"Old English fyr "fire, a fire," from
Proto-Germanic *fur-i- (source also of Old Saxon fiur, Old Frisian fiur, Old
Norse fürr, Middle Dutch and Dutch vuur, Old High German fiur, German Feuer
"fire"), from PIE *perjos, from root *pa?wr- "fire" (source
also of Armenian hur "fire, torch," Czech pyr "hot ashes,"
Greek pyr, Umbrian pir, Sanskrit pu, Hittite pahhur "fire"). Current
spelling is attested as early as 1200, but did not fully displace Middle
English fier (preserved in fiery) until c. 1600.
PIE apparently had two roots for fire: *paewr- and *egni-
(source of Latin ignis). The former was "inanimate," referring to
fire as a substance, and the latter was "animate," referring to it as
a living force (compare water (n.1))."
- from etymology online, a really excellent site and
useful resource.
The pleasing idea of a process as an item comes, perhaps,
from its already half-magical or numinous state. A process bound is already a
little bit more interesting than an inanimate thing. We can see this in magic
items, to show their magic; they live. The sword burns like a brand the jewel
glows like a lamp. The cloak moves in an unfelt wind. The picture talks.
But even without that, a process bound, carried and
sustained is slightly magical, it
exemplifies power over an ever-changing nature, not just tool-use but bound
process control. The common bindings break down quite neatly by classical
element;
Fire is the big one. The key thing here is that it's not
a magic lantern or a magic torch, but a magic fire. It is the fire you carry and preserve, not the means of its propagation
(though you will need that as well).
The nature of the thing puts hard limits on how you deal
with it or transport it. Fire is hard to carry and keep going, all kinds of
common circumstances and opponent action could put it out. You need to keep
finding fuel for it. Perhaps a particular kind of fuel. Magical fires could
feed on human hair, the bark of certain trees, polished coals or fossils. It's
easy to imagine someone carrying one, in a lantern, a brazier or something, but
hard to imagine them carrying two or more in anything other than special
circumstances. The nature of fire means that you will tend to adopt a
ritualistic attitude to taking care of it, which embeds a principal ritual from
the human lifeworld into the game. Because its very hard to deal with you can
make it situationaly very powerful, PC's have to invest resources and through
into how to sustain this powerful but delicate tool.
As well as it already being useful, it does so many
things, there's a whole range of extra stuff you can do with it, shine its
light on someone, breath in its smoke, let it's smoke 'write' on a piece of
paper, burn things in it, cook things with it, forge things with its heat, let
it cast shadows, burn yourself with it, see things in it.
Fire likes to get out of control though so this is a big
difference to any other kind of 'item', and a D&D PC is going to want to
let EVERYTHING BURN so then you have SUPER-POWERFUL fire. So some limitation of
this has to be built into the thing. Maybe as a fire gets bigger and more
powerful it becomes more intelligent, starts developing it's own ideas like a
runaway AI or a bound daemon, starts using its powers for itself rather than
for the PC's. And of course, few fires really want to stop burning.
Perhaps the fires are ancient daemons or angels. It makes
a neat sense that primal demiurgic beings would be incarnated as natural
processes. The idea of God making kinetic and other kinds of energy from,
essentially, minced-up angels, seems legit. If you could catch a fragment of
that Pure Fire from before they got all mixed up, and keep it going and
preserve it, then you might have a little piece of divine magic that did a
particular thing.
Is there anything that relates to moving water the same
way? I mean not just that it interacts with water but that it needs water to
activate it, to make it live.
A mill-wheel might work, difficult to consider carrying
it about, though the idea of an adventurer or NPC with a giant fucking wheel on
their back is interesting, mendicant mill-monks.
A portable water-clock seems like an edge-case, too
mechanical.
Rain, the water that drips from an umbrella having
special qualities. It would have to be natural rain, not just stuff you poured
on there because it is the process that brings it alive. Maybe it would tell
you things about the rain, perhaps heal you of mental disorders, curses or
shame or simply help you forget.
Those lantern-boats that float downstream might also
work, carrying things away or summoning them back. Water ghosts, creatures from
the past or those lost.
I think it was Keats (or maybe Shelly?) who's epitaph was
that his name was writ in water. Perhaps writing someone’s name in water causes
someone, somewhere in the world to forget that name. You can perform
mass-attacks on someone’s fame and reputation by gathering hundreds of cultists
by the shores of a still lake and having them all write the same name on its
surface. The name attacks must inevitably affect the cultists as well as
everyone else so every now and then some of them must forget the name they are
writing and have to look over at the guy on the left and right to see what name
they are erasing. If this carries on for long enough, everyone in the world
might forget someone's name except for the people writing it on the surface of
the lake, and even they don't really remember why they are writing it, only
that they were really pissed off with whoever it was.
A Chinese Whispers effect could mean that even people
with a similar name suffer some effects of the attack.
A brush that, if used to write on a waterfall or the
surface of a river, or even on a wave in the ocean, you can summon or control
the power of those things. Perhaps the symbol for 'Horse' on a waterfall
creates a charging steed of white foam that can only race downhill and which
ends each ride by diving and exploding into the river or the earth, writing it
on a river creates a tireless horse, but one which can only ever move at the
speed of the river itself, whether fast or slow and writing one on a wave
creates a titanic and powerful horse that can charge along the coastline, but
not beyond it, plus getting in position to write on a wave as it breaks
effectively makes you a surfing wizard?
Between water and air we have the sailing ship. Perhaps a
sail that when it runs directly before a headwind and pulls a ship to full
speed, can breach the barriers between planes, like a sailing DeLorean. The
precise direction of the wind affects which plane you go to and you have no way
to control it other than to have it up or not.
This brings us into air. Kites are probably the closest equivalent
to torches and lanterns. Maybe a kite that, once you get it flying, transforms
you into a bird until you touch the ground. Perhaps if you land on water you
can stay as a bird until you reach the shore so people passing through never
know if the ducks and swans are kite-monks in disguise or what.
Pin-Wheels. Even breath could activate them but they are incredibly
delicate and easily damaged and destroyed, hard to cart around for a long time
without them being crushed, so that provides a nice limiting element. Perhaps
they have to be activated by natural wind rather than breath, the idea of a
brawny adventurer running about with a pin-wheel is a nice one. Perhaps the
breath of certain creatures or type of person is needed to activate the rare
ones, a virgin, a holy person, a seventh son, a blind man.
There is the lightning-charged device of course. We would
have to work on ways to make it more interesting than just a lightning
capacitor. Perhaps, at the moment you catch the lighting you gain the speed
*of* lightning, you can race anywhere but as soon as you stop the lighting is
grounded. You also have to be careful not to interact with anything touching
the ground, you may be drawn towards metal objects and end up accidentally
hurling yourself on a drawn sword 300 miles away at the speed of sound.
Monks who wait under trees in autumn with special
brushes. They train until they are able to write upon a falling leaf before it
hits the ground, touching it only with the tip of the brush. That would require
huge study and skill to use. Perhaps you could use this to travel through time
like a leaf falling.
Stone is a process too, but one so slow that I don’t
think it could be contained into a pseudo-object by human beings.
