NOTES book 3 physical magic items

I SKIPPED A FEW TIMES of physical magic items. going into characters/misc to monsters to orbs and book section. sometimes just skipped all together. lots and lots of magical items.

129 order R&D Operations Manual =

The Research team collectively shivered. One of the things they’d done recently had been to create a set of guidelines and ethics, added to the Operations Manual, for their division. And one of the first things that \*everyone\* had agreed to was this; **no memetic weaponry. No infobombs, no idea guns, no identity erasers or persona blankers or \*whatever\*.**

132 dungeon -> tower -> totem copier

James stood at the top of the ramp, waiting patiently and taking the chance to enjoy the view out the ‘window’ up here, while Anesh drew runes on the floor in coffee grounds.

It was a ritual that they’d gotten a lot of practice with, especially Anesh. There had been talk of finding a way to repurpose a roomba to draw the lines, but then Virgil had died and no one had taken up the project. So it was by hand for now, because it wasn’t a big deal. The drawing, that is. The ritual itself was a huge deal; or at least, what it did.

Anesh finished the last line, smoothly stood up being careful not to smudge anything, and paced confidently over to the overhead projector that was set up on the end of the conference table that dominated the space. There was a box sitting on the projector, blocking basically all the light from it, and Anesh took a minute to nudge it slightly, verifying that it was in place properly.

Then he flicked the switch on the projector. The lines of coffee grounds on the floor, table, and chairs flared to a bright blue glow, some of them floating into the air like specks of gravity defying sand. There was a hum, and then a \*snap\*, and the coffee grounds vanished.

Anesh dusted off his hands, and with that same quiet confidence of a man running a machine for the hundredth time, walked over to the screen at the front of the room, where a copy of the ‘projected’ box had materialized and dropped to the floor with a thud.

“Nicely done.” James called to him, hands cupped around his mouth as he exaggerated how large the room was.

Anesh just smiled in response, walking back over and setting the cardboard box on the table, opening the top of it and starting to unpack the contents. Which was a bit tricky, because the contents were absolutely wedged in there as tight as possible.

“Alright.” He said, looking up after verifying everything. “Hey James.” Anesh idly greeted his boyfriend before turning to address one of his fellow tower mages. “No loss this time. Looks like we got it perfect. Which means we can now produce seventy two telepads per copying.”

132 telepads = teleport pads = ((((yellow paper legal pad that teleports = old name or something of the like))))

The camraconda up here with them bobbed its head, already doing the math before Anesh could ask. “Seventy two, we average seven duplications each cycle, with five free warpings each object. That is twenty five hundred and twenty teleports, moving a maximum of fifteen thousand one hundred and twenty living persons. Each cycle.” The synthesized voice of the snake rattled off the numbers.

132 dungeon -> tower -> totem copier + misc.

“Also weapons are bulky and inefficient uses of our copy space.” Anesh said. “We’ve actually got a priority chart on…” he scanned the space they were in, before pointing, “\*that\* whiteboard. Basically, if we aren’t resupplying consumables like telepads, we make upgrade kits for people, and if we’ve got enough of those, we test new greens and purples. With a couple copies each night set aside for goodwill.”

“Like the hearts?” James asked.

“Yeah.” Anesh confirmed with an unseen nod, as he walked to the low row of bankers boxes against the wall and shuffled them around to pick one out. “Although right now, I’ve been thinking we can do better.”

“Oh, god no. Manufacturing should be way beyond what we can add. And besides, we don’t have the refrigeration. Remember that we’re super cheating with the hearts thanks to whatever blue Sarah had at the time. We can’t really handle most medical things. No, I was thinking that we should be making runs of the ***purple orb that boosts immune systems***.” Anesh said.

“Doesn’t that run into the same problem, that we can’t really make enough to… make enough?” James asked. “Like, it seems like it would be more effective to do copy-testing of greens at hospitals, and hope for upgrades that can effect people en masse, right?”

132 dungeon -> tower -> totem copier = 120 orbs (small size)

Anesh nodded, keeping his face blank. “Mm hm. Mm hm. Okay.” He opened up a carton with foam inserts for orbs, perfectly sized to fit on the projector. “Let’s start with a **hundred and twenty**, and go from there.”

“You can duplicate a hundred and twenty orbs at once?” James was impressed. “That’s actually awesome.”

“Well, they have to be the small ones, which these thankfully are. And also we’ll need to get up to the point that we have a hundred and twenty extras. So, a lot of testing with other things while we do it. We’re still perfecting the procedure so we maximize gain.” He sighed. “I don’t think we’re using this right. It still feels like we’re missing something obvious.” Anesh stared at the projector screen on the wall, still sporting a few finger sized bullet holes from where he and James had claimed this place from its previous occupants.

132 dungeon -> tower -> totem copier = high school dungeon -> books = duplicate books = requires same learning info

As it turned out, after they shared the duplicated books with volunteers to test them, they \*did\* work. The only downside was, as James put it, it was the \*same lesson\*. Nate and Deb both had [Writing 0/100]. But that number didn’t go up unless both of them learned the same fact or piece of information.

They were taking the same class.

133 glasses / shades = combo of stuff glued / taped together

‘Pair of glasses’ was perhaps a generous term for the amalgamation of nonsense she’d just been passed. The base frame were wide framed sunglasses. Onto that, six different lenses had been affixed to the left eye; some of them with tape, some with tiny screws and clamps, one with glue. On the side there was a little swivel clamp that held a pager in place where it could be pulled in front of the eye when needed. The right bar had a pair of headphones coiled around it, which were then taped down to the single lens that had been added to that side. There was a pen rubber banded to it. It was a hot mess, and Momo kind of hated it.

It was also one of their more powerful research tools right now, which was \*embarrassing\*. She wanted to be a proper witch, with rituals and cool crystal things and the whole \*aesthetic\*, and these dumbasses were over here being engineers and just handing her things that worked and looked like crap. It wasn’t fair.

The sunglasses protected vision. That was their magical effect, as well as their normal one. Your eyes couldn’t get hurt while you wore them. Which was important, because of what the other stuff did. They’d figured out the trick to not breaking blue objects recently, and had used that to add some of their perception enhancers to these; when you wore this, you could see in infrared and microwave. You could tell if the thing you were looking at was a person, or could become a person, and how that person felt about a half dozen things. You could read any text from twenty meters away.

Most importantly, it could see the cracks.

They’d needed something like this. A way to more easily detect the craters in reality where an infomorph or an authority had torn out information, had blanked a person. And finally, they had a version that worked… well enough.

Momo got to use it, because either she was becoming resistant to brain damage, or she’d already hurt herself in the ways that mattered. Everyone else \*could\* use it, in theory, but if they actually saw a crack, it hurt. Not the \*eyes\*, obviously, that was what the sunglasses were there for. But it still hurt.

