Indispensable Tools for the Modern Practicing Occultist; Or: Loot Which One Can Use To Stock A Wizard Or Wizardly-Type's Laboratory & Domicile

Divinatory:

1. Vortex Prognosticator - A device like a many-tiered funnel, with a tube and vacuole leading off from each tier. Each vacuole is numbered (sometimes with a strange number of para-mathematics) and represents a layer of the Abyss. Given that the layers of the Abyss are by most accounts infinite, or at least so very many that it would be impossible to represent them all on a reasonably-sized prognosticator, the makers of these devices choose a selection based on which layer might make for the most useful and comprehensible omens, and on which demon-lords they'd least like to offend.

To work the prognosticator, you pour a jug of blood (human is ideal) and a lead ball into the thing, and make a note of which vacuole the ball ends up in, which layer of the Abyss it corresponds to. You then cross-reference this with a book of the layers of the Abyss and their associations - for example, the 66th, the Demonweb Pits, is associated with poison and treachery (among other things), and interpret the result as an omen from there. If the vortex prognosticator is well-made, it will have a pool at the bottom full of leeches who will glut on the blood, and must be sacrificed afterwards as a propitiatory offering.

A vortex prognosticator is best used for predicting disasters and other such misfortunes, and like all divinatory devices several should be consulted in tandem for increased accuracy.

2. Xorvinthaal Board - Xorvintaal is a board game somewhere between chess, ouija, and tarot. At the outset of a game, players pick their pieces from a selection based on archetypal roles and personified concepts (Night, Dream, the Holy Fool, the Veiled Lady), and open their minds to the influence of greater forces and powers. How the game plays out should, in theory, depict in cryptic terms how these forces and powers desire for the future to turn out. Which pieces you play with should, in theory, help reveal more than these forces and powers intended to about their plans and foreknowledge. There is of course the risk that these reveals are in fact simply moves in a greater plan which the diviner is being manipulated for.

3. Phototypic Telescope - Fate is written in the stars, it's said, and if regular astrology is carefully and critically attempting to discern the authour's intent and techniques, then use of a phototypic telescope is closer to grabbing him by his tweedy authour collar and shaking him until he spills the beans. The catch? It's very expensive.

You need the optics for the telescope, finely-wrought enough to focus on a single star, and then you need a plate, exactingly manufactured from an alloy-balance aligned to that same star. You've got to keep the plate in total darkness until the moment of its use, when you zoom in on the star and let its light, and its light alone, project onto the plate, where it will create a single still image of the future encoded in the star, from a distance into the future based on how long the plate as exposed. Every star has its own thread of the future, and knowing which has what is its own trick.

4. The Ten Thousand Proclamations of the Prophet Sutandis - As the name suggests: a (very long) book of prophecies by Sutandis - who is held to be a true prophet because how else could a street urchin have acquired such a poetic fluency in draconic? The Proclamations are rarely the first thing a diviner will consult, but forewords to the book tend to be filled with various formulae for converting various letters, symbols, and phrases into mathematical equations, which can then be solved to arrive at one of its 10,000 prophecies - which can help to get a stumped diviner going again, and open up new possible interpretations.

For a bunch of randomly generated prophecies, try here.

5. Darkling Needle - Divination's best when it's one-sided. If I'm trying to predict the future, and then you're trying to predict that same future, then I'll have to predict you predicting me, and you'll have to predict me predicting you predicting me predicting you predicting me predicting you, and then suddenly we'll have all gone cross-eyed.

A darkling needle's a tool meant to keep that from happening. It keeps a future exclusive - with a catch. Take a needle forged from dark iron, steep it in the black blood of a chthonic beast that's never seen sunlight, wrap it in the write-up of a future you've foreseen, then prick your brain with it. Don't worry, this last part won't kill you, won't even really hurt you, just kill the part in your head that remembers that future. Thereafter, so long as the needle remains intact, anyone who tries to see that future will have their eyes jabbed. Anyone who tried to write it down will have their paper drowned in ink. The same will happen to any external records you try to keep of that future too however.

The key to good use of darkling needles is to use them "around" the future you want to protect, like roadblocks that'll scare off any potential competitors, while leaving your one way clear to you.

6. Oracle Bones - From a genuine oracle, and preferably the orbital bones. Roll them and look at how they fall, how they cluster, where they point - that could be the spirit of the oracle trying to tell you something. Or it could be that spirit fucking with you, if you weren't on good terms with it in life or you've been calling on it too frequently.

Free Space. Crystal Ball - Can't beat the classics. Might instead be a shew-stone, or a deep pool of crystal-clear water.

