A Handful of Sorcery

Mathilde’s hands were red and sticky.

And they trem­bled. Hor­ri­bly. She shook, there in her hid­ing place; in the tiny sup­ply clos­et, under the glow of one smoky can­dle­stick.

She fum­bled a tiny key from her uni­form pock­et. A uni­form dec­o­rat­ed with four iron oak leaves and a gold­en crown: First-class Acad­e­my hon­ors. In the can­dle­light, the navy wool glis­tened dark with stain down the front and sleeves.

Before her, on a crate of scour­ing pow­der, there lay a waxy pale book gird­ed in iron. A locked clasp, key­hole shiny from fre­quent use, bound the block of pages tight­ly shut. Beside it lay a stock­ing with a lump inside. Wine-red. Leak­ing.

Key in hand, Mathilde glanced at the clos­et door. Shut. Quiv­er­ing, she turned the key in the lock. Pages spilled open with a rus­tle like dry hands over bare flesh. She pro­duced an onyx pen and a sewing pin, pant­i­ng, check­ing fre­quent­ly the han­dle of the door. Still shut. She pricked web of her thumb with­out hes­i­ta­tion. The wound welled. She inked the pen-nib.

She wrote, bow­ing close to the soft, veined pages. Her hair, tan­gled and sticky, paint­ed streaks over the page as she scrib­bled:

“I have it. Have them.”

As her words dried, new ones sprung from under the sur­face of the page. Bloom­ing like burst cap­il­lar­ies. The script was not Mathilde’s own neat print, but crabbed, cur­sive strokes.

“Yes, I taste him on the page.” Then, after a moment: “I knew you could do it, Mathilde. You have come so far.”

Mathilde flushed, she pursed her lips, wrote.

“Thank you.” Then: “I am afraid they will know it was me.

The book wrote back. “Did you do exact­ly as we planned?”

“Yes.”

“Then what have you to fear? What are a few dab­bling magi­cians against a Beau­ty?”

There was a tap­ping. Mathilde star­tled, dart­ed towards the door, but the sound was mere­ly the stock­ing, drip­ping gen­tly onto the floor. She shiv­ered, turned back to the page.

She wrote. “Thank you. But I am not a sor­cer­er. I am not you.”

The book flood­ed with red text. “But you are not the girl of ten who first pricked her fin­ger and wrote to me. I know by the strength of your hand and the ripeness of your blood that you are grown strong. And I know by the oth­er ink that pol­lutes my page that you have the resolve befit­ting true Beau­ty. All you lacked were bones.”

Mathilde’s breath­ing quick­ened as she read. As she neared the end of the line and the words began to fade, she glanced at the dis­tend­ed stock­ing, at the humps of knuck­les and the red stump with­in. As if it knew her gaze, the book wrote.

“And after tonight, you will lack noth­ing at all.”

Beyond the clos­et door, dis­tant, there was a cry and a response, pan­icked and muf­fled.

“They are look­ing for me.” Mathilde wrote quick. “I fear I will not escape, even after all I have accom­plished.”

Large text flew over the page, excit­ed. “You have the vice, do you not?”

Mathilde glanced to a fold­ed con­trap­tion, like a met­al spi­der squashed between two book­boards, nest­ed between two texts with­in her open book bag. A small tube labeled “scalpels, sur­gi­cal, sana­tive” was tucked beside. “Yes.” she wrote.

“And the serum?”

“Yes.”

“Good. The bone will do the rest, even if not ful­ly healed. You know what you must do.”

Anoth­er shout from out­side. Pound­ing feet passed the door. Mathilde jabbed the pen nib into her hand, wrote, script messy and run­ning. “I am afraid.”

“Fear does not depart, even from Beau­ty. Begin, I will guide you.”

Mathilde drew in a long breath. Her hands stilled. “I know. I will.”

Set­ting down the pen, she with­drew the roll of scalpels. She pro­duced sev­er­al lit­tle bot­tles of flu­id, the spi­dery vice, and sev­er­al rolls of gauze.

She drew the stock­ing-cov­ered thing towards her, glanced once more toward the door, and began to cut.

Knucklebones

Knuck­le­bones are the most rec­og­niz­able of all sor­ceries.

They are fine­ly-craft­ed sur­ro­gates for human fin­ger­bones. Worn with­in the flesh of the hand, they grant unnat­ur­al pow­ers in exchange for the nutri­ent salts of the wear­er’s blood.

Arti­facts all, knuck­le­bones’ pow­ers and pres­tige are worth any and all suf­fer­ing and dis­fig­ure­ment entailed in their implan­ta­tion with­in the del­i­cate struc­tures of the hand.

The process of implan­ta­tion, known as abscis­sion, is aid­ed by sor­cer­ous tech­nol­o­gy. Name­ly by the pal­mar vice, a spi­dery appa­ra­tus that immo­bi­lizes the hand and pierces and holds the del­i­cate­ly pared veins, lig­a­ments, mus­cles, and flesh for the sur­geon as they oper­ate upon their own twitch­ing extrem­i­ty. Used too is osmot­ic glair, a kind of ner­vous glue that speeds the recov­ery of dam­aged nerve end­ings.

A well-implant­ed bone is a scar to remem­ber for­ev­er. A failed or clum­sy instal­la­tion spells lin­ger­ing pain, at best, and more often means mutilation—or ampu­ta­tion. For most, it is a risk under­tak­en with­out a momen­t’s doubt.

