Day 79, Fall of 416 AV
Evening
Aylasa Caves
Evening
Aylasa Caves
Apparently, Middleman had something for snail shells, for Eridanus found himself with yet another one in his hands. A few days ago the old nuit had given him a rather large one, though it seemed exceptionally well preserved that the mercenary had first thought it was made of marble. He had spent the next few days trying to find out information about snails, until he finally chanced upon an anecdote from a Syliran farmer about the strange homing tendencies of garden snails. And the shell in his hands looked suspiciously like that of a certain 'king garden snail' that had been plaguing them for years. Suspicious glances at Middleman yielded only shrugs and grins.
According to the farmers, snails had to be routed and killed instantly, for if they displaced those slimy creatures, they would inevitably return to chew up all the lettuce. There was to be no mercy in routing out all of them. It was that anecdote that got Eridanus to thinking about yet another interesting capability of the snail, which was its instinctive ability to always return to its home - which in this case was the farm of unfortunate farmers.
Rather than granting effects to a user, Eridanus decided to try something new, and that was to grant effects of an item to an item. In order to do so, he would require more resources than just a simple shell, and so he had spent the last day or so approaching wandering merchants throughout for various materials.
In fact, he had spent the whole afternoon traveling back to the cave, and it was quite lucky that he barely managed to return before nightfall. The wilderness was no place for a mortal to when darkness reigned supreme. Thus what laid before him was no longer just a snail shell, but a product of his many days and hours of preparation beforehand.
Through meticulous sessions of carving and chipping away at the granite-seeming shell, the crafter had managed to shape the object into a sort of cup-like, semi-egg shape. It looked like a container of sorts, a half-circular object that looked like a teacup except for the organic swirls throughout that naturally occur in shells. There was a small hole at the bottom of the shell, a result of him carefully tapping his dagger timidly until a hole was carefully bored into the shell without cracking the whole structure and shattering it.
Inserted into it was a small wooden rod that he fashioned out of a sturdy piece of branch by whittling it down to that shape. It had a small base at the bottom slightly wider than the hole at the base of the shell - he was quite careful with his measurements, especially with circular measurements - and it had another even smaller base somewhere at the middle. He intended to build some sort of compass, and therefore the bottom base was to prevent the wooden rod from simply slipping out from above the shell. The entire rod was also a sort of screw with lines edged in a circular, round-about fashion throughout, and thus he could secure the rod into shell in two steps. Firstly, the bottom base, unlike the middle base was removable since the wooden rod was a sort of screw. He first screwed the bottom base slightly higher, then inserted the wooden rod from upwards into the snail shell. Next, with another wooden base identical to the bottom base he screwed from the bottom, out of the shell. That formed two small organic plates above and below the hole of the shell, securing the rod in place.
Next, was a wooden object shaped like the pointy end of an arrow that Eridanus himself carved from a larger branch found in woods. It would serve as the pointer in his self-made compass, and was placed on top of the middle base. Yet another base that he whittled out of branches was then screwed in from the top to settle the pointer in place too. As it was secured by the two plates above and below it, like how the snail shell's central hole was secured, it would therefore be unable to drop out. However, there was still enough freedom for it to move sideways, and it was of course impaled upon the rod through the small hole that he made at the wide part of the pointer.
At the sides of the snail shell were two tiny holes drilled and chipped through the old-fashioned way. Attached to these holes were pieces of very thin rope and this rope was tied around twin holes of another wooden plate. However, this plate was large enough to cover the open mouth of the snail shell. He had left a chunk of shell protruding slightly from opposite while shaping it, and so the plate can form a sort of lid by tucking it under the protrusion since wood was slightly elastic and thus flexible enough to do so, unlike rigid steel.
However, what was most interest was actually the shallow carved lines on the insides of the shell, with dried ink still lathered over the designs. Of course, Eridanus had the smarts to do the actual malediction circle creation before he began to tinker and form the shell into the compass-like thing that it was now.
He first made a large circle on the outer edges of his organic canvass, then designed a star shape within it. That served as the basic shape that meant direction, and it secured the direction in the four known angles. The next noticeable shapes were the two circles, one at the center and one at the beginning of the swirls of the shell. That represented the start and end point. Circles were used to represent the neutrality of whoever that could inhabit these start and end zones, essentially meaning the compass can be used by anyone instead of any particular, bound user.