Necromantic:

1. Spiced Rum - The tastebuds of the dead might be numbed and rotten, but they hunger still for fleshly pleasures. Therefore a drink strong in alcohol and flavour makes a good bribe for many among their number.

2. Evening Glories - Pale violet flowers, said to have grown from the tears of a goddess of unfading love. In the presence of a corpse they will preserve it by withering in its stead. Dried and crushed, the evening glory's petals are useful for sterilization and mummification of the dead.

3. Bag of Bone Dust - Working with negative energy's a bit like working with high-voltage electricity - it helps to have some grounding, so that it doesn't slip into your guts and rot them from the inside-out. Dead stuff tends to hold negative energy better than living stuff, and bone dust is pretty hard to use for anything else, so it finds its use for that.

4. Sharpened Shovel - Good for digging up bodies and dismembering bodies that stay up when they're not supposed to.

5. Evergrowing Trichobezoar - A congealed lump of hair pulled from the stomach of a troll or other such beast that's overflowing with life. It provides a convenient bit of positive energy to balance out the negative that builds up from necromantic workings. Must be trimmed regularly to prevent it from slithering off.

6. Nosegay - Dead bodies can smell pretty bad. It's nice to have a package of fragrant flowers and herbs to hold up to your face to block that out.

Conjurative:

1. Stomapyli Relic - The Church of the Divinity of Mankind teaches that the body of the cosmos and the human body are reflections of one another - the cosmic body is the primordial giant Annam, and the ideal model of the human body was the god-king Zarus. This teaching is one explanation for the existence of the unfortunate souls known as stomapyli - people who possess a gate to another plane in their body.

A legend of the Beolo people tells of their conflict with the city of a queen who bore the curse-weapon of "tears of dissolution", and could weep oceans of acid against their army. Scholars of the Church of Wonders interpret this as referring to a stomapyli with a connection to the para-elemental plane of ooze in her tear duct.

In Conquering Marlo there was a stomapyli with a gate to Limbo in his rear, who lived his life upon a garderobe expelling all manner of grotesqueries.

A play banned in many of the tyrannies of Quelm is about a famed masseuse and stomapyli with a gate to hell hidden in her throat. She assesses the virtues of her clients, and if they disappoint her swallows them up into damnation.

Preserved, a relic from a stomapyli has little of the power it held in life, but any tether's a handy one when dealing with crossing the gulf between planes.

2. Full-Spectrum Mask - Beings of the outer planes don't always appreciate being called down to the prime material and bound to do their summoner's bidding. To cut down on the odds of a vengeful spirit tracking them down, conjurers tend to wear masks - masks which must be masterfully crafted, for it's not just human sight they have to block but all the subtle senses of outsiders.

3. Imp in a Bottle - Often an imp, and often in a bottle, though any lesser creature of the lower planes and sufficiently-warded container will do. The creature is bound then cajoled and coerced into revealing the true names and other pertinent information of their superiors to work up to greater summonings.

4. Silver-Edged Dagger - Many things which a conjurer can call down shrug off ordinary weapons. Some silver gives a blade the bite to harm them.

5. Communion Bed - Really more of a padded table loaded with straps. Used to hold a conjurer who intends to commune with other planes down, so that they don't injure themselves in the case that they're possessed or overawed by some transcendent entity.

6. Adamantine Lodestone - Invincible adamant is said to be the primest material of the prime material, so even just a sliver of the invaluable stuff is useful as a reference point and anchor for the summoner's home plane, whether trying to return or bring an outsider in.

Evocative:

1. Brass Head - A simple golem, not capable of much more than biting and jabbering. Used to practice the imbuement and binding of animating elementals.

2. Asbestos Blanket - For smothering of and protection from fires. Not good for your health, but then neither is being on fire.

3. Tafula Shard - A broken piece of a crystal "tree" from a mismera, charged with lightning. A potent store of power to draw on, but it must be handled with exceptional care.

4. Dead Pigs - A relatively cheap way of approximating the effect of an offensive spell on a human body. Can also eat them afterwards, if you don't mind your meat charred.

5. Wizard's Hat With Inbuilt Helmet - Very little can cut an evoker's career short like a traumatic brain injury caused by shrapnel or falling debris. As one rare nod to safety, there's often a helmet of padded cloth and metal built into their flamboyant hats.

6. Scar Ointment: Jars of stuff that can be spread on scars to improve their flexibility and strength, and reduce pain and discomfort.

