Seiraryu/SN

Sweet Net

A small filter-like net made snake vertebrae and Orichalcum threads criss-crossing.

History and Description:

In the First Age, people learned to be prepared. Especially sailors and fishermen who planned on going long stretches without seeing even a simple glimpse of civilization. In heavily occupied as well as very small vessels, the limits of what the ship (or boat) could carry sometimes could not compensate for the extreme need of those that had to live for extended periods of time. Sailors and long-range fishermen always ran the risk of getting caught in a storm, being tossed to Gaia knows where and, when found in these situations, realized they would not be able to survive long enough to get home. Most of these people died of hunger, but an equal amount died of thirst, as salt water is not exactly potable. Tragedies befell children who dawned a new day and saw their fathers not yet home from the trip to fish; women (and men) were occasionally widowed when the report came back that the ship their spouses were on had disappeared or been found wrecked with no signs of life left.

Tanin, Eclipse Caste Chosen of the Unconquered Sun, had three children. Two with the nymph Serphys from the depths of the Red Lagoon of Abalone who were God-Bloods, and later, when the nymph tired of playing spouse to the Solar, she found a mortal love, named Kaanen, with whom she had her third child, Alik. This third child became a fisherman of the West, and was quite good at his chosen profession; however, disaster struck when the vicious torrents of the West ripped through the Southwestern island and flung him into the Wyld reaches of the ocean. After a day and a half of not seeing any sign of return of her son, Tanin embarked on a quest to find him, and find him she did. He had perished only hours before she had arrived to his rescue, dead from thirst because of the lack of potable water he could carry on his small fishing boat.

Tanin was, of course, frustrated beyond belief as she finally understood the hardship that people suffered when their children and spouses died at the hands of this merciless fate. She vowed that her remaining two children would not suffer this fate as their brother had.

To fulfill her vow, she crafted an artifact of beauty and utility. The Sweet Net. This net, whose original design is threaded from spidersilk-thin strands of orichalcum --but can be created of any of the Five Magical Materials, though Black Jade -does- work best because of its affinity to water-- is bound tightly together, leaving almost no room for anything but the most clear and pleasurable of fluids to pass through its glimmering surface, making it possible to filter any type of liquid into pure, crystalline, and most importantly -potable- water. Its circular in design, about one foot radius; the borders crafted from the vertabrae of river snakes and threaded together by the same orichalcum threads that make the net. In this manner, the Eclipse made two of these Sweet Nets, one for each of her remaining children, fulfilling her vow that neither of them would fall to the same fate their brother had.

Sweet Nets became a thing of common use among Exalted-commanded ships, due to their extreme utilty and easy transport. Larger versions were made, but they usually were not needed, for the sheer amount of water that the net is able to filter is enough to keep even a large crew from dying of thirst, if it is used wisely.

System:

The Sweet Net, as mentioned above in the introductory story, is circular in shape, the edges crafted using the vertebrae bones of river snakes who have been killed without damage to their skeletal structures. The threads of whichever magical material is used go from one vertebrae to the other, threading and uniting the bones to make a sturdy object, and then they are criss-crossed from one side of the circle to the other, passing straight down the middle over and over again, until less than a millimeter is left between each line. Then another set of threads is weaved into the net, moving in parallel to the actual bone structure, creating the image of a perfectly circular spider's web.

This artifact does not need any committed Essence. However, for each twelve gallons of liquid (any liquid will do, except of course, liquified materials that don't actually hold water, like melted metal and the like) 1 mote of Essence must be spent, and six gallons of perfectly potable --and usually quite refreshing and delicious-- water will be filtered out into any container that is held under the Sweet Net.

The Sweet Net requires that after every twenty uses it be cleaned, by submerging it in clean, drinkable water, which can be water that the net itself filtered (this is, in fact, recommended, as it is some of the cleanest and purest water found in all Creation) for five hours, after which the net is removed, and the container in which it was submerged should be discarded --for it carries the foulest, most despising liquid known due to the large quantities of impure things the net released into it-- and the net can be used again another twenty times.

It takes one scene --or, if the current situation demands that the scene be divided into turns, twelve turns-- for the Sweet Net to filter the twelve gallons of liquid into six gallons of pure, potable water.