered and undertook to seize control of a recently opened portal between Earth and a small planar realm located within the ever-shifting chaos of the greater Plane of Limbo. Having cautiously explored the place on the other side of the gate and found it to be anomalously stable-
"Hmmm," Ambrose and Balthazar hum in unison.
"Bad sign?" Urahara guesses.
"Potentially," Ambrose replies. "Limbo is a sea of the stuff of pure chaos, creative and destructive in almost equal measure. It's common enough for pockets of that seething potentiality to coalesce into stable forms, at least temporarily, but they tend not to LAST unless there's someone there with a sufficiently powerful will to hold the place together and unchanged in the face of the wider plane's constant efforts to alter or unmake it."
-devoid of signs of intelligent life-
"Hmmm," comes the concerned sound once more.
-and rich in strange and wondrous elements that would be of great value to any practitioner, Belleth decided to claim the place, exploit its raw materials and ambient properties to advance his mastery of magic, and make more than a little money off of greedy, desperate human magic-users. To help ensure the secrecy and security of his find, he enclosed both ends of the portal within large physical gates-
"Naturally," Ambrose huffs.
-of which the Earthside member was as heavily warded against physical and mystical discovery as he could manage.
That could be annoying, you muse.
For all that your Dark Self's spell has said about the circumstances that contributed to the creation of the Silver Key, the item itself seems to have very little history apart from the times Belleth used it to unlock and then re-secure its partner Gate. The magic-using monster didn't carry the Key with him when he traveled, instead leaving it secure in a locked box in one of his residences, which he rotated between at periodic intervals.
The Silver Key came into the possession of the Wandenreich when they raided Belleth's current domicile fifteen years ago. Although it was obviously of considerable value to the arcanist, they were never able to determine its purpose.
Gained Belleth's Silver Key
You take a moment to try and picture yourself pulling a hundred cubic inches of stone out of your Arcane Pocket, and find yourself doubtful that the Tablet would fit through the physical opening. The spell makes whatever actual pocket you use as its focus a bit more flexible than normal - or maybe that's just your mastery of Summoning Magic coming through? - but there are still limits to how far the material can stretch without tearing something, and the Tablet probably wouldn't get more than a third of the way into the actual extra-dimensional storage space before it ran up against those limits.
For all that the thing only weighs a few pounds, walking around with a big chunk of shiny stone hanging most of the way out of your pocket is just not going to work.
Still, you suppose there might be some use in setting the Tablet up at home or in your future workshop. At the end of the day, you could load it up with a bunch of spells you're likely to use-
"How much magic can this thing hold?" you ask.
"If it's a typical example - and it does seem to be - then three spell levels' worth," Balthazar replies.
"But that's hardly anything!" your Dark Self protests.
"What he said," you state in agreement.
Mr. Blake just shrugs.
-make that two or three spells you're likely to use the following day, before calling it a night and promptly recovering the energy spent.
Another possibility is to study the Tablet and then make copies of it, preferably ones capable of holding more significant amounts of magic. You have a brief vision of lining your workshop's walls with ancient stone Tablets before dismissing it with a shake of your head as too impractical.
Gained Tablet of Spell Storing
Having cleared out your portion of the contents of the Room of Odds and Ends, you head down the hall to one of the last remaining chambers of loot. This one contains several racks - some hanging off of the walls, others placed atop small tables, and a few tall freestanding models simply there by themselves - all of which are holding various lengths and styles of wood, bone, crystal, and metal. There aren't terribly many of them, and with only two or three to a rack, it gives the room a certain empty feeling.
Looking things over and taking into account how much of your cut of the plunder you have left to "spend" claiming things, you decide to leave the Wands for now and get the room's more expensive contents sorted out.
One thing that catches your eye and causes you a certain momentary shock is what appears to be a sliver of ice about three feet long.
"Hey, an Ice Rod!" Briar exclaims.
"Cool!" her Shadow adds.
"Literally, even," Ambrose agrees dryly. "If you recognize it, I suppose I don't need to recite its uses-"
Urahara raises a hand. "For the ignorant in the room?"
"Ah. Well, a Rod of Ice is cool to the touch for the user, but can exert a painful chill to anyone or anything said user touches with it. It can also be used to flash-freeze a stretch of ground, although only once a day."
"Wait, that's it?" Briar asks, sounding disappointed.
"...yes?" the wizard replies, frowning in puzzlement. "I mean, you can also use the Rod to keep yourself a bit cooler in hot weather or to chill things - if you've got enough water, a cool storage area, and time, it works decently well for making ice - but that's about the extent of things."
"So, NOT an Ice Rod," your partner huffs.
"Not cool," her Shadow agrees.
Ambrose still looks confused for a moment, before the light of recall dawns. "That's right, your fairy kingdom's legendary Hero had a Rod that could freeze people and things at long range, didn't he?"
"He did," Briar agrees. "And 'freeze things' is very accurate. Monsters that aren't as powerful as Miss Akasha or most of the other things that turned up in the Ring would freeze SOLID if they got hit by a blast from an Ice Rod."
"And then you can SMASH them to pieces really easily!" the fairy's Dark Self adds with ghoulish glee. "Or at least, you can if you've got a Magic Hammer or the strength of a Goron..."
"Definitely the superior model," Ambrose agrees.
It's probably just as well for you that this isn't THAT grade of Ice Rod, though.
On the rack next to the disappointing Ice Rod is a three-foot-long iron bar with a flanged, conical head. Unlike the slightly fragile-looking icicle, this one looks solid enough to serve as a weapon, and it bears minor enhancements for that very purpose. In addition, you can pick up an aura of Divination Magic that is touched faintly by Necromancy.
"Oh, I recognize this one," Urahara says.
"Care to do the honors?" Balthazar offers.
"Delighted! ...unless you already know what it is, Alex...?"
"Not off the top of my head, no."
Urahara doesn't quite clap his hands. "So, what we have here is a Crypt Rod. When it's activated, it points out the nearest gravesite, whether that's a proper crypt, a common grave, or some other method of burial. It can distinguish between graves of different types of beings, so if you're looking for, say, a Quincy buried in the middle of a graveyard of ordinary humans, you can tell the Rod what to focus on. It can also be used to find the remains of a specific individual, if you have an item that person owned in life on hand."
Huh.
"An accurate summation," Ambrose approves. "If you don't mind my asking..."
"Karakura's high spiritual activity doesn't just attract Hollows," the Shinigami answers. "Every once in a while, we'll get a spiritualist or magic-user hoping to take advantage of the environment for their own reasons. The Crypt Rod that I ran into previously belonged to a necromancer of the more unpleasant sort; when we went through his notes afterwards, he turned out to have been VERY frustrated by Japanese funeral customs; he made the Rod to try and cut down on the amount of time he had to spend looking for actual bodies for his research."
You can definitely see how a cultural preference for cremation would annoy your average corpse-caller.
Shadow Alex reaches out gingerly, poking the Rod of Ice with one finger a couple of times in quick succession before actually taking hold of it and pulling it out of the rack.
"Not that cold, then?"
"Nowhere near as bad as real ice," he agrees. "Not even as bad as most things that have been in a freezer. More like a glass of water that was in the fridge for an hour or so."
Long enough to get nice and cool, then, but no worse than that.
The latest Spell of Literary Vision speaks of a sorceress named Ersilia-
Ambrose snaps his fingers, and Balthazar nods.
-whose powers were aligned with the Element of Ice, and who created and maintained a refuge in the Alps, so that she could enjoy a "comfortable" environment all year round. Unlike many another powerful magic-user, however, this was no isolated tower or frozen fortress that turned away all travelers just by its menacing appearance; rather, it took the form of a large and welcoming inn, with a roof that was almost perpetually covered in snow and sporting a few icicles. Travelers of all sorts were welcome, be they human, Fae, monster, or demon, living, dead, undead, or other, magical or mundane. The only sorts that were not periodically found in attendance were: beings strongly aligned with the Element of Fire, who almost never ventured to the region anyway; some of the more delicate creatures of Water, who could not tolerate the cold; corpse-demons-
This time, everybody nods.
-and various individuals or small groups that managed to get themselves banned by not obeying the rules of the establishment.
Said rules are, "All guests must sign in on arrival and out upon departure," "Be a good guest during your stay," "All bills are to be paid before departure"-
You nod, seeing perfectly sensible requests.
-"Don't pick a fight if you can't win and pay for your share of the damages"-
Wait, what?
-and "Death doesn't get you out of paying for anything."
Wordlessly, you turn to the experts.
"It's the signatures," Balthazar explains. "I've never been sure if she got some tips from Baba Yaga, learned the trick from a Winter Fae, or had a necromancer guest who paid their bill in a service, but part of the way Ersilia maintains good order in her place is by making sure that nobody gets further than the front desk without signing their names in her guest book, which enters them into a binding contract with the Inn and its staff, until such time as they sign the departure book and end the contract."
"How do the fights fit in?" Urahara asks.
"Ersilia's a practical girl," Ambrose replies. "Much as she may personally prefer non-violent solutions to interpersonal problems, if she were to ban fighting altogether, a good two-thirds of her customers would stop showing up, including some of her older friends. So, she gives them another outlet, keeps a couple of fighting pits available, and turns some extra profit providing odds, drinks, and snacks for the crowd."
"And the deaths?"
"The contract temporarily binds a dead guest's soul to their body and to Ersilia's territory until such time as they've worked off their debts," the wizard answers with a shrug. "Ersilia does make a point of encouraging any 'employees' she gets that way to settle their OTHER affairs before they'd made good on what they owe her, but not everybody can take a hint or come to terms with their fate in time to take advantage of that - the lady of the house doesn't stiff her working stiffs, if you will. I think she said once her longest-lasting debt was five years, and that because the man in question was an abrasive idiot who kept putting himself further into debt by getting into fights and gambling badly."
Urahara takes all that in, looking thoughtful.
"You're picturing Eleventh Division in this place, aren't you?"
"It definitely sounds like the sort of establishment they would enjoy visiting at least once," Urahara agrees, nodding. "I'm not so sure if the proprietress would care for the experience, though... probably for the best it's all the way over in Europe, rather than somewhere closer to Japan."
You nod. You can see a member of Captain Zaraki's thuggish getting concussed in a fight and wandering off at Shinigami speeds to some place he shouldn't be. Depending on where they were deployed and how long they could keep that sort of movement going, you could see an Eleventh Division member ending up in Korea, China, or Russia that way; alternately, they could get one of those long-term assignments for which gigai are supposed to be assigned and end up taking a boat or a plane.
Or they could just go AWOL. You can DEFINITELY see that happening with those guys.
You inquire of Ambrose and Balthazar what sort of contacts could be made or business done at this lady's establishment.
"People don't go to Ersilia's to do business, lad," Ambrose says with a shake of his head. "Her regulars go there to relax, catch up with old friends without having to wear disguises or worry about hunters, and get a cold drink, a hot meal, and a warm bed in the middle of an Alpine winter - and also for the occasional spot of violence," he adds. "Most of the rest of her customers are tourists, whether they came there on purpose or wandered in after getting lost in the mountains."