Illusory:

1. 4-D Prism - A piece of glass that exists in higher dimensions. Used for refracting light into illicit spectra, and peeking beneath the surface of things both real and illusory. Tricky to handle, easy to get cut on edges you couldn't possibly see.

2. Triptych Mirror - For checking one's work. Each face of the three-part mirror is back by either copper, silver, or gold - which will each reveal a different sort of flaw in an illusion not made either painstakingly or by the hand of a virtuoso of the art.

3. Portrait Mimic - Mostly tamed. Can be fed paintings to gain a sort of algorithmic ability to imitate their subject matter, and be used as a reference. Responds to verbal commands, but not always in straightforwardly sensible ways.

4. Dog Treats - Animals can often see through illusions where humans are fooled. It's good to have other means on hand to distract them.

5. Sticky Pigment - If you can become invisible, others can become invisible. Best be prepared for them.

6. Sensory Deprivation Helm - To learn how to fool others, a good step is learning how you fool yourself. Cut off from sight and sound, your brain invents stimuli for itself, sometimes full-blown hallucinating.

Transmutative:

1. Mercury Bath - Mercury is the metal of flux - many transmutations flow from it. It's also a horrendous toxin - transmuters are a strange bunch, whether from mercury poisoning or the modifications they've made to their bodies and brains to work with the stuff.

2. Hides - It's a lot easier to shift into something's shape if you've got its skin as a basis. Hopefully these all belong to mere animals.

3. Primordioid - A lump of undifferentiated living substance, supposedly the clay of life itself. Malleable but unstable, quick to reshape but equally quick to return to its undifferentiated form. Used to add mass to short-lived metamorphoses and homunculi.

4. Memento - Something uniquely yours, one last chance to remind you of yourself if you become lost in another form.

5. Gold-like Slag - Just about every transmuter's tried turning lead into gold, and so far all of them have failed. Some keep the results around hoping to sell them to a dumb jeweler, some as a shameful reminder, some as a joke, and others for another reason entirely.

6. Moonshine Still - Studying natural transformations is a necessary prerequisite for performing magical transformations. Plus, you get an end result you can get shitfaced on - leave sobriety and refinement of the spirit to the alchemists.

Abjurative:

1. Seabird-Down Pillow - Protects you from nightmares if you sleep with it. Has to be slept on by a sailor on at least a seven week voyage beforehand, and never washed after. Don't ask why it works, it just does.

2. Apotropaic Eye - Invisible, malign forces are slower to act if they think someone can see them - at least that's the current popular theory behind how these things function.

3. Peach Branch Broom - Made from green, flexible cuttings. Spaces and objects are beaten with it to drive off impure influences that might contaminate a longer-term abjuration.

4. Bead-Laden Concentric Puzzle Boxes - Sturdy, carved with sealing sigils, each box must be rotated to access the next, and rotating a box spills numerous beads within it. Such boxes are made for the containment of the surprisingly common monsters obsessed with counting things spilled before them.

5. Divine Dog Statuette - If anointed with sacred oil and offered rice cakes, it will scare off beasts and idiots by growling in their minds. Advanced abjurative workings can animate them to fight in your defense.

6. Iron-Rich Paint - Lots of baddies are repelled by iron, perhaps thanks to humanity's pact with the archdevil Mephistopheles Manfriend. Keeping a vat of the stuff in a conveniently-applied form around makes it easy to slap down wards and glyphs.

Enchanting:

1. Perfumes - The olfactory bulb is directly connected to the amygdala and hippocampus. With the right scent an enchanter can break past a target's defenses and grab them by the root of their soul.

2. Honeyed Poison - "Drink this" is an easier sell than "jump off that building" or "fall on your sword".

3. Cavitous Effigy - A model of a specific person, enhanced by hair, blood samples, articles of clothing, and any other sympathetic materials the enchanted can get their hands on. The model has openings in its head, heart, gut, and groin - potentially elsewhere, but those are the most common - and enchantments to be worked on the person it's modeled after are placed in these openings to focus the enchantment on a particular aspect of that person. For example, enchantments that will focus on memory will be placed in the head, while those focused on libido will go in the groin.

4. Veil - Like a conjuror and their conjurings, it's usually best if those you enchant can't remember your face.

5. Mesmer Candle - Made from the tallow of pixies, as well as certain mushrooms. The smoke of such a candle is psychedelic, and its flame dances in a hypnotic rhythm.

6. Cage - Isolation, captivity, deprivation - all these can help with breaking someone's mind down so you can build it back up. There's nothing nice about enchantment. Even a simple Charm Person is reaching inside someone and violating them more intimately than a knife ever could.