134 dev + momo + karen + emerald chips + shallaxy + momo \*something\* = solved?

“I tried to, and you started yelling about how I’d crippled your masterpiece.” Deb was doing a much better job staying level headed now. “But yes, since you asked so nicely, we wanted to get a couple of the working on a program that generates ‘bugs’ that a shellaxy can effectively use as a food source. In case our supply line of yellows is cut again, once the pandemic ends, and the company that owns the building starts having things like ‘employees on site’ and ‘security’ again.”

134 emerald chips = large portion of chapter + karen going over emerald chips

“How many emeralds do we acquire from Officium Mundi each week?” Karen asked, not bothering to waste time with a greeting when half the people here already understood that direct approaches were best. It was the one benefit of working with a pack of anxious millennials.

“I think there’s, like, ten of them per sheet of silver?” Daniel filled her in via phone call. “We’ve only actually ever brought two sheets out. They’re kinda bulky and hard to manage, and we weren’t really using the chips for anything important yet.”

“How bulky?” Karen needed to know.

“Like… you’d need a cart to carry more than one. Unless they can break into pieces, I dunno. Also, we still have those silver plates in the basement, no one’s using ‘em. If that matters.”

“Not right now. But noted.” Karen added that to the pile of potential income sources. “Do you have tactical details about their source?” She put no infliction on her words. Not on purpose, anyway. She was focused on the notes she was making.

“Uh… I remember El saying they came out of a cave. James built a weird magnet thing for the time he went in there.” She could almost feel Daniel shaking his head and shrugging. “No ideas beyond that.”

“Do the caves resupply themselves?”

“Maybe? I mean, probably.”

“Mmh. And finding them? Could you do that?”

Daniel sucked air through his teeth. “I… \*could\*... but Path and I don’t…”

An expanded search turned up old records from Virgil, rest his heart, about a number of projects he had planned. Eventually, someone would rekindle those ideas, so Karen accounted for them, as well as the smattering of other ideas thrown around. Projects were filtered through her mind by low and high priority, by number of chips needed, and by how likely people were to remember they’d grabbed their phone off a nightstand at 4 AM to send a text reading “what if grow a program that hates Comcast”.

Karen stared at that for a full minute, before moving it to the high priority column. Then she copied her compiled list of ideas and sent it to the Research channel in the chat server.

More information was needed. The Order had a map on its server, and Karen started poring over the spaces in Officium Mundi that had been charted. It was, after only about a mile or two out from the entrance, only a sliver of a fraction of the whole thing. But there were points of interest noted, including two caves. One of them, James had even attached pictures of the silver sheets that bore the emeralds like eggs. Karen checked it; thirteen of the chips, latched onto the plate of metal. There was also a reference to something in the Operations Manual.

As she learned more about the resource, Karen began to see a problem that would require addressing. The emeralds were not perfect. In fact, they had two major problems. First off, they required an amount of time to fully manifest their product. That wasn’t an exceptionally large issue, but with only one use per emerald, that left no room for iterative prototyping - Karen learned that term from Virgil’s notes, and instantly adopted it. The only real counter to this problem would be using multiple emeralds on the same task, and letting them ‘grow’ into different solutions. Which necessitated adjusting her estimated requirements.

The second problem was that, as they grew, they became specialized into near uselessness. Karen didn’t actually see a problem with that, as the entire point was to create specialized tools. But Virgil referenced it several times, and the number of italics he used made it sound like he had \*opinions\* on the process.

135 emerald chips = breaks into wifi cameras and then streams the video feed.

“Well, we got a working program out of one of the chips that JP and Nate requested.”

Reed cleared his throat, and looked around for help. But the rest of Research had abandoned their boss, suddenly all consumed by small tasks and tests. “It finds the wireless signals that traffic cameras use, breaks into them, and streams the video feed.” The young man admitted to James.

138 Virgil’s disc = ((((((i do believe is it "venmen" cd thing?)))))) = ((((just asking is virgil a CD now vs a human?)))))

“Oh, by the way!” James said to Anesh, checking the trays on the tables to see what Nate was making today. It looked like fish. He was gonna have some of that, for sure, later. “How did the copy of Virgil’s disc go?”

Anesh let out a low whistle through his teeth as they made their way back to the warehouse area. “Hooooo boy. It works.” He did not sound super excited.

“Pause on that.” Anesh cut him off. “So, the disc copied. Which is great, because the program on it won’t, but the whole thing… whatever, it’s magic. Anyway. It works fine, doesn’t have diminishing returns, but it requires the hardware to be on or it doesn’t do anything.”

“Yeah, about that. How does it decide who gets the buff? Did you figure that out?”

“It’s whoever it’s assigned to. There’s a sort of mental push you can do when you run it, it’s… magic.” Anesh sighed. “I really wish we had better words for this sort of thing.” He waved his hand around to indicate that ‘this sort of thing’ encompassed most of what their lives had become at this point. “The point is, it eats up a lot of processor power. And honestly? I don’t think that’s a stumbling block for us. We could probably build a server rack with five thousand CD trays just to…”

“Wait, it only runs \*off the disc\*?” James groaned. “That’s so inconveniennnnntttt.”

“Yes.” Anesh flatly stretched out the word. “It \*is\*. Welcome to my TED talk.” He rolled his eyes as he pushed open the back door to the warehouse workspace. “The point is, it ‘works’ well enough. And it makes me think we need to devote a lot more effort to figuring out where Virgil got it from.”

“I would be very annoyed at him were he alive.” James admitted. “So, you’re immune to venom now? It was venom, right? Or was it poison?”

“Well, no. I’m 4% resistant to venom.” Anesh corrected. “Which, all things considered, is pretty good. We don’t really have that many computers around here that have CD trays, so getting…”

“Shellaxies.”

“What?”

“What about running it on the shellaxies?” James asked. “Just… out of curiosity. Sometimes our magical bullshit amplifies itself.”

“I don’t think… hm.” Anesh thought for a second, settling into a leaning position against the desk that James had piled a bunch of architecture and political science books on. James, while his boyfriend thought about the question, flopped on his reading couch and started reading the news on his phone. “Okay, I think it just buffs the shellaxy.” Anesh finally answered. “Also, why are we back here?”

138 alchemist guild -> potion of exercise

“Oh yes!” JP nodded. “That’s why I got a discount.” He finished, reaching into the interior pocket of his light jacket, and pulling out a rectangular leather pouch. He set it on the desk, unclasped it, and flipped it open to reveal three thin, finger length glass vials, each filled with a light red fluid. “Merry Christmas.” JP said.

“If those are health potions I’ll kiss you.”

