Slush Pile 2

Signs that a creature is resistant to Holy damage:

• covered in holy symbols
• faint ghastly glow
• it's a karma thing, you can Just Tell
• some parts of the body clearly made from silver

    Nothing the best of artists can conceive
but lies, potential, in a block of stone,
superfluous matter round it. The hand alone
can free it that has intelligence for guide.
     The peril I’m running from, the good descried
in you, proud lovely lady—yes, heaven’s own!—
are virtual in yourself. I’m doomed, I groan:
art thwarting the very end it longs to have.
     Not love, then, and not your beauty, your famous name,
disdain or marble mien, fate high or low,
is the cause I languish long here, hold my breath.
     If mercy and doom in your heart attend, then blame
my feeble wit: though the two affect me so,
it can realize the one only. And that’s death


From a description of a Lord of the Rings Online class:
"The key mechanic for the Mariner class is the balance bar. This sifts left (“foreward”) and right (“aftward”) depending on skills used. This sounds similar in a way to the Rune-keeper’s attunement meter, except that here the main goal is to keep the bar balanced in the center (“steady”) as much as possible. If you go too far in either direction and become unbalanced, bad stuff starts happening to you — namely, you get debuffs and are even stunned. So it’s in your best interests to stay balanced as much as possible.

Figuring out which skill moves the bar which way isn’t too difficult, as the devs have color-coded them. Blue skills (mostly defensive) move the bar aftward, while red skills (mostly offensive) move the bar foreward."


sphinx and dragon:
the sphinx' greatest pleasure is in the guarding, not the having — while the dragon loves the having, but is driven to distraction by the thought of thieves and intruders



Shit I saw on my roadtrip:

• billboard that says YOU KNOW WHAT WE SELL. with an ai generated image and no other information
• Graffiti reading FOR ALL MANKIND
• Restaurant titled, in six-foot-high neon letters, THE CHINA BUFFET II
• Metal fence bent half-over like it was hit by something, but covered in unmarked paint
• 24' flatbed carrying a single, presumably very heavy, bicycle
• The "Motor Mile". It was a really, really large lot full of wrecked cars on the side of the highway
• An ad for a car dealer — COME KNOW THYSELF IN SEVIERVILLE (I may have imagined this one, as I saw it very late at night/early in the morning)
• Sitting in a Peruvian restaurant enjoying a wildly overcooked steak, listing to latin music. The radio switches to something for a moment: a woman shouting "NO... NO... NNOOOO... AAAAAAAA" at the top of her lungs. Radio switches back to latin music. Some kind of horror movie thing?
  
• miles and miles of discarded tires along a pennsylvania highway
  

Atlantis - Timeline of Discovery

The Great War: Two aviators, John "Jack" Alcock, an American aviator, and Arthur Brown, an English aero-engineer, are independently captured by the Central Powers. Both men are intrepid explorers, and a brief stay in a POW camp dissuades neither man from his dream of crossing the Atlantic by air in under 72 hours.

Postwar: Alcock approaches the Vickers company to specially-modify one of their Vimy IV bombers for the trip. As Brown develops his aerial navigation skills, the Vickers company builds a series of a dozen planes at their facilities; lucky number 13 is built at Weybridge and shipped across the ocean to be assembled in Canada. Brown approaches Alcock, impresses him with his technical skill, and is officially brought onto the project as navigator.

14 June, 1919, 1:45 p.m. - John "Jack" Alcock and Arthur Brown take off from Newfoundland in a modified Vickers bomber. Though the plane was extensively tested and modified by a team of experts, including support from Rolls Royce technicians for the two 360hp engines that would power the first non-stop transatlantic flight, problems are almost immediately encountered; the overloaded plane only barely escapes the tops of the trees at the end of the rough runway.

5:15 p.m. - Over radio, Alcock indicates that the two see lights above them which Brown cannot place on any map. He intends to investigate.

Some point after 5:15 p.m. - Contact is lost with the airplane.

17 June, 4:40 a.m. - Alcock briefly reestablishes contact over radio. His only discernible words: "—it's so much colder than I—"

25 June, 9:15 p.m. - The lucky number 13 crashes in Derrigimlagh Bog, near Clifden in County Galway, only a few miles from their intended landing zone. As it lands the converted bomber noses-over. Alcock is immediately killed, and Brown is hospitalized, dying without regaining consciousness. The rescuers note that the plane appears to have been crudely repaired with sheets of leather and large whalebones, and that both Alcock and Brown have aged perhaps 20 years.


