Scroll (pergamino) is a written leaf whose engraved text is executed when read: at once a record, a ritual component and a single-use magical device.
| Type | Object |
| Spanish entry | Pergamino |
Description
A scroll is a handwritten leaf, sewn when it forms a book: the book of 1155 “is sewn and has some written parchment leaves”. It is not always skin: one library holds engraved scrolls of bone, wood and metal, alongside ancient manuscripts, papyri and palimpsests (erased and rewritten scrolls).
The highest-ranking scrolls are recognizable at a glance, “like a magic device”. Emergency teleportation scrolls are engraved in red and carried tied to body or gear, two at a time. In one cavern, writing on scrolls looked like “little ants” and could not be read.
Scrolls are common but expensive; no price is recorded. They are bought in the magic markets of Paris and kept in libraries; scrolls of knowledge and abilities lie in the Dead Sea. A typical traveler carries two tied scrolls, plus wands and other magic possessions.
Properties
- Return: a third party can write a teleportation code returning the bearer to a fixed point from anywhere, as in Florence.
- Escape and rescue: emergency and emergency-teleportation scrolls, which also point out locations.
- Conjuration: summoning (also as a conjuration talisman); some, from every culture, work as resurrection.
- Restoration of health and wisdom.
- Last life: the scroll of reincarnation, and the scroll of ancient writings that gives “a last life”.
- Ambient magic: making every tree in a place grow.
- Object manipulation: the Red Magic scroll.
- Distracting enemy hosts: the Dead Sea scrolls.
- Ritual material: to give Drake Machine a heart, having the scroll sufficed.
Use spends the scroll, as recorded among the Templars: drawn, spell cast, scroll spent. Spending does not guarantee the effect: a failed reincarnation scroll sank Aby’s plan.
Writing a code and preparing the scroll are one act; erasing it erases the capability. Scrolls let holders teleport, resurrect, restore and conjure without being mages of that power, and companies base emergency plans on them. Erased scrolls keep knowledge the Cakravartin possessed.
Open questions
- Price, size, weight and carrying form (beyond the two tied scrolls) are not recorded.
- Who makes them, and whether anyone with the code can, is unknown.
- Whether “Red Magic” names a school, an ink color or something else, and whether the emergency scrolls’ red belongs to the same system, is unclear.
- What decides the material (bone, wood or metal) is unknown.
- Why the reincarnation scroll failed (wear, a writing error or the subject) is unknown.
- What made the cavern writing illegible (scroll, place or writer) is unknown.