"Even if they got lost hundreds of miles away," Balthazar adds.
You blink. "Does the place move, or...?"
"I wouldn't be surprised if it had the ability," he admits. "Still, most of Ersilia's 'unexpected guests' turn up on her doorstep because she's made deals with all sorts of entities residing in and around those mountains to send people in trouble or headed towards places that they really shouldn't be her way. She provides single-use teleportation tokens tied into the wards on her place, and when the owners find someone who they think needs help or that they just want off their snow-covered lawn without having to deal with search parties and the like, they get the tokens on them and let Ersilia deal with the matter from there."
...huh.
Getting back to the Literary Vision, the Ice Rod was created by Ersilia for one of her great-granddaughters, who worked at the inn for several years and needed a little something to help her make a point against unruly customers. The young lady in question eventually quit that job to get married - her future spouse being a member of the Wandenreich who'd been one of those "unexpected guests" and had subsequently become a regular customer - and she tried to return the Rod to Ersilia, only to be told to keep it, as she had more than paid for it over the years and might find it handy in the future.
If she did, it isn't mentioned in your Shadow's notes. All that's said is that Ersilia's great-grandson-in-law kept the Rod after his wife passed away, and that it ended up in a collection when that man died about forty years ago.
Honestly, you don't see much point in keeping this weapon. You can casually throw out Ice Elemental cantrips that do almost as much damage at range as it can by getting in close, your actual spellcasting leaves it in the diamond dust, and if you REALLY wanted something like this, you'd build the superior Hyrulean variety.
It's not really an ideal gift, either, as the only one of your circle of friends who has any sort of affinity for Ice is Katara, and despite living at the South Pole, her specialty is really more broadly Water-based than winter-specific. You're also pretty sure that Sokka would tease his sister about getting a magic ice-stick, and possibly get himself whapped with it as a result, which wouldn't be good for either of the siblings OR the Ice Rod. Your fellow carnivore has a pretty hard head...
So, for now, you'll leave Ersilia's work alone. Maybe you can return it to her later?
Shadow Alex switches the Ice Rod out for the Crypt Rod and re-casts the much-used Divination Spell, noting in passing that he's starting to run out his mana again.
"After this, I've got three more castings for sure," he lets you know. "Maybe four."
The Crypt Rod before you was created by a necromancer who had grown frustrated by the difficulties in securing corpses with non-human ancestry for research and development of his dark art. Human corpses were plentiful in the extreme, cheap to reanimate, and easy to control in large numbers, but they had a tendency to fall short when one needed a big nasty thing to serve as meatshield and/or beatstick against other big nasty things. Converting human bodies to more powerful undead forms was possible, but the Ritual to Create Undead was not within this necromancer's means at the time, and most of the undead it could create were intelligent, which made them less trustworthy and harder to control - this on top of the extra effort needed to retain command over their greater forms.
Corpses of monsters, large animals, and the occasional demon that didn't essentially self-destruct after death were more cost-effective and reliable as guardians, not to mention more likely to yield new insights into the mysteries of death than yet another human body, but these were also harder to come by. So as not to have to spend weeks of time digging up entire graveyards in search of rare bodies, this necromancer created a Crypt Rod and would make routine sweeps of burial sites in his native city and any other settlements his business happened to take him to. He did not often find pure monsters - and demons were even rarer - but the corpses of various hybrids gradually made their way into the man's service as particularly high-quality zombies, which he was careful to keep in good order.
It was this necromancer's fondness for reanimating non-humans which got him into trouble with the Quincy. As Urahara said, Crypt Rods are capable of surprising precision if they are modified correctly, and after seeing one of the spirit-archers in action, the necromancer made sure to make such adjustments, hoping to find himself a Quincy corpse or three to study.
He succeeded.
Needless to say, the Quincy were NOT happy about it, and once the offending necromancer and his "abomination" had been destroyed, his notes and belongings were seized and transferred to Silbern. The Crypt Rod was studied for some time, in the hope of discovering a means of warding burial sites against its power to avert future desecrations-
"A simple lead lining on the interior surface would do it," Ambrose notes.
-but once that was done, it ended up as another trophy.
While you aren't in need of any corpses for necromantic purposes, the ability to track down dead bodies as accurately as this item allows could be useful to you, particularly in Sunnydale. If it can be used to track corpse-demons-
"It can't," Balthazar interjects. "Once the demonic essence has reanimated the body, it's not properly a 'corpse' anymore, and once it's out of the grave and walking around, it's definitely not buried."
-okay, then; what about corpses that are INFECTED with that demonic essence but still lying in their graves in the process of turning?
"THAT will work," Ambrose says with some approval. "You might experience some difficulty getting a lock in the latter portion of the reanimation process, especially at night, but before then and during daylight hours, the corpse will still pretty much be a corpse - it'll just happen to have something ELSE inside it."
That right there makes this thing stupidly useful for future bloodrat-culling missions, and if you upgrade it so that it COULD detect corpse-demons even after they've dug themselves out of the earth, and maybe even other types of undead... well.
Gained Crypt Rod
Before then, though, you might want to put in a little more work with Lu-sensei in the proper use of one-handed weapons of the smashy, crushy style. You're not terrible with them, but you could be better and probably SHOULD be, if you - or more realistically, your Shadow - will be roaming the streets with a magical mace in hand.
Next among your potential selection is a rod of polished wood that Balthazar and Briar identify as mahogany. It's about two and a half feet long and has been etched with images of whirling stormclouds and a single lightning bolt, and when you peer at it with your Mage Sight, you sense an aura of Elemental Magic, specifically of the Elements of, unsurprisingly, Thunder and Lightning - though you note that the latter leans more towards "Light" than pure electrical power.
"This noisy little number is variation on the Rod of Thunderous Force," Ambrose declares. "With a normal model, you'd slam it on the ground, and it would release a blast that knocks everyone other than you within about twenty feet on their butts, leaving them temporarily hard of hearing to boot. The force is dispersed enough that it doesn't usually harm anyone or anything it catches, but being magical force, it can affect incorporeal targets like ghosts as easily as more physical threats. Not much as a weapon, but a good way of opening a hole to make a run for it when you have no backup and too many enemies to deal with."
"And how is this one different?" you ask.
"I suspect its creator either saw a riot squad at work or was inspired by a thunderstorm," the wizard says, "because they seem to have realized that the Rod would be an even better distraction if it could also BLIND the enemy, and turned it into a flash-bang, instead of just a bang."
Huh.
Next are a set of five flat iron bars which, unlike the other devices in this room, are all lined up side-by-side on the same rack. Three feet long, each of them has a slightly raised button at one end, and they all give off the same aura of Augmentation Magic.
Ambrose walks up, slides one of the Rods out of the rack, and holds it out at about waist height, clicking the button with his thumb and causing the Rod's aura to shift in your sight. When he lets go a moment later, the item simply hangs there in mid-air.
"Behold," the wizard declares with a grand tone and gesture. "The Practically Immovable Rod."
"Only 'practically'?" Urahara asks.
"They can support or otherwise resist about three and a half tons of force before they start to move out of position," is the response. "Or more like four tons for the Americans in the room. That's certainly immovable for most practical purposes, but not for ALL purposes."
"True enough."
"Also, due to the way their energy matrix interacts with the auras of sentient creatures, they're somewhat easier to move by INTENT than by incidental pressure. Still a bitch and a half, though."
"Were these all a matching set?" you ask, looking over the devices. Apart from a few small scratches here and there, they might as well be identical.
"They were. La Renarde seems to have been a believer in being well-prepared."
Oh.
As if to make up for the abundance of unmoving iron rods, the next rack has just one device, a length of metal inscribed with arcane characters associated with the Schools of Necromancy, Transformation, and Summoning - the latter in the context of general planar interactions, rather than the actual conjuring of a creature or thing. The aura hovers on the edge of being faint or moderate to your arcane-seeing eyes.
Some of those characters, you note, also describe spell calculations. Is this...?
"A Lesser Metamagic Rod of Ectoplasmic Spellcasting," Balthazar says. "It can be used to enhance any spell up to and including the third tier so that it will retain its normal effectiveness against ethereal or incorporeal entities. Expensive, and it only works three times a day, but it's still a handy tool if you're expecting to deal with ghosts and haven't gotten the Metamagic formula down on your own."
"Did it belong to one of the necromancers we've covered today?" you ask.
"It wasn't with their gear, or Hong's," your fellow sorcerer replies.
Hm. And the aura definitely isn't strong enough for you to get a Vision from it. Disappointing, but...
You aren't sure if you want to keep this fairly literal boom-stick or not, so you decide to have Shadow Alex take a look at its history, hoping that it will help you make up your mind.
The Blinding Rod of Thunderous Force-
And like that, you have a name.
-was created by a sorcerer specializing in Elemental Magic. Calling himself "Crash," his particular affinity was not for any of the major elements as you know them, but rather for the conceptual force of... well, Force. Flash and thunder (but not quite proper Thunder), shock and awe (but not Lightning), fire and fury (but not truly Fire), raw destructive power on demand-!
And also various constructs of shimmering energy fields, but apparently this guy found the normal manifestations of things like Mage Armor and Shield and Wall of Force to be too boring, because he'd altered his own versions to make it look like they were made of perpetual blast waves, literally blowing threats away from his person.
Truly, there was no better way of describing this sorcerer's particular aspect than to dub it: [ Explosion ].
Befitting a man with such a supernatural aptitude, Crash liked to blow things up - a lot - and being a sorcerer, he was well-suited to do so on a regular basis, a fact that he took full advantage of when his powers came in during his later teen years.
Punks in the schoolyard? Chased off with explosions.
Barking dogs in the neighborhood that would not shut their yaps? Spooked silent by explosions.
Vampires going after a buddy? Exploded with malice aforethought, afterthought, and in-the-middlethought - except for the ones that were deliberately allowed to run away, so that Crash and his gang could track the thing back to its nest, come back in the middle of the day to blow down the doors and shine some light on things, and then loot whatever was left.
You note that, despite gaining his magic around the same age as Brontes the American Storm-Sorcerer, Crash went a very different direction, and this despite having such a passion for the destructive applications of Force-magic. The difference, you think, may lie in the fact that Brontes was not mentioned as having any particularly close confidants before he got his powers, and certainly not afterwards; consequently, when his ego started getting out of control and the bad idea fairy came to visit, there was nobody to suggest that maybe, possibly, he wasn't actually a demigod or anything and that starting a crime spree wasn't such a hot idea.
As noted, Crash had buddies that he didn't hesitate to use his magic in front of, who were willing to back him up against vampires and other weirdness even though they didn't have superpowers of their own. THAT is a definite sign of friendship right there, and if these people weren't freaking out about their friend's ability to blow things apart by looking at them funny, odds are decent they would have been willing to call him on it if he started going overboard.
So: why create this Rod?
For starters, and again, as previously said, Mr. Noisy's friends were not so blessed as to be able to invoke bomb-blasts at will, and he believed in sharing the supernatural wealth.
