Invested item - magical scribe

Two things:

  1. I never said a magus couldn't talk to a manufactured tome. in fact, your contention wasn't that a magus should be able to talk to a book, but rather that the book should be able to provide information about its contents, which is the crux of the matter.

  2. A statue or brick can certainly be questioned, as can a book, it simply will not know anything other than general details about who chiseled it, wrote it, molded it, handled it or passed within its vicinity. A brick will know its composite elements as would a book, but if you write a word in a foreign language on a brick the brick wouldnt know what the word was or what it meant.

Again, I surmise that given the caveat in the RAW about the written word containing no information, it matters not if the words are etched into stone or couched between leaves of parchment, only a metaphysical entity with mental capacity to understand ( who might reside in said statue, brick or book) would be able to communicate the meaning of said text.

So I stand by my previous argument.

So what we need then is a spell that can grant Intelligence to a book. Make it InAn with Cr and Me requisites. Jack the level up some, say to 45, and make it a ritual.

I think it is an interesting enough concept that it would be worth playing with :slight_smile:

Or just invest the ink with intellect and the text could communicate its meaning to the enquirer. Should be an elementary enchantment for a Verdi and likely an easy one for most other houses as well.

I could also imagine that if one used enchanted ink to actually write the text, as opposed to enchanting it after the fact, one could give the ink the ability to also apprehend and delineate any deeper meanings intended by the writer at the time of authorship. This would negate the need for markups as one finds in the margins of old texts.

say, that is a good idea!

and who knows, if the enchanter (or his/her covenant) is enterprising enough, perhaps they could create a market in enchanted inks for magical tomes or even (perhaps more controlled application) binding written agreements/contracts.

Could provide a nice little income in vis and coin.

Just a thought.

As well as auto-scramble text so the meaning oof the book is gibberish to the undesirable reader.

Sounds cool for a code book. I would make that ink awfully expensive. Like a 60th level ritual or something like that to generate enough ink for up to 40 levels of text or something like that. It would exist, but in limited supply instead of being the default ink of the OoH.

Cheers,

Xavi

Excellent idea Xavi!

Building upon that, why not have the ritual be performed at the point of sale ( say involving an ornate crystal dram vile). The party to whom the ink is to be provided must be party to the ritual and must provide a drop of blood into the crystal vile as part of the ceremony.

The blood forms the arcane connection to the owner/writer so that he/she alone can read text written with the ink or only those that he entrusts some other trigger.

Upon the death of the owner, the ink runs dry so as to preserve the limited supply and maintain deluxe status.

sudden thought...

You could certainly have a market for such luxury magic amongst the Jerbiton poppycocks who seek to increase their social status or score points against the courtly competition. :wink: