Tarak the Tower City - Gear
Normal mundane equipment for the era and setting is readily accessible. Rough weapon damage guidelines: tiny weapons (daggers, saps): Strength (abbreviated STR)+1 or +2. Small weapons (fighting knives, light clubs, arrows): STR+1D. Larger weapons (swords, axes, battle clubs): STR+1D+1 or +2. Huge weapons (massive battle axes, polearms): STR+2D. Armor takes a variety of forms, but follows the same rules: every pip of armor adds to the Resistance roll against physical damage, but reduces any and all Dexterity skills by one pip. Specially constructed and/or magical armor may have the Dexterity penalty modified.
What's really interesting: enchanted items. Lots of items are just basic everyday goods, created by any enchanter worth the name. Weapons and armor can be enchanted with additions to their statistics (from +1 to +1D+2), and there is also enchantment available in weapons, armor, jewelry, clothing, and other tools that can provide skill bonuses in just about any skill (from +1 to +1D+2). It's most common for enchanted weapons to have the same bonuses to accuracy and damage. Many enchanted items have trigger words, commonly nonsense words that are unlikely to be accidentally stated; there is also frequently a necessary element of conscious intent to trigger an item, so accidents are rare, depending on the item.
Air Bottles: These are always full of breathable air; even better, they tend to absorb unbreathable or poisonous air over time, converting it usefully. Miners often carry air bottles and face masks fashioned of horn or metal. Places with little natural circulation can keep from going stale with a decent-sized air bottle. And there has been some success with building submersible suits, largely through the ample use of air bottles.
Cold Stones: These are flat chips of slate, often kept in a stone box or envelope, which can go from almost uncomfortably cool to the touch to an ice-cold heat vacuum and back again at a command. Frequently used to preserve food, manage comfort in smithies, guard against heat stroke, etc.
Communication Cups: These resemble nothing so much as small cans connected by string, except without the string. The enchantment that connects them transmits audio projected into one through to be heard in the other; range is immense, though the sound becomes distorted with distance. Depending on the construction and additional enchantment, a caller desiring to attract attention might cause a bell to ring, or flag wave, or gemstones flash with light. There has been some success with mounting these cups in pairs on a hand-set, one for speaking and one for listening. Each pair is connected only to each other; research on a switching procedure (besides holding similar communicators to each other) is ongoing.
Disposal Cabinets or Disposal Buckets: These are enclosed containers which, when sealed, make their contents vanish completely, useful for the disposal of waste. Only the enchanters know whether the waste is destroyed or merely transported elsewhere; different enchanting methods may evoke different processes. The enchantment will not work on containers large enough for a full person.
Ever-Spinning Wheels: These are disks on an axis that continue to turn without outside input. The slower the turning speed, and/or the larger the disk, the more torque can be applied. Disks can be made smooth or edged, or with gears, or spokes, or propeller blades, or serrated, or what have you. Uses include moving toys, air-moving fans, motive power for ground and water vehicles, crude gyroscopes, powered saws and drills, water wheels, elevators, and so forth. The wheels eventually burn out, but it takes years, and there are warning signs that a disk is failing.
Fire Stones: These are flat granite pebbles, often kept in a stone box or envelope, which can flare from almost uncomfortably warm to the touch to blazing coal and back again at a command. Frequently used to start campfires, in foundry hearths, winter heaters, etc.
Food Bowls: These are often constructed to work with a trigger, such as a word or an action (tapping the center 3 times with a spoon, for example); the bowl then fills with a predetermined substance, commonly a thick, nutritious, flavorless gruel (which, like all magic-created food, has a slight metallic aftertaste). Some bowls are also limited in the number of uses per day, and are correspondingly cheaper to produce or purchase.
Gemlights: These are common quartz, cut and enchanted to glow brightly. Cheap gemlights go out after a few years, but good-quality ones are more permanent. Gemlights can be mounted in place or carried, perhaps with a cover so the light can be concealed when not needed; they are cool to the touch and can be obtained in a number of colors. Gemlights are particularly common in underground dwellings, as they also provide some of the healthy benefits of sunlight as a side-effect.