Likewise, Mr. Personality had enemies, ranging from angry neighbors and law enforcement officials to vengeful demons and magic-users bent on silencing him.
And then, of course, there is the fact that no sorcerer's power lasts forever-
"Though some last longer than others," Ambrose observes, glancing at you, your Shadow, and Balthazar.
-and there inevitably comes a time when you could really use just one more teeny-tiny itty-bitty boom, and simply don't have the gas in the tank to pull it off. Though there were also those times when you were surrounded by people you didn't want to HURT but also didn't want to CATCH you, and you needed a way out.
Thus, the Rods - or as their maker liked to call them, "BRooT Force!"
The Briars start laughing.
You and your Shadow join your partners in expressing your approval of the amusing acronym.
"Young people," Ambrose sighs. "So easily amused."
Him, you just huff at.
Returning to the tale, you learn that Crash handed out BRooT Force Rods to each of his buddies, along with other items, as he was able to make them. Being self-taught, as so many sorcerers are, neither the Force-caster nor his friends realized the risks of being in debt to a magic-user, even one that's a close personal friend, and while their assistance in raiding vampire nests and other demonic lairs helped to keep their accounts reasonably balanced for a time, the day eventually came where Crash's companions owed him too much for their own good.
Things began happening - or rather, things had been happening for a while that were making life harder than it needed to be for various members of the group, as the natural ebb and flow of forces around Crash tried to balance out. Initially easily dismissed as minor, unrelated cases of bad, good, and simply odd luck and the "natural" consequences of dealing with "the creepy and the weird" as often as they did, the strange events continued to increase in frequency and severity until the group of adventurous teens was forced to acknowledge that something was going on. Explosions were reluctantly put on hold in favor of investigating the ongoing oddities, and once they started asking questions, it didn't take long at all for the truth to be confirmed.
Some of Crash's friends laughed it off as an honest mistake, paid their dues, and were good, but others were not so fortunate in their backgrounds and circumstances. Some owed the young sorcerer too much to easily repay, if ever, and at least one, the "owner" of the Rod before you, was too angry to. Accusing Crash of deliberately setting the rest of them up to become his personal slaves-
"Not a COMPLETELY unfounded accusation," Ambrose sighs, "but as ever, teenagers and amateurs will leap to the most dramatic conclusions, given half a chance..."
-he broke off all contact with the sorcerer and most of their circle of friends and departed town after graduation, leaving behind everything that had been made for him.
"Would that work?" you ask, frowning as you calculate the ratio of debt to sacrifice. "Because I don't think that would work."
"Not the way he did it, no," the wizard agrees. "Depending on how much the excessively dramatic one owed Crash, formally returning some or all the items he'd been gifted might have been enough to clear his debt, or at least reduce it to a manageable level and keep it from building up so quickly going forward. Giving up his friendships COULD have qualified as a sacrifice and settled the debt outright, provided he genuinely kept his distance from those people in the future, except that one of those friends WAS the sorcerer this boy owed, and the rest of them were the SORCERER'S friends. Instead of getting himself out of trouble, the over-reacting young idiot just made things WORSE."
"And not just mystically," Balthazar notes.
Yeah, cutting ties with all of your friends would HURT, not just in the moment, but in the future as well. That's WHY it would qualify as a sacrifice.
Whatever happened to Crash's ex-friend as a result of his bad choice isn't stated. Instead, the Leatherbound Book describes the sorcerer's reaction to the sudden separation, which naturally involved explosions: some verbal; others mystical; and all of them emotional. He didn't fully calm down until post-graduation, when he and his remaining friends discovered their compatriot had departed - at which point Crash fumbled his way through the same calculations you just did and realized his buddy had just set himself up for some serious hurt.
To try and avoid that outcome, Crash took back the tools he'd made for his friend and sold them to different interested parties for as much profit as he could - and not just financial, which wouldn't have been enough to settle things, at least not without the sort of markup that nobody he was dealing with would pay. Instead, Crash and his remaining friends selected people and things that would be most likely to USE the items they bought, in ways that should ultimately benefit the sorcerer's group.
Thanks to a Wand of Command Undead and a little schmoozing, a trio of corpse-demons in a nearby town gleefully purchased a few explosive charms comparable to grenades from a "wandering sorcerer," so that they could easily remove the leader of the local nest and take over the territory. How unfortunate for them that said master had recently purchased an Amulet of Protection from Explosions-
So, that's a thing.
-with an eye towards removing the "noisy mortal" so that it could it expand its territory. The nest-leader thus lasted long enough to kill two of its surprised would-be usurpers and critically injure the third, before succumbing to its own wounds.
Bracers of Mage Armor, modified slightly to no longer have a visual manifestation, were sold to an in-the-know cop who wanted something to make him a little less breakable the next time he ran into a demon on patrol. Getting an ally inside the system was a nice bonus.
As for the Blinding Rod of Thunderous Force, it didn't find any buyers in or around Crash's hometown, which led to him making a road-trip to Georgetown-
"Which one?" Balthazar asks.
"Guyana."
-to sell the thing. It was taken off his hands for a good price by a dealer in arcane wares who sounds like a wealthier version of Gen, and who was willing to pay as well as he did for the sake of potentially securing a new source of magical goods. How that relationship developed afterwards isn't mentioned; the tale just states that the Rod was eventually purchased by the city's unofficial supernatural S.W.A.T. team, who put it to work as a reusable flash-bang, which helped them to clear a few demonic nests and the workshop-crypt of a troublesome necromancer, as well as disable a forming mob of civilians who'd been afflicted by a violence curse.
Things went a bit south for that team when they tried to enforce local ordinances on a Wandenreich unit that had set up in the city. Nobody seems to have been killed, at least in that encounter, but the Rod was seized by the Quincy and eventually ended up in Silbern.
That was... only five years ago? Huh.
Decent odds that Crash and his friends may still be alive, then.
You have quite a few options at hand for situations where you've been surround by enemies, ranging from invoking an immediate Teleport to raising an Emergency Force Sphere to unleashing Din's Fire, as seems best for the situation - and that's not even getting into the non-magical possibilities. As you run down the list, however, harmless area-affecting options are a distinct minority, so taking this flash-bang Rod might be worth your time.
And that's assuming you keep it for yourself. Any of your friends in Sunnydale and Karakura could easily find themselves in a situation where this device would be a literal lifesaver. You've only got the one, but figuring out how it works and making your own versions would be doable.
That DOES raise the question of whether or not you'd owe Crash royalties for using his design, but hey - it's another reason to try to visit the guy! Maybe he has more of these to sell? Or other neat exploding toys?
Gained Blinding Rod of Thunderous Force
You can levitate, fly, make like Spider-Man, transform into various other creatures capable of going over, around, or through many obstacles, or straight-up teleport to bypass the same. You also have various means of sealing doors, ranging from magical locks to making the door unrecognizable for what it is to simply walling it up.
There aren't a lot of things that an Immovable Rod can do which you aren't capable of doing just as well under your own power.
That said, the ability to provide eight thousand pounds' worth of "lift" at a moment's notice is one thing these Rods can do that you can't easily replicate. You can ALMOST do it, if you ritually cast the Spell to Create a Telekinetic Sphere, but that requires eight whole minutes of effort and only gets you a bit over half the same force of one Rod - or an eighth of the entire set.
That's a lot of oomph, and you're sure you can find some uses for it.
On top of that, the Immovable Rods are likely to be a lot more handy for your friends and family, who aren't so mystically gifted as you.
And quite aside from all of that, they were another bit of La Reynard's gear. You'd like to "complete the set," as it were.
So, into the Bag of Holding they go.
Gained Immovable Rods x5
Pass up the very first Metamagic Rod you've ever laid eyes on, and with it the opportunity to see how these things are made? You must be joking.
Gained Lesser Metamagic Rod of Ectoplasmic Spellcasting
The next item on the block is not a Rod, but a proper Staff. Six feet tall, the dark wood is carved with images of bones and skulls and strange, spidery runes - runes you can easily interpret as sigils of necromantic power.
"A fairly classic Staff of Necromancy," Balthazar says. "It's been inscribed with one spell from each of the first six circles, including the Spell of Enervation and the Spell to Create a Circle of Death - so if you take it, please, be very careful where you use it."
"On that note," Ambrose adds, "most of its internal charges were used up before it got to us. There's only two left, which shouldn't be enough to trigger the 'kill almost every living thing within forty feet' function."
Ah. An item with the power to cast a spell you don't know, and which you don't particularly WANT to know.
Does this count as irony?
There is also a... shovel? Again? This one's not made of spirit-metal, instead having a sturdy, well-polished wooden shaft-
"Oak," Briar notes.
-and the sort of blade that's meant to dig through dirt and loose stones rather than snow. Its aura is a curious mix of Augmentation, Elemental Earth (both expected), and Summoning Magic (what?).
"Your guess is as good as ours," Ambrose says with a shrug. "Unless you're going to read another story, of course."
Well, then.
You have what you would consider very reasonable concerns about a magic item that can simply kill everyone around it, particularly when it's something like a Staff. You've never handled such a thing before, much less made one, but from your studies you are aware that Staves are unusual among magic items for being able to draw upon their wielder's magical power to enhance their own functions. A Staff in the hands of a powerful magic-user actually becomes more powerful itself, with all of its existing abilities hitting harder, affecting more targets and larger areas, and/or being more difficult to resist, as their particular parameters merit.
Granted, there shouldn't be a lot of necromancers on Earth who have access to sixth-circle spells, much less the more powerful secrets of their preferred School, but there are plenty of lesser spellcasters who'd be perfectly happy to claim the thing as-is.
While the potential future (mis)uses of the Staff are troubling, you find the question of its history almost as bothersome, in no small part because it may have a fairly powerful prior owner-slash-creator out there who'd like to have their property back - and who might make an attempt to recover it, now that the Staff is no longer locked up in Silbern with the Wandenreich's massed forces around it.
With that in mind, you feel it best to have Shadow Alex spend one of his remaining uses of the Spell of Literary Vision to check up on the past of this device, just to make sure that any potential future troubles arising from it won't catch you off-guard.
...
"Oh, hey," your Dark Self says a moment later. "This belonged to the guy that owned the Darkskull."
The Staff was created in 1916, its creator taking advantage of the ongoing deaths along the Western Front to empower his creation - from a safe distance, of course - which would readily explain where the item's power to inflict fear, widespread fatigue, and sudden mass death came from even if its maker HADN'T been a necromancer. Said corpse-caller made extensive use of his creation in the years that followed, and often resorted to scaled-down versions of the rituals he'd originally used to empower the Staff in order to recharge it.
The impression you get from Shadow Alex's recitation is that the Staff was involved in and responsible for a large amount of death and horror, but only a comparatively short list of just under a dozen incidents is provided, detailing several battles with rival magic-users, a few encounters with demons, and of course, run-ins with the Quincy. Also listed as a significant moment in the Staff's history is its master's transition to lichdom, which he underwent in 1925 due to his advancing age. He only had a decade to "enjoy" having escaped his mortal coil before the Wandenreich destroyed him and his phylactery in 1936.