Early hours of 2 July, 1919 - Though planned to take place before Alcock and Brown's voyage, damage sustained in testing meant that the east-to-west transatlantic flight by Major George Herbert "Lucky Breeze" Scott, this one aboard an R34 rigid airship, had been delayed several weeks. Dark jokes abound on the airbase: the R34 may not be the "first nonstop transatlantic flight", but it may yet claim the title of "first nonstop transatlantic flight, with survivors".

7:45 p.m. - Over radio, Scott reports lights in the sky above the R34.

7:50 p.m. - Scott transmits a final message: "[unintelligible], it's an entire [unintelligible] continent. Wait—"

Some point after 7:50 p.m. - Contact is lost with the airship.

Notes from my dream journal/possible BCS mission prompts

• group of 4 misunderstand timetravel, go back to the past so they can kill themselves in an "alternate reality" before killing their original selves. keep doing it. become incredibly good at killing themselves. just showed up in our timeline, 250 years of experience under their belt, the best genetic modification that can be bought before 2073, armed to the fucking teeth
• 911, what's your emergency?
  hi, I'm at [my previous address] and there's someone laughing between me and the only door out of my apartment
• quote: "this is all just a manmade nightmare. who's to say i can't fly in the sky with the sataks, or live in the mountain with the satavaks?"
• breathing with the aid of magical symbiotic spiders which cram tentacles in your lungs
• we are proud to be america's second news source that is both anti-semitic and pro-israel
• the flood law firm represents the seriously injured
• the name of a water lily, an indian tribe, and a practice. just north of some town. if you want to do it right, there are a few tips to make it safe. never do it near the falls. never size the light, they'll get confused on their own. never do it if the real selkies will hate you for it.
  stupid european just doesn't understand a good prank.
  double wide trailer on tank treads rolling over an old trail, dripping into the water to see if the selkies will grab me
• man trying to retrieve treasure from a deep, narrow pit. longer than his arm. uses a hook or some duck but just ends up jamming the hole. it closes over and festers. on the other side of the jam the hole grows deeper
• the state acts through its 'leader" in ritual murders called "executions"
• in a museum about germany, a screen cycles through lofi trivia questions about germany. one of the provided answers is always macabre, and one is always about piss, and then there are two random ones. the people standing behind me in line keep guessing the piss one. but the answer is "death" or "a hearse" every time. (This one might be a tweet that I incorrectly copied into my dream journal, but I'm too lazy to check).
  
•     You were a child growing up in a small West Virginia town under the friendly alias of "Taylor". Your father was a ???, your mother a stay-at-home mom. She's slightly insane. One day your father disappeared — people say he was mobbed up but crossed the wrong guy.
      He sends a letter to your mama, just before he vanishes, telling her to load the shotgun, take you out to the greenhouse, explain to you that your real name wasn't "Taylor" it was "Typhon, King of the Monsters", and shoot you in the back of the head. Sobbing, she followed almost all of his instructions.
      At the last moment she reconsidered and shot herself instead. The cops arrived, found the scene and the whacked-out letter, whisked you away to some relatives' home, and you spent years being shuffled around. You grew into a fine young human being (all things considered) (not too fucked up).
      Finally one day you return to the place your parents died. Funny run-in with a pair of cops when they find your car next to the dilapidated house that used to be yours: "yeah, folks say the place is haunted. about twenty years ago, [explanation of your childhood]. Pretty fucked up". You agree.
      Of course, what you've never revealed to anyone is: you lied. On that on that fateful day, your mother didn't reconsider. She shot you in the head from three feet away with a 12 gauge shell — and the pellets rattled off like hail. Now you're back to find some Gosh Darned Answers.
• Two old friends are recounting a hilarious tale for an ABC special involving the death of [Gene] Wolfe and their attempts to recover his famous field mouse collection. The mice live in a field of highly realistic scarecrows. The men (there's a cheesy and slightly cheap reenactment of all this, which the interview keeps cutting to) are slicing open the faces of the scarecrows to get at the straw and the mices. One of them is panicking, running through the field. the two collide. The other bends and inserts an 8 inch hinting knife up the nostril and into the frontal lobe, and slits. Cut back to interview: men are laughing, their spouses (field mouse biologist and her daughter) are laughing, man who got slit is demonstrating how deep into his skull 8 inches is. No scar, no indication of how he even survived. The reenactment had been freaking me out because obviously I anticipated what was coming but at the end I was just confused and mad.
  