Healer's Salve: This is a pungent unguent, white and waxy and with an overpowering chemical smell, produced in small jars. This is healing magic given form; it cannot regrow limbs or the like, but it can ease pain, close cuts, knit bones, and so forth. The severity of the wound generally determines how much salve is required, but some injuries are tricky. Each time a jar of Healer's Salve is used, there is a chance it will be used up entirely. It also does its best work while the subject is still in shock from any major injury; in the first half-hour, in other words.
Legless Scaffolds: This is basically just a work platform with a permanent Levitation spell effect worked into it. The scaffold cannot move itself laterally, as controlling that kind of motion is difficult to arrange in a static enchantment, but simple controls can lift or lower the platform, floating any riders or cargo vertically to almost any height. Once activated, the effect keeps the scaffold strongly rooted to the location where it is initially placed, but sufficiently powerful winds or other physical force can shift the platform's location. This device is usually used for reaching ceilings, upper walls, or high shelves, including stacking cargo in warehouses.
Load Plates: These are large feather-light plates frequently made of metal; they counteract weight placed upon them, proportional to the size of the plate. They are frequently bolted to the bottoms of vehicles to make them lighter and easier to manage. Some more expensive forms of Load Plate have a small Levitation spell effect placed on them so they stay a few inches off the ground, allowing them to be easily towed or pushed without the need for wheels or runners; cargo movers frequently bring such floating Load Pallets to help move heavy crates or equipment. The Levitation enchantment on the Load Pallets can't handle much speed, so they're not too useful for most vehicular applications.
Personal-Access Relative Dimensionality In Space (PARDIS) Containers: These are luggage or storage items whose interior space has been mystically enlarged, so that it is larger inside than outside. This is an extremely expensive process, but the truly rich can have a mansion's worth of space contained within a single closet. Windows and such are rarely employed, as the stretching of internal space does weird, disturbing things to perspective, but sometimes translucent panels allow light to shine through; outside light seems reddish to those inside a PARDIS space, while light generated inside seems bluish to those on the exterior. Still, finding enough space for even a single person to fit is exceedingly rare, due to the expense. It is much more common to find PARDIS pouches or PARDIS backpacks, where the smaller expansion in volume is easier to afford.
Specialty Tree: This is a miniature tree in a pot with its own magical light and water source; set to grow a fruit at an accelerated pace, then slow down when it's ripe to allow for fresh storage before falling off the tree by itself.. Larger, more expensive versions can produce several fruits a day. This, like all magic-influenced food, has a very slight metallic aftertaste, but that is frequently hidden by the flavor of the fruit.
Traveling Jewelry: These are enchanted to provide benefits to travelers, including replenishing the body's water and sustenance, regulating temperature, and easing the need for sleep to a mere couple of hours a night. Such jewelry takes several days to gradually attune itself to the wearer, but can be worn for extended periods without ill effect. Many who can afford to purchase such jewelry never take it off.
Water Flasks: These are always full of fresh water; the flow is limited only by the aperture of the flask. Communities have been founded around a large upended water flask. Unconfirmed rumors say some enchanters have perfected formulas that produce alcohol instead of water.
Weatherproofing: Conventional items can be slightly enhanced to protect against dirt, the elements, oxidization, and regular wear-and-tear. It helps a traveler when his or her boots and cloak gradually shed mud and dust without needing particular cleaning. Most enchanted items are weatherproofed as a matter of course, as it is a negligible addition to more powerful enchantments.
Larger and more complex items are also available, if the price is right. In addition to the usual mounts, wagons, and the like, enchantment provides many wonders, frequently just building on the small, basic enchantments already described:
Artificial Ruhk (or Roc): a huge Load Plate and an Ever-Spinning Wheel attached to a gear system allows the construction of a winged vessel that flaps to keep itself aloft. The wings can be angled to provide forward thrust and the gearage can also be shifted to create more or less lift for changing altitude. These are not used very frequently, as they are neither very fast nor very maneuverable, and flying predators find them easy targets, particularly in the mountains. However, some rich individuals keep one around, largely for novelty purposes.