He drew an arrow from the end to the start as a form of displacement to represent the concept of getting moved out of one's home or comfort zone. This was the key point in starting the idea of the homing device, since one had to be moved away in order to begin navigating to a desired position, or in this case, home. Next, he drew the lines from the start zone randomly moving but always colliding against the borders of the swirls, but somehow or another it collided until it ended up at the end zone. This represented the messy, long and numerous detours in finding one's way, but signifies an eventual return to the original position in the middle of the shell.
Next, he drew yet another line from the start zone to the end zone, but this time it was as direct, no-nonsense path that led directly to the end zone. This was more of the direct, informed path, heading straight to the original point, implied to be possible with help of the desired end product of the compass. Both of these lines showed that no matter how one would always reach the end zone even if displaced to the start zone. Doing so represented the snail's homing instinct, of how they were able to keep finding their way back to their gardens despite being displaced.
According to the farmers, snails had to be routed and killed instantly, for if they displaced those slimy creatures, they would inevitably return to chew up all the lettuce. There was to be no mercy in routing out all of them. It was that anecdote that got Eridanus to thinking about yet another interesting capability of the snail, which was its instinctive ability to always return to its home - which in this case was the farm of unfortunate farmers.
Rather than granting effects to a user, Eridanus decided to try something new, and that was to grant effects of an item to an item. In order to do so, he would require more resources than just a simple shell, and so he had spent the last day or so approaching wandering merchants throughout for various materials.
In fact, he had spent the whole afternoon traveling back to the cave, and it was quite lucky that he barely managed to return before nightfall. The wilderness was no place for a mortal to when darkness reigned supreme. Thus what laid before him was no longer just a snail shell, but a product of his many days and hours of preparation beforehand.
At the sides of the snail shell were two tiny holes drilled and chipped through the old-fashioned way. Attached to these holes were pieces of very thin rope and this rope was tied around twin holes of another wooden plate. However, this plate was large enough to cover the open mouth of the snail shell. He had left a chunk of shell protruding slightly from opposite while shaping it, and so the plate can form a sort of lid by tucking it under the protrusion since wood was slightly elastic and thus flexible enough to do so, unlike rigid steel.
However, what was most interest was actually the shallow carved lines on the insides of the shell, with dried ink still lathered over the designs. Of course, Eridanus had the smarts to do the actual malediction circle creation before he began to tinker and form the shell into the compass-like thing that it was now.
He first made a large circle on the outer edges of his organic canvass, then designed a star shape within it. That served as the basic shape that meant direction, and it secured the direction in the four known angles. The next noticeable shapes were the two circles, one at the center and one at the beginning of the swirls of the shell. That represented the start and end point. Circles were used to represent the neutrality of whoever that could inhabit these start and end zones, essentially meaning the compass can be used by anyone instead of any particular, bound user.
He drew an arrow from the end to the start as a form of displacement to represent the concept of getting moved out of one's home or comfort zone. This was the key point in starting the idea of the homing device, since one had to be moved away in order to begin navigating to a desired position, or in this case, home. Next, he drew the lines from the start zone randomly moving but always colliding against the borders of the swirls, but somehow or another it collided until it ended up at the end zone. This represented the messy, long and numerous detours in finding one's way, but signifies an eventual return to the original position in the middle of the shell.
Next, he drew yet another line from the start zone to the end zone, but this time it was as direct, no-nonsense path that led directly to the end zone. This was more of the direct, informed path, heading straight to the original point, implied to be possible with help of the desired end product of the compass. Both of these lines showed that no matter how one would always reach the end zone even if displaced to the start zone. Doing so represented the snail's homing instinct, of how they were able to keep finding their way back to their gardens despite being displaced.
Malediction Circles :
However, he made sure not to activate the malediction yet, since he wanted to apply the effects to the item itself. To that end, that was why he created the malediction circles first, then crafted the various objects onto it since after attaching all the various little objects he would be unable to conveniently create the circles within the compass. Furthermore, by making sure the entire compass was then set up and attached, he would ensure that the effects would have more chances to be applied to the item itself, since he had several symbols within the malediction that stood for compasses and navigation as well as navigational tools. By actually implementing a compass-like navigational tool into the shell, it was likely that the effect drawn forth would then act as he planned.
With that, there was nothing better to do than to drop blood into the shell and pray that it worked.
With that, there was nothing better to do than to drop blood into the shell and pray that it worked.