“You’re not my type, which is good, because they aren’t.” JP said. “Sorry dude, but \*that\* magic is still in the wind. No, these are… okay, they had some stupid Latin name for it, but they’re potions of exercise.”

“You know how when you work out, you’re actually damaging your body, and the soreness is it growing stronger muscles, or something? Well, these maximize that part, and also shorten the time window to about half an hour. Which I guess makes them like heath potions. But not for, like, cuts or cancer or whatever.”

“That’s still pretty cool. Why only three?” James asked.

“Because they sell to the Hollywood underground.” JP told him. “And we don’t have enough in our treasury to compete with that bullshit.” He shrugged, and pushed the pouch farther across the desk. “Also each of those is three or four doses. It’s just a little something to prove they’re real.”

138 alchmeist guild ->

“Well, that minor healing thing I showed you, a **dream draught whatever that means, potions for hair growth and skin renewal, and then a couple weird-ass ones, like a potion that oxygenates your blood for six hours, or one that improves reading speed for a day or so.”**

“Okay, those last two are \*awesome\*.” James said, actually getting more excited again.

“Yeah.” JP nodded. “And then there’s this one, which… well. Take a look.” And he pulled something out of his jacket.

It was a small bulb of a vial, and had James not been distracted by its contents, he would have thought it was an overly fancy perfume bottle from the eighties, repurposed to something magic. But what was inside it, was a liquid that roiled like a trapped snake, thrashing and pressing dark scales against the bottle in an endless attempt to escape. It was blue. An eternal, dark, endless blue. James stared into it, and something stared back. Something he recognized. Something dark, and poisonous, and deeply personal. But also something else. Like seeing a flash of an old friend in a crowd, just as they turned their back. James stared, for what felt like days.

JP’s hand covered it up. “Oof. Wow, they weren’t kidding.” He said.

“What was that.” James whispered.

**“Potion of cure depression.**” JP said casually. Or tried to. Even for him, no matter how suave he could be normally, this part held a weight he hadn’t fully prepared for. His voice was tight as he spoke, even while he tried to be light. “Spent some of my own funds on this one.” He said, holding the bottle up and gazing at it. “Looks like water to me. But they said… well, you know.” He shrugged, and set the impossible object on the table. “These don’t sell well.” He told James. “They’re hard to make, whatever that means, and people who need them can’t afford them. And then, no repeat customers. Which, I imagine, is why I could afford this at all.” He grinned a little at James. “Barely. Hey, can I have a raise?”

139 totem copier

Tonight, they were gonna get five duplications off. They were slated for one load of human hearts, one box of telepads, two uses on the Order armory - which would net them six total loadouts - and the last one was for a box of ‘miscellaneous junk’.

James was offended on behalf of JP, who never read the duplication reports, and wouldn’t know that his hard acquired potions were tagged as ‘junk’. They were also copying a couple things for Research, including a pen that wrote on any surface, and a key to a bike lock that \*might\* be spawning bikes, but no one was sure. Those things he was okay rolling into the ‘junk’ label. Oh, and a couple pairs of the affiliation glasses, because they were useful for the spy bullshit that was part of his daily life now.

140 kidneys + totem copier

“Your friend will live.” Dr. Nikita was telling James. By association and the magic of smartphones, he was also telling the dozen people waiting back at the Lair, who never would have been allowed to crowd into the hospital what with the whole pandemic thing going on. “None of his injuries were critical, or life threatening beyond the bleeding. Some internal damage, nothing that will not heal with time. Though one kidney was damaged, and may need to be removed. I do not suppose you have the means to procure us a supply of perfect human kidneys?”

“We… probably could?” James thought about it as he let the anxiety of Reed’s injuries leave his chest. “We don’t have access to the stasis effect we used to preserve the heart anymore, but we may be able to find a replacement. I think the biggest obstacle would be supply, and relative impact; we can only make so much. Though, kidneys also keep longer, don’t they? Like, compared to hearts?”

“Quite a bit so, yes. Though not forever, sadly.” The doctor shook his head.

“We can maybe arrange something. I’ll get back to you. Also…” James offered a weak smile, “...thank you. For taking care of him. We owe you.”

140 order -> R&D = punishment response division for totem explosion.

“Good.” James said, relief running in his blood. “Now. Like I said at the start. No punishments for this. But I \*am\* going to encourage everyone here to sign up for a training rotation with the Response division.” He noticed a few winces. “It’ll be good experience for you.”

142 Frequency-Of-Sunlight = testing attached arms on back

“Frequency!” James called after the camraconda, who turned, bracing two trays of dishes she’d collected from around the busy dining room on a series of jointed metal struts that were coming out from behind her back. “What the hell is going on here?”

“Cleaning!” The camraconda called back.

“No…” James pinched the bridge of his nose. “Where did you get \*arms\* from?” He asked more directly. “Not that they aren’t cool, but when did this even happen?”

“Recently. I am testing.” The camraconda bobbed at him in a friendly gesture, and promptly lost control of one of the trays she was holding, practically throwing a half dozen plates onto the tile floor in front of the kitchen’s doors. The camraconda glared at them, actually managing to catch the last one as the tray overbalanced and freezing it in place, but a couple of the dishes shattered to pieces on impact. “Testing. Ongoing.” Frequency-Of-Sunlight sounded disappointed.

143 totem copier + depression potion + other potions

James didn’t get much farther than that before Sarah cut him off. “Oh, did you not duplicate it yet?”

“No, we did. It doesn’t copy properly. The other potions do, tho…”

“So you’re running tests on it somehow.”

James turned his head and shot Sarah a look. “No. We’ve done a chemical analysis on it, among other things. It’s inert, nontoxic, all sorts of benign…”

“So you’re waiting to…”

This time James interrupted her, glowering at his friend. “It appears to be exactly what it says. A one use, probably safe, cure-all-depression potion. There is no reason for me to have not taken it. Happy?”

144 status que items =

“That’s… good. Good.” Reed nodded as he made a judgement call on James’ personal mental health. “Anyway. Um.. so, Status Quo’s bracers and bracelets and stuff are bad.”

“Well, it’s not degrading. It’s just… okay, I have numbers here for you.” Reed sighed in relief as they made it to the firing range, where it looked like a roaming pack of white boards had taken an interest in the shooting line, and the one person currently down here.

“Alright!” Reed looked like he wanted to clap, but was missing the use of one hand, so he slapped one of the whiteboards instead. “So, all the items have a number of abilities, which have a level, xp bar, cooldown, banked charges, and sometimes modifiers.”

“Yes, I’ve used the shield bracer, Reed. A lot.” James tried to keep from sounding rude about it, so he gave a light grin instead of an eye roll. “And the copies aren’t great because they always come out with a single level one ability.”