Dungeon

    The authorities of Orlivka have arrested the sea-rat Swithemend on suspicious of general smugglery. However, they've got no real evidence beyond the circumstantial, and Swithemend counts most of the sea-rats in the city as his friend. The authorities want you to explore his little cafe, the Greaséd Rat, and find proof of his wrongdoing convincing enough to quell the growing unrest.

A, Swithemore's Kitchen
Exit to the NORTH, doors on the EAST and WEST, stairs leading DOWN to the EAST.
There's a huge iron griddle on a woodstove, and some pots and pans and knives hanging from the walls. The floor is slick with seawater and old fishblood, as it always is. Aria the ratwench will pay 5gp if you can haul a great heavy keg up the narrow, rickety stairs from the basement (strength check to not slide back down with the keg on top of you for 1d12)

B, Dining Room
Swithemend is in prison, but his regulars are still here drinking and talking. Besides the old salts and some grim-faced sea-rat mercenaries, there's Harry Graft and 2d4 of his band of troublemakers. Given any provocation they'll throw knives "around" but not "at" you, but it's a joke so you're not allowed to get angry. For 10gp you could get them to do almost any fool thing.

C, Smoking Deck
The deck is covered by a pergola draped in a thin fabric that keeps out bugs but lets in air and light. at the Greaséd Rat sitting out here is the particular privilege of the particularly old, who smoke and gossip and snooze.

D, Pantry
Flour, oil, slivered coconut in jars, a large jamon. Concealed beneath the slivered coconut (Swithemend's favorite snack) is a large old-fashioned key.

Rumors:

1. "Swithemore was a pirate in his youth, had a hideout on Flies Island..." (true).
2. "Orlivka has a Corpse Priest problem. why, I've seen them with my own eyes strutting about by night proud as you please..." (half-true)
3. "Swithemore was always chuckling to himself about his secret heap of treasure. i bet that's the real reason they dragged him before the Magistrate in chains..." (true)
4. "Harry Graft's a vampire, that's why you see so many lads come and go in his gang..." (false)

    The basement of the Greaséd Rat is much cooler than ground-level. Halflings or other PCs with a sensitive nose might notice a faint whiff of salt and rot, though the cafe is several hundred yards from the bluffs of the north end of Orlivka, and you usually can't smell the sea this far away because of all the horse and fried fish and fried horse.

1, Beer
touch: flagstone floor, plaster walls. smell: cheap swill. lit by oil lamp.
    This room is filled with casks and puddles of Swithemend's terrible beer. Every few minutes, Aria comes half-falling down the stairs, fills a dozen mugs, then slowly and carefully trudges back up to the customers. On shelves to the WEST and SOUTH, old cookbooks and damaged utensils sit. On the large desk in the NORTHEAST, an elderly map is unfurled, and a medium leadcutter is laid out for maintenance with oil and a rag.
     The sword's blade is recently well-cared-for, though dark corrosion pitting indicates a rougher history. The map is of an unidentified island with no provided scale. It indicates several trails between several locations, though again these aren't identified. Near one of the islands bays, a large and delicious red X has been marked next to a little doodle of a rat-skull.
    Door to the EAST is old and stuck. Door to the SOUTH is broad and well-oiled

2, Ham
touch: chill air, porkiness. smell: pork. taste: pork. lit by blue crystal in ceiling.
    This room is where Swithemend kept his expensive imported jamons. They look like hams — old and mummified hams at that — but there are 40 of these suckers just hanging around and any PC with a skill or background in upper-class cuisine or etiquette knows you could march up to any local noble's cook and sell them 10gp a pop easy, maybe more if you target a banquet.
    The crystal in the ceiling is a Gem of Cold. It could be set in a weapon or used as a magical reagent, but if you just leave it around in a room of this size it lowers the ambient temperature by about 30 degrees fahrenheit.
    The door EAST has a large shiny padlock. It can be opened with the pantry key (in D), or it can be noisily axed through, or noisily kicked open by a character with at least 15 strength. Smashing a door provokes an immediate encounter

