Artifacts/DarlothSpellSpireScepter

Spellspire Scepter</b>
<b>Artifact:</b> varies - 3 for Terrestrial, 4 for Celestial, 5 for Solar
<b>Commitment:</b> 1/3/5 motes for Terrestrial, Celestial and Solar circle respectively.

Spellspire Scepters are ornately carved wands made of various magical materials, often with a large and depictive orb set into one end. They have essence channels carefully cut into and through both the end ornament and the handle, and each is a unique melding of intensely precise essence manipulatory geometry and art.

Once a day, an attuned holder of a spellspire may channel their essence and willpower through it to cast a single spell, which is set into the spellspire at its creation. This spell may never be changed without completely rebuilding the artifact, as it is physically carved into the very form of the artifact itself.

These artifacts are most commonly found in jade, as the dragon-blooded find sorcery the hardest to learn and have the smallest reserves of personal essence to cast it with, but they can and have been created in all five main flavours of magical material. Each material gives a different bonus, and the bonus is listed below:

• <b>Orichalcum - Orichalcum spellspires channel their essence with all the force and fury of the unconquered sun. In cases where a casting roll is needed, add Essence in automatic successes. In cases where there is some sort of fixed difficulty to resist the effects of a spell, add (Essence / 2, round up) to the resistance difficulty. In the case of some sort of variable mote spell where every mote has a specific effect (Imbue Amalgam and my own Invocation of the Sorcerer's Undeniable Privilege come to mind), then orichalcum rods add a pool of (Essence x 2) motes which can be spent before drawing on the caster's own essence.
• Moonsilver - Moonsilver spellspires can draw prodigious amounts of essence and shape it in the blink of an eye. Reduce the casting time for the spell by 1 turn. For terrestrial circle sorcery, this means it is cast in a single simple action, the runes and display of power glowing to life and unfolding in a single fluid motion. Counterspells and anything already faster than normal can be cast reflexively and with only a single thought, even if the caster is restrained or would normally be completely unable to use sorcery.
• Jade - Jade spellspires are the most common, and for the dragon-blooded, probably the most useful. For every hour that the artifact is suffused in the element associated with it, it charges 1 mote of essence, up to the cost of the spell it is engraved with. Especially strong elemental manifestations will charge the spire at a rate of 3 motes per hour instead. If an appropriately aspected dragon-blooded is flaring at the top level of anima flux, they may also directly charge it at a 2 motes spent to 1 mote charged ratio, but noone else may charge it like this. Finally, if a dragon-blooded knows the appropriate Elemental Bolt technique for the type of jade, then every damage success rolled against the artifact with use of this charm or charms that derive from it also charges 1 mote, and has no chance of damaging the artifact . However it is charged, as soon as the spell is cast all stored motes are expended to help casting the spell, reducing the cost by whatever amount has accumulated. Suffusion in elements is roughly equivalent to the following - Placed somewhere high in moderate wind, placed in a fire, placed underwater, buried under the earth, planted amongst a healthy garden or group of shrubs. Examples of strong elemental manifestations are also provided: stormwinds or lightning storms(it makes a great lightning rod), rapids, forgefires, entombed in rock or buried more than 5 yards underground, or planted amongst the roots of a gigantic ancient tree. Finally, it should be noted that the colour of jade used must match at least partially the spell engraved, which limits multi-elemental spells to a single permutation.
• Starmetal - Starmetal spellspires cause a conjunction of fate when used, so that not only is the universe acceptable to being altered by the precepts of sorcery, but it actively aids such a process. As such, spells cost 1 less willpower to be cast from a starmetal spellspire, although they are as usual the rarest sort, often being topped by a delicately woven hollow orb with a much smaller smooth and intricately engraved solid sphere at the very centre of the tracery of metal.
• Soulsteel - Soulsteel spellspires contain only the most hungry and malicious spirits, and these wrest essence from the surrounding area whenever they are used, draining enough motes to halve (round down) the cost of the spell, although the willpower cost remains the same. This has no mechanical effect, but the storyteller may wish to assign small narrative effects such as plants wilting around the caster or small animals sickening and dying to fuel the magic. It works just as well in the underworld or other places with no life, as the spirits do not care from what they rip the essence, but in a complete lack of ambient essence, it may need a source of life to draw from (pets, or a few caged vermin should suffice)