“Right. Right! Let’s use the shield as an example!” Reed got excited. “So, the Status… the SQ shields,” Reed accepted the shortening of the term, “they have the two powers, which is handy. One to block, one to switch what you block. Now here’s the thing; leveling up the block on this one… here. This one.” He held up a bracer off a table of clutter nearby, with a series of tags dangling off it, “takes nineteen thousand uses to go from level eighteen to nineteen.”

“Yikes?” James offered.

“Correct, yikes.” Reed nodded. “And from the few that we have leveled up, we know that mostly all it does is increase max charges stored, and \*very slightly\* reduce the cooldown.”

“I’ve never actually upgraded one of them myself, so I didn’t know that. That’s kinda cool, though, right?” James asked. “Like, that makes these very effective legacy artifacts. Something to pass on to the future that only ever upgrades and doesn’t degrade, right?”

“So, this is one of our copies.” He held up a second bracer. “Not super useful, since it comes out with the ability to block… I mean, let’s not be glib, it blocks \*swords\*, James.” He gave James a \*look\*. Like he was rolling his eyes, and, collectively, the eyes of the entire Research division. “When’s the last time someone tried to hit you with a sword?”

“Yesterday. Anesh and JP and I fence.”

“I… yeah… well, I meant, like, in a fight?” Reed cleared his throat and moved on, ignoring James giving a toothy attempt to suppress a laugh. “Also it somehow differentiates between bladed weapons and bladed \*tools\*, so it won’t block a lot of kitchen knives, even if they’re being used to stab you. So. Level one, blocks swords, twelve hour cooldown on uses, gonna be a while before it levels up, right?”

Folding his arms over his chest, James leaned back on one of the wooden frames they’d put around the range area. “I feel like you’re saying that because it’s a trap. But if it’s like the other one, it should be two thousand uses, yeah? So… a thousand days, if we never miss an activation, that’s about two and a half years? Just to get to level two?”

“It would be, but you’re wrong!” Reed sprung the ‘trap’ anyway. “It’s three hundred.”

“What?”

“Three hundred uses. And then six hundred, to jump from two to three.” Reed tossed the bracer back onto the table. “A level cuts \*half an hour\* off the cooldown, and at three, it unlocks the next power, so this entire batch…” He moved a leg with a pained wince, and shifted a hefty cardboard box full of metal jingling pieces out from under the table, “is ready to go. Not perfect, but growing fast and good enough.”

“Wait, what the fuck?” James had a concerned frown on. “Why? Like, why doesn’t it go \*slower\*, since we didn’t feed any weird blood machine a human sacrifice to get these?”

Reed shrugged. “No idea. Maybe it’s because of that. Maybe it’s the process of copying? Maybe we just got lucky for once. Either way… the copies are way, way more useful than everyone thinks. They mature into usable gear in about four months. Three, if we abuse all the time dilation we have going on.”

“We should absolutely allocate more duplications to these, even if it will be a while before they’re really effective.” And then, a concerning thought came to mind. “What about the gun bracelets?” James asked, eyes wide, a worried excitement in his chest.

“Ah.” Reed shook his head. “The initial cooldown on bonding to a weapon is too high. It’ll be eight years before that levels up, unless we find something we can really abuse.”

“You can make time loops with the orange totems.” James said quietly. “And the one I got stuck in, it reset me, but all the magical resources I burned stayed gone.”

144 friendly fire at level 25 = Status quo (weapon bracelet ? to many items)

“Kinda, yeah. And to ask that you make more copies of all the other ones, too. But also…” And here, Reed opened the side gate, and walked out onto the range, giving James a very nervous feeling as he put a pair of earplugs in before coming to a stop in front of one of the target sheets. From next to him, a hand extended and offered James a pair of earmuffs, and he glanced over to see Nikhail grinning ear to ear. “So, check this out!” Reed called.

Then Nik took a shooting stance, and before James could do more than widen his eyes, pulled the trigger. The bracelet on his arm glittering the color of a cluster shot activation as the handgun kicked and a deafening bang echoed off the mildly soundproofed concrete.

Then Nik flicked the safety on, unloaded the gun, and called out, “Safe!”

Thirty feet away, Reed nodded, hand on his hip as he turned around and pulled down the target sheet before walking back over. He leaned on the other side of the frame they’d built, and offered the paper to James. “Cool, right?”

James considered that it would be unfair to strangle someone who was already injured, so he took the deepest breath possible, and silently seethed for a bit, before speaking. “Never fucking do that again without warning me, or I’m sending you back to the hospital for containment.” He said calmly. “Also what the hell.” He looked down at the target sheet, the one Reed had been standing directly in front of. Three neat holes, all in a short cluster. “What?”

“Friendly fire.” Reed said, smiling even through James’ angry annoyance.

“This one unlocked it at level twenty five of the reload ability.” Nik explained. “It doesn’t save up a lot of uses, but it’s pretty cool. And now we know it works with the cluster shot, too!”

146 MAGIC ITEM = sharpie pen/marker

“Okay. But first, touch this.” James held up the clipboard, a circle drawn on one side in sharpie. Anesh poked it. “No, like, hold your finger there, you dork.” James rolled his eyes.

Anesh did so, and then jumped as James ran his fingers across Anesh’s. No, across the other side of the clipboard. But it felt… real.

“What is \*this\*?” He asked. “Magic clipboard? Cool, but I don’t see how it helps us. Also, you’re sidetracking me.”

“Magic sharpie, actually.” James grinned. “Circles drawn on opposite sides of material seem to ‘conduct’ tactile sensation. But, like, as one big nerve ending. I’ve been taking John Green’s artistic advice, and drawing lots of small circles in weird patterns, trying to make something cool work.” James looked, Anesh realized then, strangely \*content\*. “It’s a good day.” He nodded at his boyfriend.

146 MAGIC ITEMS

The first few were easy. The **pen that connected tactile sensation. A coat that regulated body temperature.** A few vision options, with the one they settled on starting with being **a pair of glasses that gave you a sense of everything moving above a certain speed within a radius around you.**

**A pair of hiking boots someone had found in the office that couldn’t fall over.** They’d shaped the base of the feet of their mech around them; the legs would snap in half before the thing lost balance now.

**Pencils and pens, fused into the structure, inactive so long as the thing wasn’t a ‘body’, but after it was? One that changed color, one that projected writing, one that always landed upright when thrown, one that self sharpened.**

146 magic items

After they’d cleared themselves and made sure their weapons, such as they were, were intact, they moved forward. James and Ethan were carrying quarterstaves, which were, as far as the door into this place was concerned, \*absolutely just brooms\*. Anesh had brought that **binder from the Office that turned impacts into paper, and then also a long ruler that was vector-locked once it was moving at a certain speed.**

146 alchemist guild -> exercise potion

And everyone, practically \*everyone\*, who had any kind of even remotely physical role, had been abusing the exercise potions like they were water in the desert. Push yourself to the point of near breaking, down one of those, \*feel\* as your muscles rebuilt themselves stronger and harder, and then do it all again. With a properly designed regimen, someone who had spent most of their life out of the gym could cram two year’s worth of strength training into about a \*week\*.