3, Wine
touch: flagstone floors, earth walls. smell: dust and spiders. not lit.
    Racks and racks of bottles of fine wines, most of them untouched in years. They're unwieldy and fragile as treasure, but most of the 60 bottles in here are worth a respectable 3gp. The bottle of Mariada Rose would be worth 20gp to an enthusiast, and a dose of the warming Goat Valley Tempranillo would cure stat-damage and XP drain (one bottle has 3 doses).
    Tipping the racks over would crush the occupants of the room for 4d6 damage, save v. traps for half.
    The door SOUTH has a large, rusty padlock. It can be opened with the pantry key (in D), or it can be noisily axed through, or noisily kicked open by a character with at least 12 strength. Smashing a door provokes an immediate encounter

X, Tripart Hallway
touch: slick packed dirt. smell: earth and clay. not lit.
    This hallway seems to have been cut through the ground relatively recently. Any dwarf or engineer can immediately see it's not supported enough to last many summer-winter cycles in a coastal town. The track WEST-EAST has been walked so often there are no footprints, just a few dragmarks. The path SOUTH is taken so infrequently that it's clear the visitor was a sea-rat every time

4, Junk
touch: earth floor and walls. smell: old wood, damp, dust. not lit.
    This room is cluttered full of crap. There are old crates, chests of drawers, a full suit of plate armor (sized for a human, requires significant repairs and refitting costing 1/4th as new) holding a medium poleaxe and a shield, shelves loaded with decks of marked cards and fistfuls of loaded dice (2gp, perhaps), shelves loaded with old books mostly on the topic of whelks (but also a spellbook with 2 spells, if 10 minutes are taken to search), a wicker basket full of 40 pounds of fetters and cuffs, a collection of skulls, and whatever other garbage you can think of. There's a treasure chest on a large expensive-looking rug (10gp but bulky): approaching the chest without examining the rug triggers a loaded beartrap underneath, 2d6 damage. The chest itself is locked, and contains 30gp in silver coins from various lands.
    The door in the WEST, leading to hallway X, is obvious. the door in the EAST, to Y, is disguised as a large coffin covered in faded warnings of Red Plague.

Y, Crooked Hallway
touch: damp stone. smell: salt air, dead bodies. lit by luminescent paint on the wall.
    This hallway is narrow and uncomfortable, and seems to have been picked through solid stone sometime in the past. The walls and ceiling are splattered with green paint that glows brightly enough to keep away the Grue. Tasting or inhaling a fragment of the paint requires a save v. poison, dealing 1d6 damage to intelligence on a fail.

5, Gnomic Temple
touch: wooden floor and walls. sound: low whispering, dripping, chuckling. smell: beeswax and wormcast and blood. not lit.
    This was once a small shrine to Wee Jas the Witch-Goddess, but someone has toppled her statue. It lies face-down with its legs broken. Rangers or characters with a background in monstrumology immediately know this room is the den of a Grue. When first entering, everyone who's holding light must save or have it extinguished. Every subsequent minute, they must repeat the save. Anyone in this room in total darkness must save every round or be eaten by a Grue.
    The statue is surrounded by the wreck of several large sanctuary candles, which can be pressed back into rough shape and lit. the sanctuary candles make their own save as a whole, with +4.
if the party

    "I will finish this later" I said in June  — dear reader, I did not finish this later. Room 6 is full of scraps of clothing and broken glass, room 7 has deep pits with giant worms, room 8 has a smuggler's ship and evidence to convict Swithmore (and evidence of his connection to a smuggling ring whose friendship might be more useful than that of Orlivka's mayor), room 9 is loaded with the good stuff.

What is Worship?

    Every soul produces a supernatural (as in the technical term) substance that people call "worship," "devotion" or, quaintly, "divine grace". It is a byproduct of intelligent life. Supernatural (again, the technical term) creatures subsist on worship like natural creatures subsist on sunlight and sugar. It is the ambrosia and nectar of the gods, their electricity, their kerosene.

    Simony's children, the Little Gods, cut deals with living people (though they don't usually frame it as such) wherein they are offered worship and in return grant power and beneficence. Cities have their Little Gods, as do cults and cultures, and unions and guilds, and caravans of traveling merchants, and circuses, and bandit encampments. The greatest of the Little Gods may have tens of millions of units (gallons? soul-hours?) of worship to work with, while the very smallest may be junior partners to powerful Clergy and survive on fractions of a portion a day.