As a final note, it should be recorded that attuning a spellspire scepter from another material other than your own can be exceedingly dangerous. Make the attunement roll when the spell is first cast, not when the motes are committed. In addition, for each circle the spell is above your current casting capability, subtract 2 dice from the roll. If it fails, the spell dissipates as if the caster had failed a concentration roll. If it botches, then the effects are likewise the same as if a caster has botched their concentration roll, often causing horrific backblast and likely annihilating the local area if it was a high circle spell. As such, there are only very few people using these artifacts to cast spells 'above' their natural level, and they are loath to allow their attunements to dissipate, for obvious reasons.

Comments:

I had considered changing the celestial ones to once every 2 days, and solars to once every 3 days... what do you think?
-- Darloth

I say go for it. -Seraph

Ah, but -why- do you say go for it? I'm undecided, so I need reasons, not votes.
-- Darloth

Well, how about looking at it this way. Savant and Sorceror notes that an Artifact 5 item can do roughly one Essence 5 or 6 effect, and if made of orichalcum, can include perfection. Solar circle sorcery as a concept is Essence 5, and some of the things can take hours to cast, and boatloads of Essence (such as summoning 3rd circle demons 'safely'), so it's definitely pushing the top bound. At the same time, Gaia's Rebuke is a Solar circle spell, and can (and will) pretty much kill ... anything. The best defense against it is to kill the sorceror in the 3 rounds he's casting, and unable to use charms. With this thing, you're looking at launching a Gaia's rebuke pretty much once per day. Now, depending on how it works (and the description isn't really clear), can you use charms while you're using the Scepter? After all, you're not using the real casting charm, which is where it specifies that you're busy for those rounds. In addition, from the description, it seems that you still need to pay the Willpower and Essence costs of spells. So really, all the scepter does is give you the ability to use the charm for the sorcery, and even then, only once per day, and even then, for a single predetermined spell. Methinks, then, that this is perfectly reasonable, and in fact, seems canonical, in that it's things like this that I imagine Mnemon uses to do all her weird tricks. Crazy psycho probably found an artifact long ago that allows her to attune to other MM's without penalty, as if they were appropriate to her type, and so she waltzed into the armory, picked up a bunch of things too dangerous for anyone else to dare touch (and risk breaking), and became the uber-psycho she is today. I'm just saying, it makes sense. To me, it's not too powerful at all, because once a Solar learns Solar circle sorcery, this artifact is really only a cost-reducer for that one spell. At the same time, if a Twilight was casting one spell over and over, such an artifact would be quite useful. The only thing I'm really worried about is the non-Solar ones, as a result. I worry that the WP-cost reducer and the Casting-Time reducer are both scary, in that sorcery was never 'checked' againt being able to fast-cast, or not needing a WP cost to use Terrestrial circle spells. I'm not saying it is a problem, but that it could be. In practice, I'd case-by-case which spells can be put into a Starmetal or Moonsilver Sceptre, just to make sure. Finally, I'd suggest a forced re-attunement to the Sceptre every so often, or some other check to make sure you're up to the task of using Solar sorcery. While initial attunement might be scary, something like Iron Skin Concentration can make it much less frightening, as you can keep trying to attune without too much fear of death, wait a week while you heal, and try again. Once attuned though, you have hundreds of possible years to keep using that spell, which I find a bit scary. Perhaps every time you use the spell, you've got to make an Essence+Occult roll, difficulty 1, +2 for every circle above your current casting level. Not really that bad, as Mnemon's expected Essence 6 Occult 6 + Charms can keep her over 5 pretty safely, but it keeps others from just using one all the time. I mean, at that point, you'd probably want to channel WP or a Virtue to get more successes, which would make sense, as you pour yourself into this focusing sceptre, to exceed the power of your station, and wreak changes upon Creation. Just my two cents. - GregLink