147 emerald chips

James pursed his lips, a guilty look in his eyes. “I’m not gonna lie, I don’t know how money works on larger scales like this.” He admitted. “We really need to just get an emerald to generate a hit video game for us and add that as an income stream.”

“First of all, the chips don’t work that way.” Anesh corrected him. And then, seeing the startled look on James’ face, cleared his throat. “Oh, sorry, thought you knew that. Um… yeah, it turns out, they can accept inputs while growing? And there’s limits to what they can do without certain things filled in. Like, one of them couldn’t make a game with graphics, unless you gave it 3D models to work with. I think? I’ll be honest, I didn’t fully understand what Mars was talking about when he told me.”

147 coffee machine -> reflex version

“Wait, I never thought about that! What does the reflex coffee do when it’s iced?” Anesh perked up like he’d just downed some caffeine himself. “Does it change how it works? Normally it needs to be over a certain tempature, right? Does making it iced coffee mean it has to be \*below\* a certain tempature? Have we been missing out on a whole suite of potential effects?”

“Well, \*two\* effects.” James tried to hold back a laugh. “We only have two coffee machines. And yes, it does change it. It-“

“I knew it!”

“-yes very good. It does the reverse.” He finished.

Anesh was silent for a second, narrowing his eyes at James like he was trying to figure out if this was a joke. “As in, the reflex coffee would make you slower?”

“Yeah. And you’re right that it does need to be cold enough. But, it works in blended drinks!” James grinned.

“Nah. It’s just that iced wisdom coffee is a really good sleep aid. Makes it possible for me to stop panicking about death for a while and close my eyes. Also it’s cheaper than weed, which is illegal once we cross into Idaho anyway.” James replied, leaning down to let Rufus scurry up his arm, the tips of his pen legs stinging against skin that was starting to get cold in the mountain wind.

148 status quo -> crown = increase usage of blue orbs

“Oh hey!” Reed said, trying to cover up the wince of pain in his voice. “The crown thing! I’ve been looking for this.” He rolled over from where he was knelt down to the bottom shelf of the workbench, holding up a wire and wood circlet. “How long has this been down here?”

“I… don’t know? What’s it do?”

Reed settled it on his head, and mentally scanned the information that it provided his mind.

[Inner Spirit Reignition - 14 - 19,984 / 20,000 -1:2:44:10 (26)]

“Yup!” He exclaimed, plucking it off and looking at it more closely. “This is the one that has the effect that increases uses of blue orbs!”

Nik plucked it out of his hand and added it to the box of Status Quo equipment. “Well, \*that\* sounds like something we can duplicate and abuse forever, huh?” He nodded to himself. “Any other SQ stuff down there for this box?”

148 UNKNOWN MAGIC ITEM = maybe "nightmare hexagon"

“Probably. Also what do you mean ‘maybe’? The bench isn’t that large.”

“I mean, there’s the weird hexagon thing down here.” Reed said. “Does that count?”

“It doesn’t level up, it doesn’t go in the box. Come on, let’s get this and the pile of red orbs over to the Research side, and then come back for the rest.” Nik tapped his foot impatiently, shifting his grip on the badly weighted cardboard.

Reed awkwardly cleared his throat, looking at the concrete floor he was propping himself up on. “Um.. can I get a hand up?” He asked. “I didn’t realize… how much this would hurt, when I got down here.”

Nikhail swore, setting the box to the floor with a clattering thump as he knelt down next to Reed to offer an arm and shoulder for the supposedly intelligent head of Research to use to stand. “You were supposed to \*take breaks if you needed them!\* Reed, you need to take better care of yourself!”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re missing roughly five pounds of human parts that humans are supposed to have!”

“Yeah, but most of it doesn’t hurt that much.”

“...And the parts that \*do\* hurt?!”

“Hurt a lot.” Reed’s voice came out with a kind of hollow exhaustion. “Anyway. Grab the nightmare hexagon and let’s go.”

Nik didn’t look like he wanted to stop supporting Reed, but the other guy pushed away and seemed to be standing okay on his own. Although Nik made sure to shift the heavier box out of his reach while he grabbed the last Status Quo artifact.

148 status quo -> ID tags / hexagon thing + Nikhail + reed = Nikhail + hexagon thing = stuck to each other.

“Um… hey, what did this thing do again?” He asked Reed as he looked at the orangish hexagonal polyhedron and very blatantly didn’t touch it. “I remember it had a bunch of ID badges in it, probably from agents, right? But… what else? Did we ever test that?”

“Uh, it didn’t do anything, even to people who did test it with their own IDs. Why?” Reed asked, shifting the lighter burden he’d grabbed himself into a better position that didn’t stress his bad arm.

“Because part of it’s sorta glowing and I’m suspicious.” Nik said.

Reed dropped his box back to the table, and leaned down to check, arm supporting himself against the upper surface.

Indeed, the object was glowing. Reed nodded. Okay, good. Verification out of the way. Now. \*Why\* was it glowing, and was that bad for everyone?

It was one of the things they’d recovered from Status Quo’s HQ. Possibly the most important thing, not that they’d know. For all that James and Anesh complained constantly about the lack of health potions or bags of holding, the Research division knew that the true tragedy was that no one had found an identify scroll.

About a foot and a half in diameter, with a series of perfectly hexagonal sides. The object was made of some kind of pale orange resin or something; they hadn’t wanted to damage it to test the substance, and really, it didn’t matter much when dealing with magical artifacts, near as anyone knew. When they’d found it, the indented facets on each face had been filled with ID badges of people who, even through the infoweapon that had been set off, they could match to a lot of Status Quo agents.

What the object did, no one knew. They’d assumed it was responsible for the agent’s unnatural durability, but if it was, they’d never been able to trigger it. And so, it had been shuffled from shelf to shelf with the other Status Quo artifacts for months now. Mostly ignored.

And now it was glowing. Well, a few of the hex surfaces were glowing. A kind of luminescent green, pale and almost unnoticeable unless you looked at it.

“Huh.” Reed said. “Okay, don’t touch that.”

“Should we… try the ID thing again?” Nikhail asked with a kind of anxious concern.

“That seems… bad?” Reed replied. He pulled himself back up with a sigh and a stab of pain in his side. “It looks like it’s moving.”

“Yeah, it kind of looks like little larva or something.” Nik said, still on his knees and trying to get as close to the thing as possible for a better look. “Like...oh.”

