Date: Twenty Fifth of Febuary, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

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Sly Malon firmly closed the box around the deck of cards. A cloak, a pair of gloves, and a wand of some sort were all predictable magical items; she might not know what they did exactly, but the effects would be the same every time. A deck of fifty six cards could have fifty six different outcomes, and that randomness was something that Sly was unwilling to risk at the moment. She gathered up the items and descended down the stairs with Baar’Miin in tow.

Job Arseoth came out of his Hoard-growing trance and looked about. Enra and index were fussing over a book, Baar’Miin was working on a stew, and Sly was poking at a new cloak.

“Mrrrrgh. Anyone find anything? I think I lost a few hours…”

Baar’Miin poked a spoon at Job, “six hours, a fight, a burial, and lunch. Dinner ready in a bit. Go help Sly with magic cloak while I get bowls ready.”

“A fight? A burial? What in the nine hells happened.”

Sly waved him over, “come help me with this and I’ll tell you. Found a few shops around back…”

An hour and a hot meal later…

Job licked his bowl, “mmm, good. so , you all found a bunch of magical things and we don’t know what they all do? Why don’t we just use the Identify spell?”

Enra shook her head, “two reasons. One, we don’t have any pearls worth at least a hundred gold. Two, we’d need six such pearls, as each would be used up in the casting of the spell. Material components aren’t typically used up, but Identify is one of the exceptions that proves the rule.”

Sly pointed to her pack, “We found a little over five hundred gold, and a small stack of gems. We could just head into Bera and buy the pearls we need.”

Enra nodded, “or we could just try things out. The book is taking a while, but Index and I should have it figured out with a few more days of work. The wand is probably a Wand of Web, the design for those is pretty much standard. The cloak and gloves I’m not completely sure about, but Detect Magic proved helpful. The cloak has a very subtle illusion enchantment on it, targeted at the cloak itself and the area immediately around it, activated by pulling up the hood. I’d have to check to be sure, but that seems like a Cloak of Elvenkind. The gloves have magically selective sticky or webbed fingers keyed to the wearer’s intent. I think they are Gloves of Swimming and Climbing.

“The deck of cards has a number of enchantments all layered on top of each other; all single-use. Probably one for each card. They are hard to pick apart, given how densely they are stacked, but most of them are some sort of minor cosmetic transformative enchantments. There are a few more powerful enchantments, still completely cosmetic. I can’t detect anything dangerous in its own right. There are no summonings, no spells of Wounding, nor planar gates. The ‘worst’ spells are a couple of curse-likes, possibly even cure-lites aka “prank curses’, but even these are cosmetic in nature. None of the enchantments have enough power to last more than a day, and they seem to recharge over that same time period. It’s something of a prank deck, a reusable party trick.

“There is one command phrase I picked out though: SiDiablo Suit. I don’t know exactly what it does, but it seems to either lock or unlock a subsection of the cards, physically pulling them into or out of a micro-dimension where they can’t be ‘drawn’. I triggered it, and counted the cards again, and came out with seventy-eight cards, the same number as a tarot deck. The SiDiablo Cards, for lack of a better name, are extremely powerful. The enchantments and effects all feel like high-level spells; fixed variations on the Wish or Reincarnation spells. Draw that card, and the corresponding predetermined Wish or Reincarnation is triggered. There is at least one ‘wild’ card that feels like a pure Wish spell. The effects of the card enchantments also seem stronger while the SiDiablo Suit is active, probably lasting longer at the cost of consuming the card for good.

“I say we turn the SiDiablo suite off and try drawing a card. Otherwise we need to cast Identify twice, once with the deck in each mode, to figure out what all of the cards do. That means two pearls turned to dust and at least two hundred gold sunk. Gold that, even after our haul, we can’t really afford to squander.”

Sly shook the sack of coins and gems lightly, “we have five hundred and eighty-one gold, and we can probably get another hundred and thirty for the gems. There might still be some things on the fourth and fifth floors, so that could be a few more gold yet. If we spent exactly six hundred on pearls for Identify spells, we’d only have about twenty two gold and two silvers each. Not much in the way of spending money. If we can identify any of these magic items without spending gold, that’s an extra twenty gold for each of us per item, forty if we do the deck in both of its modes.”

Baar’Miin’s eyes were huge, “only ever had ten gold coins my entire life. Having another hundred and forty some gold… my sisters and mother would appreciate that.”

