Atticus's Artifacts of Mysterious & Limitless Power

"You must be the first person I've ever met who attempted to create an alien death ray from hard drive parts." --- David Uzumeri

This page is a brief index of the more exotic items in my sizeable collection of strange objects imbued with mystical energy. While none are for sale, you can use the knowledge I present here to create your own superpowerful relics. However, it is adviseable to test their powers extensively in unpopulated areas, as all of my artifacts thus far (even the ones I did not personally create) have had a few bugs to work out.

Birdclops

I am not quite certain what powers Birdclops possesses but I am certain it must have some. I found this odd piece of craftmanship while rooting through my late grandmother's collection of ancient stones and such - mere moments after it occurred to me that all the interestingness of the rocks had obviously been drained out. Birdclops must be the recipient of this interesting energy. It is probable that Birdclops is some sort of totem, or perhaps a mystical battery. Its seashell base is roughly triangular, and it has three shells in front of the central golem. This recurrence of the number 3 cannot be insignificant. One theory holds that energy such as the interestingness of those stupid stones is channeled up through the base and into the statue, where it is stored and then released through the snout. The single googly eyeball is a true conundrum, though; perhaps it is all-seeing, enabling Birdclops to make its own decisions and wield its power accordingly.

The Magic Nothingball

Definitely in the Top Three as far as power goes, the Magic Nothingball was created when I realized that ordinary consumer objects must logically contain huge batteries of psychic energy to function. Take (as I did) the Magic 8-Ball, a black orb with an 8 on one side and a little depressed window on the other. Beyond this window is a murky bluish liquid which has a tendency to bubble up and obscure this weird triangle-faced thing inside. Each triangle face has on it a cryptic oracular utterance, such as "SIGNS POINT TO YES" or "OUTLOOK NOT GOOD." Since medieval times, rulers have employed special advisors capable of questioning these balls, shaking them around to get the triangle-faced thing to rotate, and interpreting the answers.

Of course, industrialization has put the Magic 8-Ball in the hands of anyone with access to a shopping mall, and spinoff products have been created. However, these products are not at all magical - especially one known as "Ask Zandar", a pathetic statue of a disoriented wizard who when questioned will say in a stuttered voice (resembling that of the villain in the Commodore 64 game Impossible Mission) "Def-in-ite-ly." I have never seen Zandar say anything else and if he has any other phrases they are probably of little value. Plainly Zandar is a phony. And the same goes for those stupid Ouija boards. Fie on you, Ouija board manufacturers, for giving false hope to stupid people everywhere!

But anyway, it occurred to me that every Magic 8-Ball on the face of the planet must be unfathomably powerful in order to produce accurate prophecies so quickly. Since no one has ever yet used a Magic 8-Ball as anything other than a sooth-sayer, there must be something sealing in their power. That something is the white paint carefully splashed on to create the well-known mystical Eight sign out of blackness. Using the Letter Opener of Ultimate Destruction (see below), I carefully disintegrated the paint on my sample 8-Ball, and within hours had created the Magic Nothingball, a sphere possessed of great power for bonking people and projecting "Eight-E Fields", making it the defensive complement to the offensive might of the Letter Opener.

The Letter Opener Of Ultimate Destruction

This was one of the first artifacts I acquired. It was sent to me in a Kris Kringle exchange by the deranged German mystic known only as "Minstrel". Why he sent such a potent weapon to a novice Adept is unknown; perhaps there was a mix-up and he meant to send me a Pez dispenser. In any case, it did not take me long to determine the usefulness of this thing - not only does is its chipped blade capable of scratching nearly any surface, its two odd round parts allow for a tight grip. I have used it perhaps once or twice in actually opening envelopes, but this really is far too mundane a purpose for such a tool. Should you stumble upon one, I recommend using it for construction work, blood rituals, or hurling zap bolts at people who refer to anime as "That Sailor Moon stuff with the big eyes."

Bus Number One

This artifact (if it can be called that) is not, sadly, in my personal collection. I describe it in the hopes that it will raise the alertness of other mystics; if photographic proof of this machine's existence could be produced it would have earthshaking effects on the Academy, which has long denied the existence of Bus Number One.

It was roughly a year ago, in August of the year 1997. I was in the automobile parking lot at a water park known as White Water with some other mages on a pleasure trip when I spied a huge block of empty parking spaces. I searched for a reason and found it - at the center of this dead zone stood an orange school bus clearly marked "1." I recoiled in pure shock at first, and then approached cautiously. I did not step within the empty zone for fear of divine retribution, but I came close enough to verify the number and point it out to my companions. All of us were stunned; the idea that a Bus Number One even existed was a fairy tale to us all. Ah, if only we had brought a camera! But I dwell too long on this matter. If you see this bus, photograph it, I beseech you!

The Eye Of God

I am not sure who nicknamed this piece, but the label stuck. This is another object of unknown origins and capabilities; it was found in the ruins of an ancient IBM PC hard drive by myself and oft-times colleague Andrew McGinty. The circumstances surrounding this discovery bear retelling. Our school's technology master, Bobby Allen, had recently gained possession of a shop-ful of very old computers. Having no idea as to what to do with them, he gave control over to a squad of unruly if occasionally constructive students. This pack of tomb raiders quickly smashed open nearly ever computer, ripping out interesting components and using giant shop machines to bend them into new and more useful shapes. Once they had passed, Andrew and I stole into the shop and looked through the caved-in remains of some of the computers, finding many exotic trinkets (including The Gold Circle; see below). But our chief find was indeed the Eye of God.

I have not really decided upon why IBM workers in the early-to-mid 80's saw fit to hide this relic within a hard drive. Since opening a hard drive case is easily one of the hardest tasks on the face of the earth, even for an experienced mystic such as myself, I can only assume that either they wanted to keep the Eye from being found, or they wanted to contain its power. Perhaps it fell from space, and they decided to set it aside until future generations with greater knowledge could deal with it. Lacking much knowledge of how to handle it myself, I decided to continue the policy of non-use of the device, and promptly cut the wires that would have made possible its activation. If I ever happen upon a hard-drive factory, I shall attempt to slip the object into one of the cases just before it is sealed, to try and stave off armageddon for a few more years.

The Bauble of Bad Taste

Of all my artifacts so far, the Bauble has the most complicated history. I acquired the pure-crystal sphere at a trade fair some years ago, attached to the end of a walking stick which I used to good effect for some time before the ball mysteriously fell off one day. Ever resourceful, I decided to use the orb as a sort of signature seal - placing it on a satchel or chest would help distinguish the container from similar mass-produced chests nearby. Needless to say, this was extremely handy at parties. Which is how things stood..

It took a great amount of time and effort (most of it expended by my associate, the Communist sorceror Kertz) to get the ball back out, and I was convinced that in this temporary connection with the heart of bad taste must have enchanted the ball somehow. It was then that I dubbed it the Bauble of Bad Taste, and on the journey home, I persuaded the aspiring artificer Purdy The Elder to allow me to use an artifact he had recently acquired as a gift. I formally titled this object the Bauble of Good Taste, for its primary component was a hollow sphere whose inner surface bore the image of Ami Mizuno, well regarded as a near-epitome of Good Taste. Placing my own Bauble next to this Bauble, I allowed their energies to overlap, instantly polarizing both - all traces of bad taste were eliminated from Purdy's bauble and all traces of good taste from mine.

Since that day, I have greatly pondered the uses of an object which does nothing but absorb bad taste. I have occasionally pointed it at radios playing inferior music, and I have once attempted to use it on a person who had bad taste. But the taste of the targets does not seem to change, so I've learned little. Kertz accidentally offered one possible explanation when he peered into the ball and saw within the image of the Sailor Senshi - beings whose perfection he doubts. Since favoring the Sailor Senshi is one of the greatest acts of good taste one can perform, can it be that the Bauble can be used as a window into a person's own bad taste? Then there are other interpretations. As seen in this picture, the Bauble (center) is capable of exerting force on physical objects. The CD it shattered was a copy of the 1997-98 Chamblee High School yearbook CD supplement, a Mundane object of extremely bad taste. My theory is that the Bauble either expunged the few examples of good taste on the CD - photographs of attractive women and such - or absorbed the bad taste that permeated it. Either way, the disc was left unstable and broke instantaneously.

My only other notes regarding the Bauble - I have vague intentions of someday forming a sword out of taste-conducive material (melted-down CDs, most likely), placing the Bauble in the hilt, and trapping some taste-related daemonic presence in the Bauble. If what I have learned from certain Sosarian myths is correct, this method will create a weapon of fantastic powers which also gives me control over the daemonic presence. If I ever achieve this goal, I shall report it here.

The Screamer

Since I created this artifact myself, one would think I might be fully aware of its capabilities. However, I was working from vague and occasionally difficult-to-follow plans from a book entitled The Simple Screamer (the author I cannot recall; a David somebody), and therefore I am rather uncertain if it turned out the way it was supposed to. The Screamer is a combination of papier-maché, cloth-maché (cloth dipped in glue, more or less), quantities of paint and clay, and probably some other things---it's been a few years.

Let it suffice to say that the Screamer is an immobile golem which has yet to display any severely magical abilities. Should it be awakened somehow, though, its actions would be completely unpredictable. I treat it well and keep it in comfortable spots in the hopes that my activation experiments will not end in it attacking me in revenge for poor treatment.

The Gold Circle

Another powerful device, drawn from another hard drive case. Unfortunately, in attempting to pry it loose from the surface of the drive with a hammer, Andrew badly bent and damaged it, and it began leaking brown fluid. Fearing that it might explode, Andrew and I decided to leave it behind in MIDI class; the next day we found that Mr. Glor had thrown it away. Thus, it was never studied or properly tested, but I feel the need to acknowledge its existence.

Republic 142

In the course of the Into The Deep adventure (check out the ITD webpage by clicking here), Andrew and I stumbled upon this metal widget. In all likelihood it was the opening mechanism of a locker door, but the severe damage to its edges (and the fact that it was ripped from a steel door) suggest that it has endured fantastic pressure and power. Thus, it is proof of the presence of great wizardry below the locker rooms, and just barely qualifies as a mystical artifact. Fellow sage Matthew Beermann has also suggested that it resembles an electrical housing, suggesting some sort of dual purpose of the entire locker room. Very curious.

The name, incidentally, comes from a spot where those words, in addition to "Steel" and "Canton, Ohio," are printed on the surface of the artifact. I explain this because the words are almost impossible to make out in the image above.

That's all the artifacts I'm willing to disclose specifics on at this point. Make me a good offer, or just send me email talking about this page, and I may consider expanding this library.

Other People's Artifacts

The Giant Aluminum Ball looks extremely mystical, and judging from the creativity and knowledge displayed in the web-available writings of its creator, there is more to come.

The Armory is a storehouse of weaponry and other equipment, all of which looks rather well-made. Though none of it is naturally mystical, some objects look like they may have uses in containing magical energy. I particularly favor the "Sword of Amaterashu" and the "Merlin Dagger."

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