Forged: These are artificial people (golems or automata or homunculi, depending on how they are constructed) with varying degrees of intelligence. They are somewhat uncommon but well-known in the world at large (more common in larger cities), created as guards and workers, and given life and some semblance of sentience through magic. Only sorcerous enchanters can create them, with the skill of the enchanter determining the complexity of the finished Forged, and some few are Legacy Forged, meaning they have normal mental attributes equivalent to any sentient creature, and are capable of making independent decisions. At the opposite end of the scale are the cheap Forged made from quickly-fashioned cast-metal parts, readily identifiable by their crude bolts. Among the less wealthy, who come into more frequent contact with this variety of Forged, they are frequently nicknamed "Bolts," which often gets elided into "bot" when combined with other words, creating such titles as sewer-bot or farmer-bot or porter-bot or bouncer-bot; the cheap ones are normally much less sophisticated in their enchantment, as well as their construction, and are frequently used in positions where intellect or decision-making is not an issue.
Forged do not breathe or sleep, and need no sustenance of any sort. They are also immune to the extremes of weather, and the 'bots have no sense of fear, as they have no real sense of self, or self-preservation. Legacy Forged learn skills just as anyone else does, but must improve their more basic capabilities with modifications (in game terms, the process of increasing an Attribute is the same, but while a flesh character's XP expenditure might represent working out or deep study, a Forged character's XP expenditure represents finding the necessary design and materials and locating an enchanter who can do the job, etc. Same effect, same expenditure, different in-game explanations). Forged can get injured, in that the damage they suffer impairs their function, but they do not heal by themselves, they must be repaired, preferably by another party, though not always by a sorcerer. Also, they do not die, they simply stop working, and can be repaired "back to life" unless they are so completely broken up as to make repair impossible. Some Forged can be built or modified to have equipment built into their bodies, and Legacy Forged thus modified have instinctive control over such equipment. Not even Legacy Forged have demonstrated sorcerous abilities, but some have become craft enchanters, and some make excellent lay-clerics for the Orders (particularly if they become outfitted with appropriate magic items as equipment).
Horseless Carriage: a literal carriage with a simple steering mechanism to turn the front wheel assembly and a geared shifting lever that controls how a powerful Ever-Spinning Wheel interacts with the rear wheels, providing motive force. A large Load Plate keeps the carriage from getting too heavy to maneuver. Truly expensive models have a PARDIS interior, for traveling in luxury.
Jump Rings: a pair of metal rings that act as a teleportation gate. Rings can be constructed from an inch to a dozen feet in diameter, and depending on the enchantment and arrangement, one or both sides of the ring can be utilized, or they can be keyed into still other rings. These are difficult to construct and enchant, as teleportation is always a tricky proposition. They are immensely useful when they are found, however, as they have no maximum range, and they make travel through the dangerous wilderness unnecessary. The passage through a ring is often identifiable because there is often a stretch of space in the magical distance between the two portals, seemingly made of the same substance as the rings, while the rings themselves may be quit thin. One-sided rings appear to be discs, solid on one side but with a "hole" to somewhere else on the other. Some rings are built with mystical controls, or with doors or other forms of barrier blocking access; one-sided rings can be fairly effectively sealed by placing them face-down on a flat surface and putting a weight on top, as those on the other side will have very little means by which to get leverage to flip the disc over (it's possible, but difficult).
Time Chamber: a closet or storage container, which can be a PARDIS enclosure but does not have to be, which freezes or greatly slows the passage of time for objects stored within whenever the door of the contained space is closed. Sometimes used to preserve perishables, or to extend lifespans, or to punish criminals without building large prison complexes, these mystic items are difficult to produce, as time is always tricky to work with. Still, they are popular among some of the rich, who may spend time in a larger Chamber to extend their lives, skipping objective days or weeks in no subjective time at all. Also, those who dislike travel may have their Time Chamber shipped to the destination, arriving instantly, from their own perspective.
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