It would seem that the necromancer was attacked while in the middle of one of his death-fed empowerment rituals, an act of timing that suggests Jugram's hand - or rather, his borrowed eyes - but apparently that rite was more in the nature of a sensible "topping off" of the Staff's mostly-full reserves than anything else, for the necromancer was able to use its power against his Wandenreich assailants several times before somebody blew his arm off at the shoulder.
Some attempts were made to study the Staff of Necromancy after it was captured, but it was a little too potent an arcane creation for the Quincy to make much progress. More than that, they just didn't like the feel of the thing; being regularly "fed" by so much death had given it an unpleasant aura a bit reminiscent of Hollows and other man-eaters, which led to it being locked up under heavy aura-suppressing wards.
You take another "look" at the Staff, this time with your spiritual senses, and nod at the cold, not-quite-hungry feeling you get from the thing.
Your plans for the not-too-distant future involve building yourself a proper workshop, which will require breaking at least some earth. A magical shovel would be useful for that, and it will definitely come in handy if you need to go digging for reagents again - at least as long as it doesn't involve cutting into a glacier. Not that there's anything specifically preventing you from using the Shovel for moving snow and loose ice or chipping at more solid formations, but that's not really what it's MEANT for. The right tool for the right job, and all that.
As the experts were stumped by this item-
"It's a BIG pile of loot, alright?"
-you request Shadow Alex to break out his spell of historical revelations once more.
"Alright, but I've only got one more shot after this, and I might disappear in the middle of it - so if I do, it's your fault."
"Just cast the spell, you... me."
The Gravedigger's Shovel-
"Charming," Ambrose says lightly.
-was previously owned by the same necromancer that you just heard about, but it wasn't made by that man. Evidently, the Shovel's creator was one of the much more tolerable sorts of necromancer, making a living as a mortician, undertaker, and all-around respectful handler of dead bodies - his actual STUDIES were performed only on bodies whose prior owners had donated them, or the corpses of animals. He created the unusual Staff to ease the process of digging fresh graves, but also to give him a quick and less-than-lethal answer to the sort of adventurous soul who saw a wizard digging in a graveyard, immediately thought "evil necromancer stealing corpses," and didn't stop to ask questions before attacking.
Which isn't exactly the WRONG response when it really IS an evil necromancer, but it's frustrating for the ones that honestly aren't trying to disturb anybody.
The Shovel's ability to conjure a temporary pit full of spikes was included as a precaution against the REALLY unfriendly sorts. There's no mention of it ever being used.
Anyway, the Shovel's creator was killed by the OTHER necromancer, who stole all his research and found it amusing to reanimate the man as an advanced kind of zombie that retained just enough of its prior magical knowledge and power to be able to use and recharge the Shovel. The unfortunate body remained in the service of its master for some thirty years, before the Wandenreich finished them both off.
Gained Gravedigger's Shovel
Turning to the older men again, you ask, "Just to be clear, if I decide I don't want to keep the Staff of Necromancy, would one of you be taking it, would we be destroying it, or would we be selling it?"
"Between its origins and its specific powers, I'd honestly prefer to see the thing destroyed," Ambrose admits.
"I tend to agree," Balthazar concurs.
"I don't think I could afford it," Urahara says, "and even if I could, I'm pretty sure I couldn't actually do anything with it. Taking that and the potential for misuse into account, I'd have to agree with destroying it. Although, if I could observe...?"
Anyway, that's three in favor of permanent disposal. Figuring that you might as well make it unanimous-
"Agreed," you state.
"Agreed," your Shadow chimes in.
"Likewise."
"What she said."
-you do so.
Next on the block are a couple of racks' worth of Wands.
"That's a lot of Wands," Briar notes.
"And they all just do the one thing, instead of being... well, like in Harry Potter?" Urahara asks.
"As a rule, yes," Ambrose replies. "There can be some variation, though. From time to time, you'll find a Wand that can not only cast its default spell, but also expend multiple charges to produce a greater, related effect. Sometimes that's an extra projectile, like when you're dealing with Magic Missile or Searing Ray; other times, it's just a boost to raw damage, like if you had an oven dial for the intensity of Burning Hands - or in this case, Burning Wand; and every so often, it'll be a Wand that can cast a Communal version of its regular power. Then there are the so-called 'Eternal Wands,' which are more like hybrids of Wand and Rod design, giving you the ability to cast a specific spell a set number of times per day."
"There ARE such things as general-purpose focus wands," Balthazar admits, "but the majority of those are just channels for the caster's own power, rather than inherently magical devices. Exceptions exist, of course, but wands are fragile enough to make it a little risky to put too much power into them. That's also part of the reason why typical Wands can only contain spells up to the fourth tier or so; holding more powerful magic takes something tougher than a simple twig, or at least much better-prepared than one."
"Not only that," Briar says, "but thanks to all those kid's stories and TV shows that depict witches, wizards, and magical girls relying on wands, they're something even the regular folks ASSOCIATE with magic, and they don't have much other use. You can potentially get away with pulling a Wand out of your sleeve and casting a quick spell before you tuck it away again, but if you HAD to have the thing out all the time to cast ANY magic, you'd be a lot more obvious. Which annoys some people and things."
You've been picking through plunder and listening to tales of yore for over five hours, now, and given the times of day you all started at - and in your personal case, the depleted state of your mana reserves - none of the arcane spellcasters in the room are really in ideal condition to be taking apart a magic item as powerful as the Staff of Necromancy.
That doesn't mean you couldn't DO it, or at least that Ambrose and/or Balthazar couldn't, but why strain yourselves and take chances when there's no need to? The Staff isn't going anywhere, its maker and only prior owner is very, very dead, and nobody outside of the Drake Estate knows you have the thing. You can afford to take your time, rest up, and come back to dispose of the thing another day.
And you have no issue with Urahara being present to observe that event.
Heck, if Ambrose doesn't mind, the Shinigami could use the opportunity to prepare some of his gizmos and then bring them along to monitor the process, giving him better intel on the whole procedure.
At that, Urahara looks from you to Ambrose.
"We'll talk after this," the wizard says.
A smiling Urahara tips his bucket-hat to the two of you.
You sort through the collection of Wands, considering your options.
The Wand of Summon Nature's Ally IV is a definite must-take. While Briar's tutelage - how long ago it seems, now - gave you command over the first two tiers of that spell-chain, you're only able to access the higher forms via ritual-casting, which isn't nearly as convenient.
It must be said that Wands are not as useful as Scrolls when it comes to the matter of learning new spells. A Scroll has all the instructions and most of the calculations necessary to cast a spell laid out for and awaiting the input of a few final variables from the user, making transcribing or internalizing the formulas a straightforward matter. A Wand, on the other hand, is a delivery system whose use has been simplified almost to the level of "point and shoot"; some or all of its spell matrix is locked away inside the thing, inaccessible unless you crack it apart and ruin the item, which is a rather wasteful approach.
But being able to observe the spell in operation, as it's cast in the non-ritual manner, is a useful and instructive thing all the same, and will save you time trying to learn the fourth iteration of the druidic Summoning Spell. And if it eats a few charges in the process? The Wand has enough of them that it won't be a concern.
The Wands of Consecration, Greater Invisibility, and Lesser Restoration are not so pressing to nab, as you already know the spells in question and each of them is rather situational - but when said situations arise, being able to cast the spells without digging into your mana reserve would be convenient, and there's enough charges left in these wands for you to get a fair bit of mileage out of them.
As for the other Wands...
None of your associates other than Briar would be able to use the Wands of Barkskin or Bless, and those are also spells that you've already learned, so they're out.
You are the only one in your current circle who could use the Wand of Magic Missile, and you could honestly get better results by casting the spell yourself one time than the Wand's depleted charges would allow it to. Again, not worth it.
The Wand of Bestow Curse is RIGHT out.
"Are you sure?" Shadow Alex says.
"Are you KIDDING?"
"No, seriously, think about it. The power is coming entirely from the WAND."
...
In spite of yourself - and also BECAUSE of your (other) self - you think about it.
...
He... kind of has a point. The problem you've had with casting curses in the past is not only that the act resonates so strongly with Ganondorf's history and memories, but also that the power for them was channeled through your soul, where you KNOW the Curse of Demise is lurking. Said Curse has caused more than one aspect of your magic to exhibit undesirable qualities, with the alarming results of your hastily aborted attempts at proper curse-calling just being the most extreme and unpleasant manifestation of that.
But as your Dark Self has pointed out, all of a Wand's power comes from the Wand, not its user. That's kind of the whole point of the things, storing power well ahead of time so that it can be used later - and since YOU aren't the original source of the power invested in that Wand, the Curse has no bearing on it.
...should you?
That leaves the Wand of Mage Armor, which you ARE a bit tempted to take and hand off to Amy or her mother, but after some thought, you decide to leave it. Your reasoning is that, if a situation arises where one of the Madison ladies unexpectedly needs to defend herself or someone else against supernatural menace, Mage Armor won't actually STOP the assailant - at best, it will slow them down, and potentially not even that - whereas if they have time to prepare, actually casting the spell themselves would make it last longer and let them apply other tricks.
Gained Wands
Ambrose is not the only one who laughs at your remark.
Your Dark Self makes a very good point, but the Demon King's Curse lurking in your soul isn't the only reason you have to be leery of casting lesser curses. Ganondorf was just too fond of this sort of Dark Magic for you to feel entirely comfortable about using it yourself, regardless of the actual mechanism, and that goes double for the Spell to Bestow a Curse, which is rather open-ended by design.
Normally, a versatile spell is a wonderfully useful thing, but in this instance, it simply gives the King of Evil's influence too many avenues to creep into - or out of - any such curse you would bestow upon a target.
At least most OTHER spells classified as curses are fairly specific in what they can and can't do, curtailing the opportunity for things to go sideways, such as by turning into monsters and eating their victims alive, to mention a pertinent example.
Anyway, you leave that Wand where it is, and move on.
The next item is an... undersized rod? An oversized wand? Regardless, the shaft is about eighteen inches long and as thick as your thumb, with a single thread of gold winding about it from the butt towards the head, which is a five-pointed star perhaps two inches across at the widest points. Small gems glitter here and there along the length of the thing and at the tips and vertices of the star, their colors - and in the former case, placement - rather random, while a single, larger piece of emerald glimmers in the center of the star, visible from both sides.
The presence of that one stone reminds you rather keenly of the Chaos Emerald, both for its coloration and because the rod-wand-thing as a whole gives off an aura of uncertainty.
"Oooh," the Briars chorus.
"A Wand of Wonder," Ambrose says sourly. "Also known as a Rod of Wonder, 'That Useless Piece of Junk,' 'Fairybait'-"
"Rude, but fair."
"-and 'Grrrraaaargh!'"
"It creates a random magical effect each time it's activated, ranging from the harmlessly annoying to the strangely useful to the dangerously unpredictable," Balthazar takes over. "Said effects are usually around the level of a third-tier spell, but it can vary up or down."