    Sot and Simony and the other children of the Unwelcome Guest do not, it is supposed, require sustenance from mortals. Perhaps, because they are a generation or more removed from the Little Gods, they are less fallible, closer to true immortality, and don't require sustenance. Perhaps, because they dwell in the corpse of Heaven, they are sustained by its stinking humors.

    Hobgoblins produce little or no worship. It is sometimes suggested this is because they lack intelligence, or souls. Hobgoblins believe it is because they are sane and all other mortals are demented and demon-haunted. In Hobgoblin lands it is illegal to worship any but Ba the Cosmic Potter.



Tchotchkes:

1. Icon of Saint Sebastian at his execution, eyes turned to heaven, body studded with fletched flowers
2. T-shirt with obama Hope poster. obama's eyes have slit pupils and small horns have been added to his temples; the badge on his chest has been replaced with the alchemical symbol for sulfur
3. Snowglobe of the local town perhaps 40 years ago
4. Doll of a popular politician of a generation past, who was assassinated by Orc nationalists
5. Tiny scarecrow with haint-blue features
6. Artificial daffodil in a rubber pot. Smells faintly of lavender, for some reason.
7. Stress ball depicting [the owner's] own head
8. Funko Pop of Kite Man
9. Colorful abstract ceramic, obviously handmade, with the initials KBM painted on the underside
10. Antique ration container, 9 notches on the side and two small scratched-out silhouettes of a tank

Random Prompts

• Al-Tandwp- the sultan is that one Dril tweet
• Duslam- used to be shrimps
• Freak people- want to dig a hole
  

Human
1HD, 12AC, 9 Morale
Attack as weapon, +2 to strength

    Humen are a common sight in any dungeon. Their culture places a strong emphasis on violence and ability in combat; because of this and because of their size and strength, they are a prized part of any dark lord's army.

Superstition and Witchcraft
    Humen have no magical tradition of their own. Instead, they steal elements of other races' traditions to perform cargo-cult rituals and assemble crude magical weapons. A particularly inventive human might loot an artifact from a slain wizard and experiment until they can activate it, then use up its remaining charges before discarding it. Less intelligent humen can be found swinging magic staves as clubs, throwing burning spellbooks as crude bombs, or wrapping amulets and totems (both real and imagined) around the hafts of spears and axes in an effort to grant their attacks supernatural efficacy.

Dreams of Massacre
    Humen lives are as short as they are brutal, and their females bear children every year. Even if one of their hordes are utterly destroyed, they will replenish their numbers within twenty years and be ready to attempt another invasion. Towns on the human frontier are never totally safe.

Inconsistent Forms
    Humen can interbreed with many other species. These offspring (called "demihumans" or "mules") are fertile, and combine the features of their nonhuman parent's race with the savage ferocity of their human side. Because of this, they are sometimes unwelcome in civilized towns. Internal conflict means stable communities of mules are rare. They always feel trapped between their two halves, with some choosing to devote themselves to pursuits such art and music to spurn their human side, while others use the edge granted to them by their mixed blood to rise as warlords and adventurers among the humen.

Gruesome Trophies
    When a human slays an enemy they particularly hated or respected (concepts which are very similar to humen), they may construct a grisly memento out of that enemy's body. Their skin might be preserved and used as a rug or wallhanging, their skull might serve as a goblet, their other bones as toolhandles or decoration, and their hair or fur might be woven into fabric or cords. If the enemy was particularly notable their head might be preserved and mounted on a wall, as a reminder to their killer of the glorious combat, or as a warning to visitors.

Wild Companions
    The natural inclination of humen for chaos and the wilderness makes them closer to animals than other races. Humen of all lands often travel in the company of wolves, with whom they share meals and dens. Eastern humen, especially those of the Dendra and Domovoi tribes, even ride tamed horses into battle. The thunderous hooves and gnashing teeth of these brutes are a dangerous complement to the sweeping blows of their masters' cruel axes and the thrusts of their vicious spears.

Thoughts on GLOG magic

    A spell, as everyone knows, is like a ferret. It can be contained in various things, much like a ferret; a spellbook, a wizard's brain, a scroll, a wand, a stave, a gem, whatever. But why, and for what purpose all these different spell-cages? For the sake of this explanation, imagine the roles are reversed:

    You are a meat-and-matter human; your house is material, and made out of materials: different pieces of different sizes. You actually inhabit the negative space but that negative space is defined by the materials; a solid block of concrete is not a good home and neither is the infinite vastness of Deep Space.