“Oh?”

Nik settled back on his heels. “Is this a hive?” He asked. “Like, maybe the reason we couldn’t figure out what it ‘does’ is that it isn’t dungeontech. It’s something more alive than that.”

“Okay, that’s awful. Two questions.” Reed ticked off on his fingers. “What sort of nightmare bugs is it growing, and what do we do with it?” Then he added a third. “And also, why was it full of IDs? Did they… grow… the things...into agents?”

He and Nik shared a grimace, and at the same time, both said “Creepy.” Before Nik shook off the disgust and tried to come up with answers. “I mean, we could just break it. But also, what if it grows something friendly?”

“If they were holding onto it, we know it was at least friendly to \*them\*.” Reed countered. “That doesn’t mean it’ll like \*us\*.”

“True. Still doesn’t answer why they had their IDs in there.” He looked down at the object, the suspected hive, again. “I’m gonna try it.” Nik said, pulling out a wallet from his back pocket.

“I feel like I should be armed for this and maybe you should \*wait\* and…” Reed sighed. “Alright, you did it. Okay. Cool. Are you dead?”

Nikhail looked up from where he’d dropped his driver’s license into one of the glowing hexes. “Nope! Nothing happened. Except that it seems like it likes my ID.” He cleared his throat. “And I can’t pull it back out. And… I needed that, probably.”

“Well, good news. You get to be under observation from now until we figure out what that was.” Reed shook his head. “Why is everyone so goddamn reckless?!” He threw up his good arm in exasperation. “Did we all learn nothing from that time we blew a hole in the parking lot?”

“I think the others learned more than me. Davis learned a lot! He actually spoke up in a meeting!” Nik cheerfully replied. “Anyway. This \*seems\* safe to carry, so let’s get this stuff moved, and then I’ll go sit patiently while everyone asks me questions I cannot answer yet.”

149 EL magic car = 92 Mazda Miata + heavily modified with magic stuff

She turned back to her car with clear satisfaction in her eyes, also glad for the subject change. “\*This\* is an \*actual\* car child.” El informed him. “‘92 Mazda Miata, slightly modified in a boring and frustratingly difficult way to have working air conditioning, **heavily modified in an arcane way to have slightly more horsepower, torque, acceleration, and fuel capacity than it should.”**

“The engine is, somehow, **a sixteen cylinder monster**.” El told them, circling around to the hood and motioning the two boys over. James strolled onto the unfamiliar driveway, hands awkwardly in his pockets, as he looked down at the machinery he did not understand in any way. “I don’t know it’s actual displacement, because I don’t know how to calculate that. But between the engine itself, a **set of ball bearings that double the amount of torque the car’s internals can safely handle**, and **this part of the drive shaft that I am**…” El cleared her throat, “...\*attempting\* to figure out how to install, I bet you anything I can outpace your dumb mom-car.”

James glanced at the candy red chassis of the car in front of them. “I cannot help but notice that you picked yourself a late nineties convertible?”

“Early nineties.” Anesh corrected him. “She said ‘92. Also, can I just back you up a bit? How do the ball bearings impact the entire car?”

“Magic?” El shrugged. **“Same with the drive shaft rod and boosting acceleration**, I guess. I install it, and its effect spreads over the whole unit or something. It’s kinda cool, cause half the time the parts don’t have anything to do with what their actual function is.”

151 cars get tired

“Now, we go home and sleep!” She declared, stifling a yawn that quickly turned contagious. “I’m tired. You’re tired. The cars are tired. And I feel odd so I wanna nap it off.”

“Cars don’t get…”

152 order packages for order people

Armory Inventory Report

Note : Due to increasing demands on replicator resources, armory packages have been restructured and are now in limited availability. Until further sources of mana coffee can be secured, Knights should not request more than one loadout per month.

Note : Skills are written in simplified form. Full details available on request. Skills are compatible with available equipment, even when esoteric.

Note : Armory packages only list dungeontech being copied for personal use, and do not include issued equipment for the response or delver teams. Skulljack wifi braids are available without making an armory request.

Introductory Package :

Skills : Quarterstaff, Kickboxing, CPR, Running, Driving, French Mycology (Incidental), Baseball Statistics (Incidental), Lens Fabrication (Incidental)

Physical Upgrades : Immunity Response Improvement, Short Term Memory Improvement

Emotional Resonance : Courage (Optional)

Other : Status Quo Shield Bracer

Delver Package :

Skills : Camping, Packing, Investigation, Animal Husbandry, Crossbow, Handgun, Acrobatics (2), Beatles Lyrics (Incidental), Impressionist Painting (Incidental), Statistics (Incidental), Ducks (Incidental)

Physical Upgrades : Throw Speed, Ligament Tensile Strength, Blood Production, Impact Absorption

Emotional Resonance : Calm, Surprise

Other : Telepad (1), Blue Orb - Medical Attention (Absorb for 23x Refine Liquid)

Rogue Package (In development) :

Skills : Languages (2, Spanish, German (Outdated)), Handgun, Investigation, Etiquette (5), Cookware Fabrication (Incidental), Cartography (Incidental)

Physical Upgrades : Skin Contact Electrical Discharge, Vocal Precision

*Wanted :* More languages, more perception enhancers

Response Package (In development) :

Skills : First Aid (2), Trauma Response, Language - Spanish, Judo, Ducks (Incidental), Cookie Recipe (Incidental)

Physical Upgrades : Impact Absorption, Lift Capacity, Bone Durability

Emotional Resonance : Patience (Incidental)

Other : Status Quo Shield Bracer (backup). A full team may request an Akashic Sewer book be duplicated for their unit, but only once due to space constraints, and pending availability.

*Wanted :* Persuasion, therapy, or other forms of deescelation ability. Durability based purples.

154 EL road dungeon -> gas station -> magic gas = heals cars

James had parked the car about fifty feet away, just to give them a little distance in case it exploded or something, but it didn’t look like it was going to. Anesh had approached the overturned vehicle, while James was examining their own car.

The spines that had riddled the driver’s side were bad news. Wherever they hit, it seemed like they penetrated, and where they were stuck in his car, they radiated sprawling organic lines of decay and corruption. Not exactly rust; his precious new road trip car was \*rotting\*, the metal and plastic and paint of its structure turning to a slimy goo that dripped slightly in the sun.

But.

Parts of it were already self repairing. The gas in their tank, a healing potion for cars, was already doing its work in the short time they’d taken to drive back here. James had initially been annoyed they’d found a health potion for a vehicle before a human, after all this time, but he wasn’t going to complain as he yanked the spines out and let the idling engine slowly purge the corruption.

154 EL road dungeon -> gas station -> lighter + cigarettes (suppose to be like regular dungeon food item for road dungeon ?!?!)

