#arcane jargon

Reference for the non-chemists:

Alkaline Metals: putting water on these will set them on fire. Combines explosively with Halogens to produce salts, which are largely impervious to heat.

Halogens: corrosive as fuck. Includes Fluorine and Chlorine. Combines explosively with Alkali Metals to produce salts, which are largely impervious to heat.

Mercury: thanks to Cooper Pairs and Quantum Weirdness, is liquid at room temperature despite being heavy as Lead. Turns Aluminum to mush. Will drive you mad.

Dimethyl Cadmium: 2 methyl’s on a Cadmium! A Metal, directly on Carbon Functional Groups! Carcinogenic, Teratogenic, Neurotoxic, Lipophilic, with both acute and chronic effects, this shit will wreck your cellular machinery like an industrial mining apparatus turned on a neighborhood brownstone.

Azoazide Azide: hello yes I would like to order 14 Nitrogen atoms, but, can they all be exclusively single bonded in a second-order Azide? Whaddya mean it’s the least stable molecule ever fabricated? What do you mean it self-immolates in isolated conditions?

Sand: it's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.

Spells and Artefacts

• Lantern of Diogenes (lamp): Forces the bearer to relentlessly detect and forcefully reject falsehood. Extended exposure may cause Apostasy, Atheism, Antiauthoritarianism, Public Nudity, Obscenity, Poor Grammar, Debasement of Currency, and Ostracism.

• Curse of The Chinese Room (spatial curse): Renders the inhabitants unable to subjectively comprehend language. They retain the ability to respond coherently, and will continue to do so, disguising the Curse. They will effortlessly answer questions and converse, despite having no subjective clue what is being said, even by them.

If you had a glass that was actually half empty, like, with absolutely nothing in the second half, the half empty part would fill with air within milliseconds with a loud bang. At least, assuming the water was in the bottom half of the glass.

If the water was in the top half of the glass, it would probably destroy the glass, to be honest.

Am I making any sense? I have illustrations around here somewhere… that might help…

Randall Monroe does a better job of explaining what’s going on here than I can, so I’ll just leave a link here for the curious.

So far, no wizards have come close to my home. So no remains I have to clean up. Yet.

Well, we’ll have to do an inspection, naturally. We’re not so much about what you do as we are about how you go about it, you know? but here’s some things you can do in the meantime to help make sure everything goes smoothly:

How’s the line work on your sigils? You didn’t just freehand it, did you? You remembered to use the-(wait hold on let me check… my scrolls… here we go. ah yes) You used chalk containing Salt of Titanium, right? If you’re using that cheap Carbonate of Shellfish chalk you used in school you’re gonna melt your fucking doorframe. Don’t want that.

How specific were you in your targeting parameters? How did you define “anyone?” Don’t make me summon the ghost of Diogenes to teach you a lesson about the shortcomings of morphology based targeting parameters! He’s an ass and it’ll ruin your day. First of all any Wizard with a basic polymorph will be able to circumvent it if you made it too simple. Second, if you don’t restrain your semantic envelope, the spell will get… interpretative. That’s always bad. Ætheric background field operates on Monkey Paw logic. Do not invite interpretation.

How did you define your duration? Did you account for spariotemporal distortions from other nearby enchantments? Doesn’t do you any good if you explode people who broke in 2 weeks ago. And if you manage to somehow flip your past/future polarity and start targeting anyone who might break in… no.

We do not punish people retrocausally.

Got it?

(Ahem) anyway

So, I could drop by… hmm.

6th Saturday of the month work for you?

I’ll arrive around 11:75.