    Imagine a pluripotent alien intelligence from a universe without "matter" owned your house and was trying to get your attention without killing you. If every human lived in the same kind of McMansion, that pluripotent intelligence could get anyone's attention easily and safely, by ringing the doorbell (which it could always find in the same spot, because every McMansion would be identical). 

    A spell is a critter. It's made out of magic and spirit like you're made out of meat and matter. A spell's house is made out of meaning and lack of meaning, ideas and non-ideas, not material and negative space like yours but analogous.

     A rock is not a good house for a spell, just like a solid piece of concrete is not a good house for you, but a gem is an okay one, and a gem with a name and a history is a desirable one

    A "spellbook" contains quite a lot of meaning and quite a lot of whitespace. It's like a McMansion for spells. Spellbooks have two major advantages in the eyes of a wizard: they're easy to produce (at least compared to a gem with 200 years of sordid history or whatever), and they're easy to understand.

    Not every human lives in the exact same kind of house: not even the exact same kind of human will live in the exact same house. Being a wizard is merely knowing what a house is, and knowing that houses have doors. Imagine the pluripotent alien intelligence very carefully and gently examining every part of the house, inside and out — every wall, ceiling and floor, every piece of furniture, the rain gutters and the windows and the doors and the front walk, each detail — until it was absolutely certain it knew what sort of house this was and what sort of person lived there. That's what a wizard is doing when they identify a spell in a scroll or book.

    Reading a spell in a spellbook (which is a wizard-specific thing) is like gently ding-donging the doorbell. Reading a spell from a scroll (which 'most any fool can do) is like setting fire to the house, and waiting for the inhabitant to flee in a panic.

Casting from your book:

• Spell has however many MD you give it
• Combat casting goes off at the end of the round, you can be interrupted
• Spell leaves when it is cast, and returns to the book the next morning (that's why wizards will keep extra copies of their favorite spells)

Casting from your brain:

• Like casting from a book, but the spell goes off on your turn
• Spell returns to your brain the next morning
• You can store as many as [wizard level] spells in your brain

    Everyone knows all that, it's pretty basic. Think of your spellbook as your Pokémon Box, and your brain as your Pokémon Team. Still, spelling (heh) it all out helped me understand the benefits and drawbacks of the two, the delicacy of the design. Plus it makes the other alternatives clear...

Casting from a scroll:

• Spell has however many MD you give it, plus 1 from the scroll
• Can be interrupted, like a book
• Anyone who can read the scroll can cast the spell with 1MD
• Scroll is destroyed in the process, and the spell is now homeless 😦

    I like limited use wands, but they often overlap with scrolls, don't you think? But writing everything out makes the missing puzzle piece obvious...

Casting from a wand:

• Spell has however many MD you give it
• Spell goes off on your turn, like casting from your brain
• Spell returns to the wand immediately

    Whoa-hoa! Now we're talking. A wand of Fireball doesn't let you cast Fireball a certain number of times — it lets you cast Fireball however you please, so long as you're snorting enough wizards' teeth to keep up with the MD costs. A wand is sort of like a little leash that the spell can't stray far from. Followup thoughts: you can swap out the spells in the other things (scrolls are reusable if they haven't been cast, books and brains can be swapped easily) but a wand has to be destroyed to free the spell. This makes wand blanks quite handy pieces of treasure. The party's wizard can put their favorite spell inside, and always have it handy.

    What about magical staves? Haven't really thought that one out. Maybe they're powerful artifacts associated with Wizard Schools, and have their own MD pool and selection of spells? Intelligent powerful artifacts, then, they surely must be.

    (of course, "spells are critters" is entirely wrong. a spell is a State, much as you are an Object, and casting a spell means aligning Objects with States; effects without causes. MD represent the wizard's ability to apply that State to more Objects, or to the same Object to a greater degree/for a longer time, in defiance of logic and causality. a spellbook (or what have you) is simply a stable point for a State to exist at, and when a spell is cast it ping-pongs from metastable points to metastable points, typically returning to stability (its "home") when State is checked at dawn.)
    (if this sounds puzzling, then you are beginning to understand why most wizards are Quite Mad)