Behind them, El chirped up. “Oh hey, smokes!” She said, standing up with a half full pack of cigarettes, white and red packaging proudly labeling them as “Dire Stars”.

“There’s no way those are safe.” James said with a snort.

“Hey, what? No! It’s like the food in your dungeon. These are always fine, they just have weird names and flavors.” El pulled one out. “Gimmie the lighter.”

James passed it over. “I meant because they’re gonna give you cancer.” He told her. “Also please don’t light that in here. I hate the smell of those, and I refuse to put up with that shit from you.”

156 MAGIC ITEMS (lots of them)

Of all the dungeontech from Officium Mundi, there were absolutely standout hits. The nerf gun that shot balls of superheated plasma, the laser pointer that broadcast emotions, the binder that converted kinetic force into paperwork. All great, useful beyond belief, lifesavers.

Of course, different members of the Order had their own favorites. Most people had a pair of headphones they favored at this point. One person had found a little plant pot that grew anything planted in it into a succulent, and that ‘anything’ included everything from gemstone to meat. Someone had a dress shirt that removed back pain. And another aspirant had at some point acquired a desk lamp that gradually recovered lost personal effects.

All of that was cool. But to James, none of it held a candle to his actual favorite magic item.

All of that was cool. But to James, none of it held a candle to his actual favorite magic item.

“Good afternoon.” He smoothly greeted the receptionist at the desk of Sunshine Realty while he reached into the breast pocket of the suit jacket he was wearing. “Fred Timman, New York, Fidelity Investments, I’m here to see Mr. Stephens?” As James spoke he words, the magic of the suit jacket materialized an appropriately ostentatious business card under his fingertips, which he drew out and handed to the grey haired woman who was eyeing him with raised eyebrows over her thick glasses.

This jacket was James’ favorite. Partially because it was hilarious and made him feel incredibly suave, but also partially because the contact numbers on the generated business cards were \*real\*, and some kind of potentially unethical memetic effect would make his cover bulletproof for exactly ten minutes. Or until refreshed.

165 momo totems

“You two are such dorks.” Momo said as she passed by, sliding through the front desk’s access door to get to the fridge, and passing close enough that James suddenly had a moment of knowing the **names and locations of everyone in the building, every phone number within two blocks, and the lunch menu.** “Hey, you done with those? I’m heading back to the kitchen.” She pointed at their bottles, and both James and Alanna calmly released each other, handed Momo the water bottles, let her pass by again, and then reached out to grab each other’s shoulders in the same formation as before. They both gave Momo an expectant look, and she just snorted with a smile on her face. “Dorks.” She said.

166 momo list of immunities

“Actually, James, you talked to Momo earlier, right?” Anesh asked him. “Did she tell you about the new immunity programs?”

“Somewhat. Not all of them. She has supposedly sent me a list, but I haven’t seen it yet.” James tapped at his phone, scrolling through messages and looking for anything from Momo. “Or she’s gotten sidetracked. Why, wondering if there’s an ‘immunity to the police’ in there?”

Alanna peaked out of her makeshift table bed. “I think Sarah said there was one that gave immunity to words, but she might have been joking.”

“Like… from… being convinced of things? Like rhetoric?” Anesh narrowed his eyes and gnawed at his lip. “Or like, if words caused physical damage? Like if something was too loud? How do we even \*test\* that?”

“We don’t. We put it in a box and bring it out if it becomes relevant.” James told him. “That said, a couple of these might come in handy for… wait, hang on, I’m getting sidetracked. Anesh, why did you ask about that?”

169 MAGIC ITEMS

They sort of had. Aside from the box of small yellows that were on the table to be copied and tested next at Deb’s request, they’d come back with what had become a pretty standard haul for a delve.

A few thousand dollars, a sealed briefcase for future investigation, a USB stick that appeared to store network connection, a stack of various random candy (partially because there was an ongoing theory that eating dungeon candy did in fact expand how many blues you could have absorbed, partially because one of them was called Lemon Alligators and there was no way in hell either James or Alanna was going to pass on that), a few purple orbs that were set aside for sharing with Order members that weren’t active delvers and one green earmarked for a local library, and just a whole host of random magic items that were probably going to get rendered down into blues.

“We’ve got, like, three pairs of headphones.” James said. “And they’ve all got that itch to them, you know? That feeling that they’re dungeontech. Actually, \*you\* spotted one of them, so that’s cool. No idea what any of them do yet though.”

“It’s like that way too often. We don’t give Research enough credit for stumbling into answers sometimes.” Anesh nodded. “Like, remember the headphones that read books to you, if ‘plugged into’ a book?”

“I think my favorite part of that was learning that Reed doesn’t have an internal voice when he reads, and then learning that a \*lot\* of people don’t, which is why audiobooks are so popular.” James got sidetracked briefly talking about using the headphones for rapid production of audiobooks, before Anesh got him back on track by verbally nudging him toward anything else they’d found. “Ah. Well, the main thing is, I don’t know.” James admitted. “So many times, we find something that seems absurd, but it doesn’t work the way we want. And then we’ll find something that seems kind of whatever, but it turns out it’s got more uses and bigger uses than I ever thought about.” He shrugged. “So, I dunno. I dunno if the backpack that randomizes it interior is useful. I don’t know if the dress shirt that changes colors is useful. It’s all so small and pointless most of the time.” He thumped his head against the wall behind him, eliciting a hollow thud. “That’s why I like the orbs. They might be dumb, but I don’t have to carry them around or worry about them.”

173

“Okay!” Mars panted. “Sorry to bother you! Do you know where the paperweight that can’t move in one direction is? Because I think I can build a space elevator with, like, a few of those.” He had the look of a person in the process of overcoming the barrier of feeling awkward asking their boss for something for the first time.

180 copier totem + smallest stable orange totem

The biggest news, from Anesh’s perspective at least, was they’d gotten a little more research done on the copier ritual. First through using storage items like the wallet of folding or the lunchbox of holding lunch. And, twice, a test with the smallest, safest, most stable orange totem that Reed’s team could build.

The ritual copied what was put into the small, 10”x10”x8” block of space over the overhead projector. And it did so allllllmost perfectly. It even copied magic. But, as it turned out, it could only ever copy a single one of what Research was calling “layers” of magic. A lunchbox packed with eight hundred pounds of food would copy eight hundred pounds of food. An orange totem folded space that you put the lunchbox in would copy the lunchbox. And enough food to fill one lunchbox.

Trying to mass copy orbs didn’t work. The storage device would copy fine, but the orbs just wouldn’t appear. Neither would most dungeon rewards that they could find. Magic items would ally over but only with the ‘item’ part. Dungeon rewards copied, with \*one\* exception; the [Endurance II] book that they’d brought out of Winter’s Climb.