Job licked his lips nervously, “we have a good idea about the cloak, gloves, and wand are. Let’s experiment with those in the morning, then search the rest of the Guild Hall. Perhaps the mage houses too, might be some things there. Once we have our total haul, we can make up our minds on the deck. Wish spells are powerful things, so we can’t just give it away or sell it to the highest bidder. We should probably turn it over to the Crown…”

Enra shook her head, “far, far too risky. My mother and eldest sister would probably be not-ambitious enough to trust with a Wish, but any of the nobles… they would wish for absolute power in Altheim, at the very least. And it would be a nightmare assigning guards to it and so forth; any one of them could decide to just… draw a card and boom, Wish spell.”

Index shook her head, “only about a one point two percent to draw the Wish card, but a twenty eight point two percent chance to draw one of the SiDiablo Suit.

Job slowly nodded, “too powerful to sell, too powerful to give away. Uttery harmless with the SiDiabolo Suit turned ‘off’, potentially incredibly powerful with it turned on. At least it seems to be set up to not kill the user, or at least not permanently.”

Sly set her empty bowl on the floor and stretched, “alright that settles it. We go to bed and sleep on this, and have some fun in the morning.”

Date: Twenty Seventh of February, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

… --- …

Job Arseoth woke up, took his pack off of his lap, stretched, and reached for his dagger, “Who are you and how did you get here?”

The green-cloaked shadowy figure at the edge of the camp slowly reached up and lowered its hood, revealing Enra’s face.

“It’s just me Job, and you have no idea how glad I am to know that this Cloak of Elvenkind works. The ability to not be the center of attention wherever I go just because of who my mother and sisters are… as a Noble, that is literally priceless.”

Job sheathed his dagger, “so that’s one item identified then. Did you stay up all night?”

Enra shook her head, “no, only half the night or so. It takes about eight hours to attune to an item, but I only need four hours of trance or eight hours of shut-eye to feel rested.”

“So you spent eight hours attuning to the cloak and then tranced?”

“Yes. I reason that we can spend the rest of the morning to sort out the gloves and the wand. The deck… I don’t think we can attune to it. We’d have to pull cards or use the Identify spell.”

Job nodded slowly, ‘that makes some sense. Let’s get breakfast first, then we can start on the gloves and wand. Who gets what?”

“Well, Sly would probably get the most use out of the gloves. As only spellcasters can attune to wands as a rule of thumb, and I already got the Cloak of Elvenkind, that means either you or Baar’Miin gets the wand.”

Baar’Miin chirped up from over by the cooking pot, “Give the wand to Job. Bahamut grants me all the spells I need.”

Job took the wand, “and how do I attempt to attune exactly? I admit, I never paid much attention in the ‘use of magic items’ seminars. Never expected to actually own one myself.”

Enra shrugged, “hold the item, or at least be in skin-contact with it, and meditate about it. Takes about eight hours usually.”

Eight Hours and breakfast later…

Job Arseoth eyed the twenty square foot spread of web on the wall of the Guild Hall.

“Well, I guess that works.”

Enra blinked and looked up from her examination of the book, “whoa. Wand of Web alright. What’s the command word?”

“ Lox, which is web in draconic. The wand also has a ‘safety’, I have to be holding and intending to ‘fire’ it when speaking the command word to trigger the wand. Seven charges and they recover rather quickly. Three or four every day, though that is variable.”

“That safety is a handy feature. Seems sensible, now that i think of it. I wonder why most modern wands don’t use it?”

“Probably to reduce the complexity of the enchantment?”

“True. If I recall correctly, they all seem to use trigger words in primordial, which isn't spoken all that often.”

Sly swung in through the window with a bag on her back, “the stairs to the fourth floor have collapsed. Not my fault! At least these Gloves of Swimming and Climbing make climbing about easier, and the spider web pattern is rather nice.”

Job put his head in his hands, “so you collapsed the stairs to the fourth floor and then climbed down the outside wall.”

“Well…”

Job gave Sly a look of disappointment.

Sly shrugged the look aside, “The fourth floor was more rooms, apartments more like, and the fifth floor was a set of shrines. I didn’t recognise some of them, but health and healing seemed to be prominent themes. The shrine to Kuko was the only one in good condition, and there were a few things of value there. I didn’t touch the shrine itself, that would be inviting trouble, but I did manage to find a few sets of vestments that the Kuko temple in Trebor would probably be interested in.”

Index popped her wood-and-metal knuckles with a loud SNAP to gather everyone's attention.

“So only the book and the SiDiabio Deck, for lack of a better name, need to be Identified. And we still haven’t found the main branch of the Mevada library. Do we search the mage houses, or do we go back to better prepare for a future expedition?”