"How random are we talking, here?" you ask. "One chance in ten? One in twenty? More?"
Wizard and sorcerer shake their heads. "There's no way to know without actually using it," Balthazar replies.
"Oh, can we?" Briar asks.
"Pretty please?" her Shadow pleads.
On the next rack is a three-foot-long shaft of ebony that almost seems to absorb the light around it. The head is thick enough that you could see it serving as a good club, but its aura is an intriguing mix of Divination and Darkness, two forces that you don't often see together. Usually it's the opposite, with Dark Magic being used to obscure whatever the Divination is looking for...
"A Rod of Shadows," Ambrose says. "The bearer is able to see as clearly in mundane darkness and common forms of magical darkness as they would in broad daylight, and can also touch the Rod to any nearby object to create an area of Deeper Darkness centered on that object. Conveniently enough, said Darkness does not hinder the Rod's user, while being intense enough to blind most supernatural beings and render nonmagical light sources or illumination spells of the second circle or lower useless; in addition, at a radius of sixty feet, it's large enough that even fast-moving creatures tend to get stuck in it for a while."
The fact that the Rod is shaped like it's meant for breaking heads is not a coincidence, then.
"How well does it work against corpse-demons?" you ask.
"Visually speaking, it screws them over as much as it would the next demon," Ambrose replies cheerfully. "As long as the next demon isn't actually a devil, of course. Just be sure to mind their hearing and sense of smell."
Hm.
You step forward, reach up to the Wand - you're going to call it that going forward, if only for the alliterative quality - and pluck it from its resting place, holding it high in proper fashion.
"Da-da-da-DAAA!"
Gained Wand of Wonder
"Yaaaay!"
"Yay?" Shadow Alex exclaims with some puzzlement. "I mean, yay!"
"Yay," Ambrose sighs. "I would take it as a kindness if you would refrain from using that thing anywhere I'll have to deal with the fallout."
As you're handing the device over to Shadow Alex to investigate its history, you stop and stare at the wizard with sudden concern. "When you say 'fallout,' do you mean in a general sense, or the specific one?"
"Hm? Oh, no, don't let my annoyance mislead you. As dangerous as these things can occasionally be, I've yet to hear even a rumor of one of them that involved nuclear radiation."
Whew.
The wizard goes on: "Hard to say if that's because the Wands are specifically incapable of reproducing the effects, or because the creator of the original didn't know what radiation WAS and didn't include the potential for it in his work, and everybody else has just been tapping into his design over the millennia..."
Another reason to want to read its past, then.
Shadow Alex sets up the device, takes a deep breath to steady himself, and then casts what will be this manifestation's final Literary Vision.
His form actually wavers slightly as the spell takes effect, telling you that he is REALLY low on mana, but your Dark Self keeps it together until the magic has resolved. Then he hands the Leatherbound Book to you, declares, "I'm done," and disperses.
*Poof*
"Aw, but the Wand-!"
*Poof*
You shrug, clear your reasonably rested throat a couple of times, and start reading.
The work of a Chaos-worshipping sorcerer-
"No surprise, there," Balthazar admits.
-the Wand of Wonder was created in the early 1800s as a kind of backlash against the then-ongoing Industrial Revolution. The sorcerer had watched for decades as technology advanced and spread in Great Britain, and from there to the rest of the world, and he came to find the process and its consequences objectionable.
Humans had been making goods by hand for millennia, meaning that - so long as the works were of proper quality - even the newest woodcarvings, woven textiles, or smithed metals were suitable for use in magical craftsmanship. More than that, no two manually produced items were ever quite the same, human limitations and imagination giving rise to unique flaws and design choices, sometimes adding to the value of their works, at others decreasing it, and always exhibiting the influence and power of Chaos on the world.
Machines were different. As new as they were, their creations did not take magic nearly as well as goods made in the traditional manner; decades would need to be spent working out how to bridge the gap, and as technology continued to be refined in that time, the distance and difficulty in adapting the magic would only increase. Mass-produced goods had also proved to be much more uniform in appearance and style, something that a believer in the superiority and sanctity of the individual could not abide.
The sorcerer was involved with Luddite movement-
"Workers who objected to being replaced by machines, and in at least a couple of instances, resorted to destroying the machines in question in protest and attempts to protect their livelihood," Ambrose tells you.
-but when that failed to avert or even particularly slow the advancing tide of industry, he created the Wand of Wonder and went on a random rampage of his own, declaring that if Technology and Innovation sought to make the world Orderly, then it fell to Magic and Tradition to restore Chaos! The Past would rise up to challenge the Future, Man against Machine!
You're starting to hear the Terminator theme again...
Obviously, sabotaging expensive factory machines was the sort of thing that would get a lot of attention, and doing so using magic, especially the sort of random effects that a Wand of Wonder could produce.
"This sounds like a Fireball," you state at one point.
Ambrose nods wearily. "That's pretty common."
"And this... he filled the warehouse with living GRASS?"
Again, the wizard nods.
"An ELEPHANT running around in the middle of LONDON?"
Ambrose's head bobs.
...you've summoned bigger and more powerful things, to be sure, but not out in the open like that!
Honestly, this all seems like the sort of thing that the Clock Tower really ought to have come down on, much less when it was happening in their proverbial backyard - and indeed, after about the fifth such incident, the sorcerer found himself being approached by Enforcers. Some sought to take him into custody, while others... merely warned him to be a little less obvious in his use of magecraft?
"The Association was trying to decide how to deal with the Industrial Revolution, too," Balthazar says. "Some of them objected as much as our sorcerer or the Luddites; others were investing in the new machines; and plenty didn't care one way or the other. Things might have been different if they'd noticed how the Industrial Revolution was affecting population dynamics and what that implied for the future, but that would have required them to take time away from their research in favor of paying attention to normal people..."
Not something you can see a lot of Mages being in favor of, based on what you've heard about their cultural obsession with their work.
When it became clear to the Mages' Association that the Chaos sorcerer would not heed their requests, the different factions within the Enforcers united to deal with him before he exposed the existence of the supernatural. Thanks to the unpredictability of his Wand, however, the man managed to escape the attack that otherwise probably would have ended him, a sudden and suspiciously convenient Dimension Door whisking him out from under the Enforcers' collective noses. Not very FAR, admittedly, but far enough for him to vanish into the night before his pursuers could catch up.
Not long after that, the sorcerer fled to the mainland, where he tried to discourage the adoption of Britain's industrial methods in other countries. Had he been allowed to use magical methods without restraint or censure, the man might have found some success, but as it stood, every obvious magical working served to get the local supernatural authorities after him, while better-disguised attempts at sabotage only managed to shut down individual businesses' attempts to modernize - and not always permanently.
He was one man trying to fight the tide, and without the benefit of major magic or divine intervention, that's a scenario which can really only have a single outcome.
The sorcerer made a fight of it, though. Aside from using the Wand of Wonder to directly damage factory equipment, deface buildings, and otherwise make trouble, he also employed it as a lure for various sorts of Fae, who he would entertain with shows of random magic in exchange for their help in further stalling the march of progress.
One tactic he came to favor for ruining factories was recruiting sprites as scouts and lookouts, hiring redcaps to break the kneecaps - and occasionally, the skulls - of any on-site guards, and then introducing a small clan of gremlins to the premises once the way was cleared. Sometimes, the gremlins would run rampant in a frenzy of destruction, but at other times, they would establish permanent nests within the cellars, eaves, and walls of the buildings and then make the very slightest of adjustments to the machines, causing them to run slower or too fast or to make avoidable mistakes - any and all manner of frustrating, time-consuming, profit-reducing delays for the human owners, and thus a fine additional entertainment for the Fae saboteurs.
"Nasty little blighters, gremlins," Ambrose mutters. "You should hear some of the stories from World War Two."
It took a few years and a number of close calls, but the Chaos sorcerer's luck finally ran out somewhere in Italy. Exactly who caught him isn't stated, as he'd left the Wand of Wonder in his current lair and gone out for the day, never to return. When it became clear that the "magic man" wasn't coming back, his Fae cohorts looted his belongings, with a fight erupting over possession of the "funny wand," and said Wand getting used to defend various claims of ownership.
The results left that building a flaming, multicolored ruin, with a portion of one wall transformed into a slab of lifeless flesh-
"Ewww."
-and an angry and weirdly clumsy jungle cat trying to chase down a naked, screaming man with purple skin.
You have to take a moment to try and picture that.
"Not the weirdest outcome I've heard of for those damn things," Ambrose mutters. "Hell, not even the weirdest I've personally SEEN..."
Who won that battle for possession of the Wand isn't written down either, only that it would eventually end up in the claws of a demon that was magic-resistant enough not to be particularly bothered by the potential side-effects of a misfire. This creature left a trail of strangeness punctuated by spots of devastation across Europe before being taken out by the Wandenreich in 1899.
The Quincy studied the Wand of Wonder only briefly, locking it down as one of their victory trophies once the random nature of its magic was apparent. It spent the next century doing nothing in particular.
Do you have any questions or thoughts about this Device of Disorder?
"What was?" you ask the wizard.
"Hm?"
"The weirdest thing you've ever seen a Wand of Wonder do," you clarify. "What was it?"
"That would be the Singing Swarm."
...
"...'Singing... Swarm'," you repeat slowly.
Ambrose nods. "Picture a swarm of cicadas, only instead of that aggravating whine, you're hearing smooth jazz with a vocalist growling at you in Draconic - and you're not hearing it because the bugs learned how to talk, that's just the sounds they're making."
You shake your head. "So, what I'm taking away from all of this is that this thing is basically a Looney Toons gag reel without a PG rating. Is that right?"
"It certainly has the potential to become one," Balthazar agrees.
You nod. "Briar?"
"Yes, partner?"
"For future reference: if you know of somebody who's about to cause physical harm to me or anybody I care about, and if I'm unable to deal with it for whatever reason-"
"You want me to make 'em Wonder?" she concludes, sounding oddly like the TV version of a mob hitman - only tiny and female.
Trying not to sound or feel too much like a (short, underaged) mafia boss, you answer, "If you'd be so kind."
"I have no problem with this."
Also, the Wand might be useful if a situation arises where you need to create a distraction or vandalize something without creating a trail that could lead back to you. You'll just have to be careful not to let anybody realize that the two you have access to such a thing.
Once again, you gather up the Goddess figurines, your gradually filling second Leatherbound Book, and the gradually depleting box of Conjured Gold Incense, as well as the latest target for your Divination Magic, and head for the spellcasting chamber.
"LIKE FINNEGAN, BEGIN AGAIN!"
*Poof*
"Don't call me Mike," your Shadow warns, as he takes the magical implements from you and sets up for yet another casting of the Spell of Literary Vision.
On a side note, you've used up most of the ambient mana within Ambrose's spellcasting chamber, and since it would be rude any potentially dangerous to disturb any of the wizard's stuff by ritual-casting in other rooms, any further uses of the Spell of the Dark Self are going to have to come out of your own reserves.
Magic is worked and reveals that the Rod of Shadows was created by a sorceress that not only had ties to but actually hailed from the Plane of Shadows. Already possessing the ability to see in supernatural darkness and having far greater command over shadows and darkness, she didn't make the Rod for herself, instead bestowing it upon a human... landlord?
"That's what it says," Shadow Alex tells you with a shrug.
Evidently, the Lady of Shadow was trying to emigrate to Earth while fending off attempts by people and things from her native plane that wanted her to return - not necessarily in one piece, from what the Vision has to say. In order to keep her pursuers from slipping through the shadows around her while she tried to sleep, and also as part of becoming a proper resident of THIS realm, the sorceress needed permanent lodgings that she could claim as her own and ward against unwanted visitors. Simply going to a hotel or charming her way into someone else's home wouldn't work - she needed an actual CLAIM on the residence before she could properly reinforce its threshold - but fortunately enough, she happened to find a decent apartment going for a fair price, with a landlord who, despite not being involved with the supernatural, didn't mind being paid in gold, silver, or jewels.
You have to take a moment to wonder who he had contacts with.
Once the lady had taken up residence, it was a few weeks before her pursuers took action. Lacking magic powerful enough to directly contest with the sorceress's established defenses, the quickest way for them to bring down said wards would be for the actual owner of the property to suffer a fatal accident, but between their unfamiliarity with Earthly bureaucracy and the assumption that whoever owned the building must be rich and powerful, the shadow-folk were greatly delayed in learning that the proper owner was, in fact, the twenty-something guy working as the manager.
"A bit unusual," Balthazar notes. "Most apartment building owners hire somebody else to handle that sort of thing for them."
"It says the building originally belonged to his grandfather, who left it to his grandson when he passed away the year before," Shadow Alex explains.
"Ah. Probably still getting used to being the one in charge of everything..."
...are there jazz dragons, by any chance?
Ambrose blinks once at the question, and then again a few times in rapid succession as he seriously considers it.
"I don't recall ever HEARING of the sort," the wizard replies, "but dragons DO occasionally develop an appreciation for music as another form of valuable art, and some of them take their interest to the point of learning how to perform themselves - but that's usually either as singers in their native forms or by using an assumed form to play other instruments."
"Claws wouldn't be great for strumming, huh?" you guess.
"No lips to work a wind instrument properly, either," Briar adds.
"Yes to both, but also, dragons don't have the best sense of touch in general," Ambrose says. "One of the drawbacks of being perpetually wrapped in armor better than most knights ever had. Throw in their size and how that would affect acoustics..." He shrugs. "Anyway, I won't say that a dragon with an interest in jazz music is impossible, but considering the relative dearth of dragons on the planet these days and the fact that jazz as a genre has only been around for a century or so, the odds are definitely against it."
Once the shadow-folk managed to confirm the landlord's identity, they were quick to target him, but unfortunately for them, the sorceress had anticipated this potential weakness in her defenses and used the time afforded to her by her enemies' "curious absence" to address the matter.
As such, when three would-be shadow assassins jumped the young manager on the street one evening, instead of a human ignorant of, bewildered by, and helpless before a sudden manifestation of supernatural power - and blinded by sudden magical darkness, besides - they were counter-ambushed by the sorceress, her faithful shadow hound, and a slightly unsteady hand wielding the Rod of Shadows.
None of the attackers walked away from that encounter.
There were several more incidents of a similar nature in the weeks and months that followed. At first, this was simply the shadow-folk stepping up their attempts to remove the landlord, but whether due to poor planning on their part, good planning on the part of the sorceress, or a previously unrecognized natural aptitude for cracking heads, the landlord became quite proficient at seeing off intruders and taking out the trash.
In response to this, the dark ones began using their routine ambushes as cover for and distractions from others, somewhat less direct lines of attack. Although their particular code forbade them taking lethal action against those who were "not involved"-
"Now, did the landlord not count as uninvolved because he was the sorceress's host, because she'd told him what was coming, or just because it was more convenient for the shadows to be able to kill him?" you wonder.
"I'd say A and B, with a large side order of C," Ambrose answers. "But then, I am a nasty, suspicious old bastard."
-they began harrassing the building's other tenants, regular visitors, and neighbors, stealing or vandalizing personal property, creating eerie or just plain bothersome disturbances in the night, and causing all manner of troubles. Not only that, the shadow-folk used the magic they had to "convince" various local actors to go after the landlord more directly, whether by attacking him on the street or breaking into the apartment. Humans, after all, were not subject to the sorceress's wards, corpse-demons were not a species she'd known existed-
"Lucky her."
-and a couple of other demons were either sufficiently magic-resistant or powerful to force their way in.
Killing the landlord remained a priority for the dark ones, but driving his business to ruin, forcing him to choose the rest of his tenants over the sorceress, or getting the place shut down by the local authorities were all viable secondary methods for breaking the wards - and they came close to succeeding on several occasions.
Frightened or angry residents departed in search of safer accommodations.
Police and building inspectors conducted investigations of the building, its young owner, and those renters who remained.
A fire started by a charm-addled member of a local street gang actually DID get the apartment complex shut down for a few days.
Yet despite that, the landlord endured.
When old renters left, he found new ones who weren't troubled by the potential danger, including a few monsters and demons who saw the prospect of recurring fights as a selling point of their new residence.
The inspections were cooperated with, all questions answered in full, all fines paid on time, and all potential charges dismissed.
The damage caused by the fire was repaired by a combination of magical aid and frantic physical labor over the course of several sleepless nights.
And while it would be a lie to say that the landlord never considered giving in to the pressure and kicking the sorceress out, there was a part of him that just refused to give the other shadow-dwellers the satisfaction - not to mention that, after he'd killed several of their number and a few demons besides, he rather preferred having a reasonably friendly relationship with a powerful, trouble-prone spellcaster to the various alternatives.
"Didn't trust them to leave him alone after they got what they claimed to want, huh?"
"Wise of him," Balthazar agrees.
Ultimately, the sorceress reached the end of her first full year's formal residence on Earth, a period of time that symbolically defined many relationships to her people, the most relevant of these being how long a youth must live without the support of her parents, master, or other caretakers to be considered an adult in her own right, and how long a couple should remain engaged before being formally wed. Having lived apart from her family for the entire time, the shadow-sorceress was no longer required to heed them or the design for her life they'd laid down - and thus, she was finally free to tell them and the prospective husband they'd selected for her, the very master of the spies and assassins that had been plaguing her and her landlord, to go to Hell.
Naturally, he didn't take that well.
"Of COURSE he didn't," everybody in the room mutters some variation of.
For the next month, all seemed well. The attacks on the apartment complex ceased, giving the landlord a chance to catch up on his sleep, attend to various maintenance jobs, and start rebuilding his social life, which had understandably suffered over the past year. The sorceress likewise began to reach out to some of the Earthlings she'd met, trying to strengthen passing acquaintance into actual friendship for the first time since her arrival, now that it was safe to do so - although having just gotten out of one unwanted engagement, she had no interest in anything remotely approaching a romantic liason, and shot down two attempts at such that her lessor and the Rod of Shadows were present to witness.
As much as he tried to relax and go back to normal, the young manager did not quite get out of the habit of keeping the Rod on his person, and this would transpire to be a fortunate thing, for while he and his tenants were getting their lives back in order - and in the case of the more aggressive renters, mourning the loss of fights - the sorceress's ex-fiance was making plans.
Though the disposable minions, hired thugs, and mind-controlled patsies sent after his quarry had all been dealt with - some more permanently than others - the core of his organization, consisting of actually loyal followers, trustworthy allies, and assets too dangerous or unpredictable to have been employed in the previous year's campaign, still remained. More than that, the spurned groom had relatives of his own, who were none too pleased to have had an advantageous marriage alliance fall apart because of one girl's childish stubbornness, a human's interference, and one over-proud fool's inability to resolve the situation in a favorable and timely manner.
Amends must be made for the insults suffered, and if they were not received in a timely manner, then revenge must be taken.
And so, exactly one year to the day after the landlord's first encounter with the dark-folk, the sorceress's ex-fiance took advantage of the lack of recompense for the lives of his followers and the interference in his family affairs to declare that the human was now a formal enemy of his house, to be hunted down.
The apartment owner was in the middle of a dinner date with his long-suffering girlfriend when the missive declaring this grudge reached him, an image of the shadow lord wreathed in dark fire announcing the feud for the entire baffled restaurant to hear - right before the assassins jumped out of the shadows and tried to kill him.
Needless to say, dinner was ruined.
Fortunately for the landlord, he'd been sensible enough not to leave his girlfriend in the dark about what was going on in his life, so she didn't freak out or hold the disaster against him. It helped that she'd met the sorceress, confirmed that the mysterious, unearthly beauty really wasn't interested in her boyfriend, and eventually developed an almost sisterly friendship as the two of them took turns introducing each other to their respective worlds.
Also, when one of the assassins made to take her hostage, the girlfriend didn't waste time freezing or screaming in panic, instead just smashing a wine bottle over his head.
The outcome of that fight was never really in doubt - the sorceress had left wards on her two favorite humans to alert her if they were in serious danger and appeared in short order - but it didn't hurt that one of the waiters was a Quincy, who took it upon himself to see off the obvious hostile party.
"'You are disturbing our guests! You have no reservations! You have FAILED to meet the dress code! Leave, or be SHOT!'" Shadow Alex recites.
"I hope his employers gave him a raise for that," Urahara says.
"...actually, it says that he got fired."
"...talk about ingratitude..."
That one Quincy sought answers about the disturbance, and once he'd been informed that there was basically a minor invasion from the Plane of Shadows in progress, he alerted his family, one of whom passed the warning on to the Wandenreich. Nothing came of that for the next couple of months, during which the "people of the apartment" fought harder in defense of their home, livelihoods, and lives than they had the previous year. They were almost winning, right up until the shadow-dwellers decided they'd had enough of this "petty mortal resistance," and worked a major ritual that dragged the entire apartment complex into the Shadow Plane.
THAT was when the Hidden Empire struck, a squad of Soldats under a gunslinging Sternritter-
"Oh, it's Accutrone," Shadow Alex remarks. "Small worlds."
-emerging from the shadows to hit the otherworlders' forces from behind. The sorcerers holding the planar overlay in place were either killed or otherwise forced to give up on their spell, allowing the natural order to reassert itself and the displaced apartment to snap back to the Material Plane, along with everyone inside. The process wasn't instantaneous, and there were a few minutes of chaos as various beings fought to get inside or out of the structure before it went back to where it belonged; in the mayhem, the landlord lost track of his Rod of Shadows, which was left behind in the shifting darkness and twilight of the other plane.
It was one of a few items collected by the Wandenreich unit after they'd cleared the area. In their analysis, they'd discovered the Rod's power to bestow dark-sight upon the wielder, but not its ability to create zones of darkness. The former ability was not without some use to them, and the Rod of Shadows was deployed for a few missions into the perpetual night of Hueco Mundo and a few other dark places where the Quincy had interests.
Aside from that, nothing else is said.
"Am I the only one that wants to meet this landlord?" you venture to the room. "Because he sounds awesome, in a very practical sort of way."
Seriously, going from a regular Joe who had just been introduced to the supernatural to the sort of guy who was prepared and able to fight off an attempted assassination while on a date, all in the span of a year, WHILE holding down a job that involved keeping an entire property running in the face of malicious actors? That's pretty respectable.
"We could try looking for him later," Shadow Alex says. "From what the Book says, this was all only about twenty years ago; he could easily still be alive."
And right around your parents' age, at that. Might be worth looking into.
In the meantime, you look around the room for your next target. There's not too many things left in here that have your proverbial name on them-
"Whoa, what happened to THAT one?" you wonder, taking a closer look at a staff whose rune-carved six-foot length must have once been a true work of sorcerous art, but whose upper third or so is a shattered, blackened husk. There's a lump of melted silver hanging off of that end which might have been the setting for an arcane crystal of some sort, but no trace of the item remains, and the warping of the fixture makes telling what shape it must have been impossible.
"That one used to be a Staff of Power," Ambrose sighs regretfully, "and the reason it's ruined is that whoever last used it invoked a retributive strike."
"And that is?" Urahara asks.
"It's a desperation move that can be performed with certain especially potent Staves and a few other magical items," Balthazar replies. "You call up all of the item's available power and strike the item against a convenient solid surface - the floor, a wall, a nearby hated enemy, whatever works best. Having all that power actively coursing through the item at one time instead of being held in reserve makes it much more fragile and volatile than normal, so at the moment of impact, the physical form just fails, and the power is unleashed as an explosion."
"Sounds like a suicide move," Urahara says with a frown.
"It is," Balthazar agrees. "There have been cases where the released energy dislocated the staff-wielder to another plane of existence, but that's a dangerous prospect all on its own - and if it DOESN'T happen, the wielder takes the full force of the blast, which is usually enough to destroy them outright."
"Usually, but not always?"
"The blast scales off of the number of charges the Staff had left when it was broken. At lower levels of power, it can be survivable, but it's also less useful as a weapon."
You take that in. "So, why would my looters have grabbed this?"
"To be fair, they may not have realized it's irreparably damaged," Ambrose answers. "And the thing DOES fairly reek of magical energy, even after however long it's been."
That's true. Looking past the crackling aura of undifferentiated magical energy, you can sense traces of Abjuration, Enchantment, and Evocation. They must have been quite strong to have persisted through the Staff's destruction.
The only other Staff in here for you to claim or reject is made of bleached bones that have been fused together. The upright end of the thing is thankfully not topped with a skull, but in its stead burns a dark, blue-black flame that feels... not quite evil, but definitely unpleasant with its mix of Necromancy and destructive Evocation.
"Another necromancer?" you ask, trying not to sound too disappointed. It makes SENSE that the Wandenreich would have run into practicioners of the School of Death Magic more often than most others, but would a little more variety in your loot be too much to ask for?
"Ah, but this one clearly believed in diversifying their magical portfolio," Ambrose observes lightly. "This Staff can start fires, empower its wielder's life-force, sap the vitality of the enemy, cast Fireballs, or reanimate dead bodies, all in one."
A veritable Swiss Army knife, truly.
And after that are some more Wands.
Too much of the Staff of Power is missing, warped, or charred for your repair spells to have much effect on its physical form. Restoring its magic is entirely out of the question, although from what you can sense of the lingering energies, you think that might be solely because your skill at item-crafting hasn't reached the point where you're capable of turning out anything this complex. In terms of raw power and understanding of the relevant fields of magic, you're probably good, and if it was a busted Rod you were dealing with, you might be able to manage something, especially if your Dark Self were to give you another boost via the Spell of Sharesister - but as things stand, with a Staff? No.
You also don't want to throw more magic at the broken item than you absolutely have to. With its spell matrices ruptured or removed entirely, the object no longer has the resistance to foreign energies that any functioning magic item enjoys - let alone what something as potent as Ambrose describes would have - nor is it able to regulate and restore its basic magical signature. The more magic you expose the ruined Staff to, the more you risk its residual energies being contaminated, disrupted, or pushed into a reaction - and that won't do your desire to study what's left of the thing or potentially use it as a reagent any favors.
The good news is that, given your skill at Divination Magic, if Shadow Alex approaches this next Literary Vision via the ritual casting method, he'll be able to minimize the spell's impact. You can also use the Spell to Analyze Dweomers to help, getting a read on what the shattered Staff's aura looks like now, how it interacts with your Dark Self's magic, and what it looks like in the aftermath.
That way, even if the item's energies ARE somehow altered, you'll be able to work back through the change to the "original" signatures.
You will need to extend the duration of your Divination Spell a step to keep it running the entire time, but that's not an issue.
Once more, you return to Ambrose's spellcasting chamber and set up for a ritual.
"Thanks for being patient with us, by the way," you tell the older men.
"Hey, I'm learning almost as much as you are out of all this," Urahara replies. "I consider it time well spent."
"As he says," Balthazar agrees. "Besides, it's not like Ambrose and I haven't been taking the opportunity to sort out what we wanted to keep."
"Yes, well, if nobody else is going to complain about being on their feet for the better part of five hours, I will," Ambrose grumbles. "In fact, bugger this. Am I wizard or not?"
And then he disappears into another room, coming back a moment later riding his favorite recliner, seat back, legs up, and all of it levitating.
"Much better," he declares.
Shaking your head, you get out your ruby lens and cast your spell, taking a moment to examine the energies clinging to and radiating from the cracked length of wood, and then another to commit what you're seeing to memory. Once you're sure you have it, you nod for your Shadow to begin his ritual, and then fix your attention on the Staff once more, watching as its aura interacts with that of the building spell.
Seven minutes on, Shadow Alex finishes and begins to read from the Leatherbound Book.
The Staff of Power was created by someone you've already heard about today - namely, the lich who found the mismatched Bags of Holding that were once the stolen property of the nomadic demon G'hren. It was apparently something of a vanity project for the undead spellcaster, a way to show off to those rivals and contacts he still bothered to have contact with, but it also served as a helpful tool during calling rituals: creatures that possessed enough understanding of arcane lore to recognize a Staff of Power were that much less inclined to make trouble; and those that didn't know what they were looking at could still be blasted or smacked down if they got out of line.
"That did happen a couple of times, apparently," your Dark Self mentions.
"Not an uncommon job hazard when dealing with powerful outsiders, especially the nastier ones," Ambrose replies.
Aside from that, the Staff was also a handy source of magical firepower, above and beyond what the lich could muster from his own reserves - and a bit more potent than he could normally manage, either. It would seem that creating the Staff of Power had required the undead wizard to use extensive rituals to boost his magic beyond its normal limits, and even for a lich, such rites weren't something that could be done lightly or often.
Given its owner, you aren't surprised to learn that the Staff of Power met its end when the Wandenreich raided the lich's demiplane. The item had been at full power when the battle began, but after using up two-thirds of its charges, a number of his other items, and of course, assorted spells, the lich ended up employing the retributive strike - not in an attempt to kill the Quincy invaders, as it happens, but to deny them access to his latest research.
"He blew up his own workshop?" Ambrose asks in surprise, sitting up in his hover-chair. "My, my; how very unusual for a lich. Even when pushed to the wall like that, they're usually confident in their ability to make a comeback and recover whatever was taken from them. Does it happen to say what he was working on at the time?"
"He was experimenting with souls, trying to find a way to refine and improve upon his phylactery," Shadow Alex reports. "It doesn't get more specific than that, though."
Whatever the lich was trying to hide, he appears to have succeeded, as the Staff's "life story" makes mention of Quincy going through the wreckage of the lab and cursing in frustration. As for the lich himself, he wasn't one of the "lucky" users of a retributive strike, his body being consumed by the backlash. Being a lich, this was less of a concern to him than it would be for a mortal magic-user, as his phylactery - tucked away on a completely separate demiplane in the timeless depths of the Astral Sea - would restore him without fail.
The fate of the Staff's master beyond that is not mentioned. The broken device was the only thing of value scavenged from the wreck of the workshop, and was taken back to Silbern to commemorate the battle.
Gained Ruined Staff of Power
Returning to the storeroom, you pack the Ruined Staff into your current Bag of Holding and then fetch the Staff of Dark Flame for Shadow Alex to poke at. As you gingerly take hold of the bleached haft and lift the ghastly thing from its stand, the eponymous dark flame flares up to almost twice its original size, while tongues of fire spill out of the divot atop the cluster of fused bone that was housing them and briefly wrap around the upper quarter of the staff's length. You feel a brief breeze that manages to be hot and chilling at the same time, the latter a far more spiritual sensation than a physical one, and then the whole display dies down, the flame returning to a level of activity just a bit above its previous intensity.
Shaking your head, you hand the necromantic creation off to your Dark Self, the Staff's flame remaining steady the entire time. Holding it aloft with its bony butt-
Heh.
-on the floor amid the Goddess figurines, Shadow Alex passes the Leatherbound Book off to a suddenly human-sized Shadow Briar and begins casting the Spell of Literary Vision.
The Staff of Dark Flame was created by a living necromancer that you haven't read about yet today, a fellow whose unsettling interest in death and the dead was matched only by his love of fire - thus his moniker, Corpsecandle. He was always on the lookout for new ways in which to combine his favorite topics, but also never got bored of "classic" applications, such as burning his enemies to death, reanimating the corpses of victims of deadly fires as unusual variants of more common undead, or coming up with spells that blended the properties of his two areas of focus.
Fireballs laced with negative energy, so that the burns they created would resist healing! Necrotic spells imbued with the ability spread like fire - or maybe like a supernaturally contagious disease, but with a fiery aesthetic! Explosions of death-energy that consumed living matter, leaving only ash in their wake!
"Charming sort," Ambrose observes.
For all his fascinating with endings and incineration, this pyro-necromancer - or should that be necro-pyromancer? - was apparently pretty responsible with his Death Magic, Fire Magic, and Fiery Death Magic - or Deathly Fire Magic, if you prefer. He didn't go around nuking people for kicks, instead reserving such treatment for those who tried to kill him for whatever justifications they cared to claim, he never allowed his undead creations to roam freely, and he only robbed graves as a second or third course of action, preferring to make good use of the corpses he created himself and get the permission of living heirs to use the other bodies he wanted.
It was this peculiar habit of seeking permission before begging forgiveness, as it were, which first brought Corpsecandle to the attention of the Wandenreich. He'd approached an Earthbound Quincy family to negotiate for use of a recently deceased family member, one who actually hadn't died as a result of any kind of fire, as the pyro-necromancer wished to explore some of the more esoteric aspects of Necromancy. If one thought of a soul as a fire - and such an association can be found in many cultures - then death would be the moment the flame is extinguished, and the necrotic essence the "ash" that remained when the spirit had moved on. Quincy had stronger souls than the average human, and Corpsecandle was curious to see what "dark fires" he might stoke to un-life with access to such materials.