180 space elevator with a handful of dungeontech objects.

Into this kind of standard report on how everyone’s personal learning was going, Anesh tried to casually slip the fact that a few people in Research, one of himself included, were \*pretty sure\* they had figured out the math on building a space elevator with a handful of dungeontech objects.

James didn’t let that one go uninterrogated, and pretty quickly regretted his choice, as Anesh started going into exacting mathematical detail on how multiple iterations of the the paperweight that ignored all force from a single vector could be chained together to create a self-lifting scalable machine. It got worse when another Anesh joined them, doubling the speed of the explanation after giving James a familiar kiss and an equally familiar notice that he needed to shave.

180 espresso machine (3rd machine) -> send objects as attachments to email / phone number / what ever. when accepted you received item

The delve team for Officium Mundi had recovered a magical \*espresso machine\*, which was truly powerful, and apparently made coffee that made you faster but didn’t improve reflexes at all. Blended drinks were being tested. Also, they’d finally gotten the ritual from another tower to work; it sent objects as attachments. To an email, a phone number, whatever. The recipient had to consciously accept the incoming object, but once they did, it just...was there.

182 shield bracer magically resized for a camraconda.

“Not to me!” Frequency-Of-Sunlight chimed in, twisting to wiggle her tail and show off the shield bracer magically resized for a camraconda.

**185 Nate + Status Quo bracers -> shields = how to train them and what effects they give when blocking with shield.**

“Cool.” Nate said, choosing to believe El and holding up his arm to show one of the copper and bone Status Quo bracers. “James, what the fuck is wrong with these things?”

“Gonna have to be more specific there boss.” James said, extracting himself from the hug and rising to wobbly feet before stabilizing himself on his desk. “Wrong how?”

Nate tapped the bracer, scowling at it with an actually angry look. “This one won’t switch to blocking bullets, and I can’t figure out how to make it.”

“Is it a new one?” James asked. “Like, a copy?”

“Yeah, does that matter?”

He nodded. “Sorta. The bracers actually have to have an attack pass through their potential shield zone, or whatever you wanna call it, before you can switch to that. So just go shoot past it with a few types of gun and you’ll be good. Oh, make sure someone’s wearing it, though.”

Nate’s eyes screwed up in concentration as he flipped through the projected menu of the magic item. “Okay, so, I can make this one switch to vehicle impact, four door sedan impact, or \*Honda\* impact. What’s up with that?”

“I love this place.” El gave a wet snort of laughter from the floor.

“It lets you get pretty specific.” James acknowledged. “But don’t. There’s no difference between the shield effect, so go as wide as possible. Like, broadsword or rapier are both options, but just ‘swords’ covers both of them.”

“Doesn’t it start with ‘bladed weapon strike’?” Nate asked. “Why not just use that?”

“You can, yeah. Oh! Though that brings something up. ‘Weapon’ doesn’t count tools, so kitchen knives slip through.” James snapped his fingers as he remembered. “Guns also suck, actually? I don’t actually think it lets you go for ‘bullet’? But sometimes it’s really irritatingly specific on what it wants you to think at it.”

Nate nodded, staring at the bracer. “Huh. Weird. This one has .45 and .38 already in it. But not 9mm? What are we even training these things on? And why won’t it let me just pick ‘handgun’?”

“If you pick ‘handgun’, it blocks physical strikes from the gun, not the bullets.” Jame clarified. “Also Nate please, those charges take two days to regenerate.”

“Right.” The chef and ex-spy didn’t even have the grace to look even a little embarrassed. “Okay, thanks. I’ll leave you to your... thing. We’re still drafting a contact plan, but it probably won’t be something we put into action for a few days. So, you know, go home and get some sleep or something.”

**190 dungeon (office) -> many things A**

It stopped feeling like a normal cubicle when James checked the coat and found not just a wallet, but also an Australian passport. And then a wallet bulging with cash, and ten different licenses. *Lucky*, but not too weird yet. Of course, when he opened the desk drawer and found almost twenty neatly lined up bottles of high strength prescription antifungal medications, along with another tight roll of bills, he raised his eyebrows.

The stapler on the desk - mundane, not alive - was also giving off a weird vibe. James poked at it, shifting it with his hatchet a couple times to make sure it wasn’t a trap, before he reached out and grabbed it. Eventually, just to see what would happen, he depressed the mechanism down, and along with the *chunk* noise of a staple being deployed, felt a pulse ripple out from the stapler. And then back into his head, along with a weird vibe of where the nearest walls and obstacles were. Stapler based echolocation. Neat. He packed it into his bag.

He paused, and ducked his head down to speak to Alanna who was watching the outside. “Kind of a lot here.” He said. “Like, a lot a lot. Weirdly a lot.”

“Let’s check the next one.” She answered, and James moved to follow her onward. After grabbing the cash. Not the pills, though. He didn’t want anything rattling in his pack while he had to run away from something with too many teeth.

The next cubicle held just as much, including a small picture frame that Alanna told him she was *pretty* sure had a diamond mounted in it, and not the fake decorative kind.

**190 dungeon (office) -> many things B**

They found a dozen small magic items, a lot of them converted to blue orbs just for portability. Not everything could change the world, and sometimes you just didn’t need a pen that automatically corrected which ‘your’ you were using.

But sometimes you found a coat that made you feel stronger when you wore it. Sometimes you found a folded birthday card on the edge of a desk that let you see how your closest loved one was doing right now. James didn’t touch that one, for romantic reasons.

Sometimes you made space for the lunchbox that felt like electrified salt, whose purpose you couldn’t determine.

They found the space in their packs that they needed, and moved on.

**190 dungeon (office) -> many things C**

A briefcase that instructed them to pick up a specific form from somewhere. A laptop power cable that seemed to also act as a high capacity battery, or else was drawing power from nowhere. A dozen small dungeon programs that were stored on the USB sticks that James always brought along - one of them measured whatever you typed in, which was exactly as silly as it sounded, but James suspected there was a way to break this. A binder full of gibberish reports and forms that endlessly respawned the pages - it was no Pony Things, in terms of entertainment value, but another infinite paper source couldn’t hurt.

**190 dungeon (office) -> totem copier = six hundred thousand dollars worth of platinum**

“Good. Good! We’ve got… uh six hundred thousand dollars worth of platinum in the compressed space that Alex is carrying? So that’s cool.” Anesh said it with a kind of deep economic panic in his voice.

“Well yeah, we’re always here for the magic and stuff.” James told her. “Don’t let Alanna mislead you. But also, we had ten ounces of platinum, and an orange totem so we can break the size limit of the copy ritual. So, you know. Power of two, right? It doesn’t take that many duplications to make a truly absurd number.”

End book three