Between the necromancers and the Nazis and what you know of their history with Magi, you're really starting to wonder how it is that the Quincy didn't decide to pre-emptively shoot every magic-user they crossed paths with.
Sure, you're grateful that they didn't - A-Day would have been even more of a pain to set up and deal with if they had - but you're still curious!
As it happens, when that family told Corpsecandle, "No" - and probably "hell, no," judging from the tone of Shadow Alex's reading - he basically shrugged and moved on. Later that year, he crossed paths with another Quincy family and repeated the scenario, this time offering greater compensation. He was refused a second time, and when he found a third Quincy household some years later, the necromancer had either suffered a decline in his moral code or simply decided that he couldn't pass up a third opportunity, because he skipped straight to grave-robbing. The family didn't notice the desecration for a few weeks, and the culprit's identity wasn't guessed at until a few months later, after word of the incident had reached the nearer of the first two groups to have dealt with Corpsecandle's odd approach to gathering materials.
The necromancer's description was quickly passed on to every Quincy clan on Earth, and from some of those, the tale reached the Wandenreich, who started looking for the offender.
This time around, the Hidden Empire weren't the ones who had the dramatic showdown with a nefarious spellcaster, as Corpsecandle was identified, confronted, and subsequently slain by three of the Earthbound Quincy. This had the unfortunate result of breaking his control over a number of fiery undead he'd been working on, some of which ran rampant and burned down a good part of a block in that town, while other, smarter specimens went to ground and became persistent problems that would flare up at times in years to come...
Regardless of that, the Staff of Dark Flame was taken by the victorious trio and subsequently made its way to Silbern for examination and memorialization.
Gained Staff of Dark Flame
The only spell in this entire lot that you don't already know is the Spell to Repair Undead, which neither you nor your friends are likely to ever have much use for. Maybe if a situation comes up where you need to take a corpse-demon prisoner and keep it functional for a bit, so you can question it or run some tests...?
Still, it's new knowledge, and that's something you can appreciate.
As for the other Wands, there's a fair bit of low-level utility in the collection. It's a shame that the Wand of Haste is almost used up - that is a POTENT third-circle spell - but Black Tentacles and Heroism are both nice spells to have available in bulk, Spectral Hand will (ahem) come in handy for all those touch spells you rarely get a chance to use, and Unseen Servant is something you could almost hand off to your mother or Zelda.
...
Okay, probably just your mother.
Gained more Wands
Seeing nothing else in this part of the collection that requires your attention, you head for the last room on today's schedule: the Armor and Shields.
Upon entering the final room of the day-
"Unless you wanted to spend some time picking out sheets, rugs, and furniture?" Ambrose suggests snarkily.
-you look around at the various stands and mannequins that the complete suits and individual pieces of defensive equipment have been placed on, trying to find a particular item. Several suits of mail with matching helmets and surcoats, plus a couple of shields - not it. Two familiar battered suits of plate and another shield, all of which you last saw behind glass - also not it. A large helmet-
You stop and take a closer look at that one, but the design is nothing like what the Literary Vision of the Mask of Vulcan described, and the aura doesn't feel like what you'd imagined, either. So, probably not it?
-some unfamiliar suits of heavier armor, and then several lighter sets made of more organic materials. Some of those are leather, but of a heavier style than La Renarde's Glamered Armor, while a couple more were clearly assembled from other animals. There's even a suit of what appears to be WOODEN armor, and you will be coming back to that in a minute.
Ambrose and Balthazar said earlier that they did not recall seeing an oversized cylindrical helm in the collection, and in short order you have confirmed that for yourself, but you also find a helm with the same sort of eye-slits and inverted Y-pattern of studs that were detailed for the Mask. While it would still cover a wearer's head from the base of the neck up, the design of this model is much closer to a mundane great helm, with a top that is rounded and molded to better deflect blows and match the shape of the skull instead of being flat and with a lot of empty space that - if not for the magic of the thing - the user's head would be bouncing around inside at every blow. You would guess that the more compact shape helps to reduce the weight a bit, and while that is probably offset by the added interlocking sections of material covering the neck and shoulders, the wider base likely spreads out the pressure and makes the whole thing less stressful to wear for long periods.
The Abjuration Magic radiating off of the "Mask" is quite strong. You can't be sure of thing's full powers with a casual look - that Spell to Analyze Dweomers you cast earlier has since run out, and you're low enough on mana that you want to conserve what's left - but you can sense a conventional defense-boosting enhancement in there, one which has been taken to a rather high level. There's also strong elements of Fire and Spirit, the latter of which carries whispers of a divine power that is unfamiliar to you.
Given the name of the thing, you are pretty sure that is a sign that the Mask is attuned to Vulcan, Roman God of Fire and Metalworking.
After the Mask, you turn your attention to the matching sets of mildly enchanted mail. "Did these belong to the Knights of Byzantium?" you ask, looking the suits over - and poking at some breaks in a couple of the suits of chain that have disrupted their enhancements. You can likely fix that, although you might have to replace some of the busted bits first...
"Those are their symbols," Ambrose agrees.
You make a note of that, just in case you run into these emblems elsewhere.
Anyway, there's nothing special about these suits of armor, but they do have some value and there ARE five of them.
Then there is that suit of plate which belonged to the murderous mage-knight who was also the last owner of the Forgotten Dagger. The enchantments on the warlock's armor feel a bit skeevy, but not to the point where they're outright cursed or Evil - Ambrose would have put them in the other room if that were the case - and they don't seem particularly remarkable aside from that.
It's been a long morning, and with the bulk of the magical loot out of the way, there's nothing among the mundane plunder that you feel really demands your immediate attention.
...well, aside from the electronic files and hard copies you swiped, but those aren't part of the great loot-pile the Drake household staff have been combing through.
Anyway, sorting out the disposal of furnishings, artwork, and the like is something that can wait for another day. That'll give Arthur more time to get estimates on prices for a lot of it, too.
Why wouldn't you take this? From the Literary Vision, this final version of the mage-smith's eponymous Mask made him nearly invulnerable to Quincy weaponry, and that most likely on top of the relic's original imperviousness to physical assault. Resistance to flame is also very likely, given the thing's genesis as a piece of (mystical) smith's equipment and its ties to a God of Fire, and there may well be some magic resistance in there, too.
Again, why WOULDN'T you take something like that?
Ambrose raises one hand. "Just to be the devil's advocate-"
Must he?
"-I do not HAVE to, no, but I CHOOSE to. As I was saying, when I examined the Mask, I didn't get the impression it was as powerful as your Vision described. That's part of the reason why I wasn't sure if it was the same item, in addition to the not-inconsiderable change of appearance."
"...you don't think it was damaged," you state with certainty. There is no exterior indication of physical harm to the helm, and its magical aura feels whole, stable, and functional. Though at the same time... "You're suggesting that there's a requirement to unlocking its full power? Maybe, being a follower of Vulcan?"
"It would explain why an arcane item feels a little bit divine," the wizard agrees.
Yeah. If true, it will also limit how much use you or anyone you know could get out of the thing. You'll also have to be careful not to damage or desecrate the helm, lest you offend the Roman God... which leads you to wonder what Vulcan's stance on the works of his faithful being studied by aspiring mage-smiths who serve different deities would be.
...
You should talk to the Memorians about this, shouldn't you? Yeah, that sounds like the right idea.
Worse comes to worst, you can return the Mask to Vulcan unsullied and with its secrets intact and get yourself in another god's good books. That's rarely a bad thing!
Gained the Mask(ed Helm) of Vulcan
While you've made some use of armor to date, it's mostly been light stuff, costume reproductions of heavier gear, or magical in nature. Heavier mundane equipment doesn't really suit your preferred high-mobility approach to combat, and it would be useless for almost everyone you know: the Drakes have superior stuff; the Shuzens could GET superior stuff if they really felt the need; and nobody else wants or would be able to use it - and that last point goes double for your friends.
For all that magical items meant to be worn on the body have some ability to adjust their size and shape to accommodate a new owner, there ARE limits, and mail coats meant for grown men shrinking down to be worn by preadolescent children goes well past them.
Still, given what Ambrose had to say about the Knights of Byzantium and their less-than-sterling qualities, it would probably behoove you to take one of these suits for extensive analysis, so that you'll be able to recognize equipment with similar origins if you run into it in the future.
Gained Byzantine Mail
The issues that apply to the magical mail you just picked up are at least as applicable to this suit of plate armor, and its value as research material is somewhat less.
After all, the Knights of Byzantium are a worldwide order whose history goes back over eight centuries. If Ambrose's estimate of their numbers only being in the thousands was accurate, the odds of you running into any of them in the future aren't incredibly high, but the chance DOES exist, which makes studying their stuff, even their older stuff, potentially useful.
Compared to that, the Forgotten Armor was the personal equipment of a long-dead warlock, and warlocks, by and large, are not famous for being part of large or long-lasting organizations. Granted, from what the Literary Vision had to say, this one wasn't empowering his own equipment; given the uniform appearance of the armor and the fact that its enchantments aren't derived from witchcraft and thus can't be the work of the warlock's inspirational grandmother, it seems most likely that the armor was commissioned from someone else as a complete set.
While that does make it possible that you'd run into other examples of this particular craftsman's work - or more likely, creations from the same lineage of masters and apprentices - the odds of that strike you as much lower than those of meeting the Knights of Byzantium. Particularly when you take into account the mage-knight's thirst for power and the vile lengths he was willing to go to in order to obtained it.
There is a distinct possibility that the armor's maker did not long survive creating it...
Still, even if it is an effectively unique piece of work, a chance to broaden your knowledge of Earth's native magical traditions appeals to you.
Gained Forgotten Armor
Speaking of enchanted plate that you've seen before and which might not be hugely useful to you, there's that suit with the magic shield your Shadow originally looted from Jugram's collection, before going back for the big plundering trip.
"The shield has two enhancements on it," Ambrose says. "The first is a straightforward defensive boost, albeit one of impressive strength. The other is an offensive enhancement that makes the shield strike much harder and a bit more accurately when it's used to smash something."
"How much harder?" you ask.
"Approximately twice as hard as that weight of metal and wood ought to."
Huh.
"And the armor?" you inquire, eyeing the suit in question.
"It would have been a lot more impressive if it were intact," Balthazar answers. "Have you ever heard of Armor of Fortification?"
Not that you can recall.
"Well, that WAS an example. Instead of reinforcing itself and generating general body shields as most magical armors do, Armor of Fortification directly augments various vulnerable spots on the body that enemies who favor precision-based attacks would target. Places like the joints, the eyes-"
Ew, and ow.
"-and major veins and arteries. Even the best examples aren't a hundred percent reliable, and I don't think this was one of the top models, but it looks like the wearer would have had a fifty-fifty chance of just ignoring a hit to any such weak point. That's in addition to the armor's normal defensive coverage, which was almost as good as the shield's."
You look at the armor again, while taking the properties of its battered partner shield into account. "Somebody really believed in being able to take hits and then dish them out again, huh?"
"Seems like it."