Knuck­le­bones’ poten­cy tempts magi­cians and neosor­cer­ers not just to pre­car­i­ous self-surgery but to atroc­i­ties against their fel­low wear­ers of bones. These digi­rati are a can­ni­bal sort, who, often wealthy, social­ize under a lay­er of polite soci­ety and pre­tense but all the while gloat, want, and pre­date. They prey upon those less able, all the while admir­ing and schem­ing against those with more impres­sive hands.

d100 Magic Knucklebones

Among them are weapons, strange relics, bril­liant med­i­cines, instru­ments of espi­onage, manip­u­la­tions of mor­tal­i­ty, trans­gres­sions against human­i­ty, and, mer­est of all, van­i­ties from an age of sor­cery.

1. Accu­mu­la­tor bone. Rare. Sim­i­lar in appear­ance to the reser­voir bone, but rein­forced against break­age by bands of green­ish alloy. This prox­i­mal pha­lange is often worn to com­ple­ment a bone requir­ing high quan­ti­ties of rare salts, which are tox­ic at blood con­cen­tra­tions above base­line. The accu­mu­la­tor bone grad­u­al­ly har­vests the blood­stream’s base­line rare salt lev­els and caches them in quan­ti­ties suf­fi­cient for lat­er use. This pro­vides an attrac­tive alter­na­tive to inject­ing a tox­ic hypo­der­mic of rare salt solu­tion, an expe­ri­ence most magi­cians are eager to for­go.
2. Ama­ran­thine bone. Excep­tion­al. Few are known out­side the hands of state­ly and estab­lished prac­ti­tion­ers. A mar­velous red-green ammo­lite thumb metacarpal, lus­trous and clear­ly pre­cious. In the hand, it is eas­i­ly for­got­ten, for it is utter­ly incon­spic­u­ous. It can remain there for decades, rarely remem­bered, as its effect is one of absence: While the pre­cious bone rests, unob­tru­sive and rarely thought of, it rids the wear­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly as they age, of malig­nan­cy. The wear­er will hard­ly notice their clear, youth­ful skin, for it will nev­er bloom and blotch with rot­ting growths. They will not remark upon their hale, vig­or­ous lungs, for they nev­er fill with blood and cor­rupt­ed flesh. They will bare­ly observe their stretch­ing age as it extends for remark­ably ver­nal decades, unbur­dened by can­cer­ous ago­nies of any kind at all. For these prop­er­ties of life exten­sion, the ama­ran­thine bone is among the most cov­et­ed of all.
3. Anasta­t­ic bone. Rare. Prized by those con­scious of their mor­tal­i­ty, as the digi­rati most often are. It should only be installed in the left hand. This metacarpal is clear crys­tal, capped at both ends by gold­en joint con­tacts. The crys­tal enclos­es a mar­row of tiny black globes, like roe. Once abscised, the bone lies dor­mant, acti­vat­ing only when it judges cir­cu­la­tion to be stopped or near-fail­ing. Upon acti­va­tion, the bone launch­es a surge of med­icat­ed blood towards the great ves­sels of the heart. Veins bulge from the arm and the hand black­ens with hematoma. It pum­mels the car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem in an effort to revive it, burst­ing ves­sels and bruis­ing the heart. Should this blast of enriched blood suc­ceed in restart­ing cir­cu­la­tion, the wear­er will be lit­tle bet­ter than on the brink of death, but they will be briefly alive.
4. Anchor bone. Semi-rare. A black met­al medi­al pha­lange. Despite its size, the anchor bone weighs a kilo­gram and more. Its weight deranges the grace of the hand and tests the capac­i­ty of the wear­er’s frag­ile flesh, caus­ing the new­ly implant­ed fin­ger to pool with ede­ma, delay­ing heal­ing hor­ri­bly. The wear­er will be hard pressed to ever again make agile use of the implant­ed hand. All this must be endured to enjoy the bone’s func­tion, which is innate to its mas­sive mate­r­i­al. It is craft­ed from bas­pho­ry lead, a met­al mul­ti­plica­tive­ly more mas­sive than gold, sourced only from with­in the deep­est earth of the Coast. It is an ele­ment intrin­si­cal­ly linked to the human world, that can­not read­i­ly be trans­lat­ed to oth­er realms. As such, this knuck­le­bone of bas­pho­ry lead, which dis­trib­utes its mas­sive pay­load fine­ly through­out the wear­er’ body, anchors them with­in the nat­ur­al world, pre­vent­ing their pas­sage, at least for a moment through the inter­stic­tion points between oth­er worlds. More effec­tive than mince toads, it is among the most potent pre­ven­ta­tives a trav­el­er can want in the pre­ven­tion of acci­den­tal tra­ver­sal to alien realms. *
5. Anode bones; AKA magi­cian’s light­ning. Deeply antique. A gun­metal dis­tal pha­lange of unusu­al design. It is robust­ly heavy. Some­thing moves inside, ring­ing softy. Most include a beau­ti­ful­ly-sculpt­ed pro­tru­sion, often chis­el-like or deft­ly scal­loped, which replaces, painful­ly, either the pad of the fin­ger­tip or the fin­ger­nail. With­out a gal­van­ic bone to poten­ti­ate it, an anode bone is a potent elec­troshock weapon; its touch deliv­ers excru­ci­at­ing elec­tric cur­rent, suf­fi­cient to burn flesh and seize mus­cle. With the addi­tion of a gal­van­ic bone, it cre­ates a ter­ri­fy­ing, roar­ing arc of direct­ed ener­gy pow­er­ful enough to immo­late or instant­ly inca­pac­i­tate. A hand­ful of poten­ti­at­ed anode bones pro­duces light­ning bolts capa­ble of vapor­iz­ing foes, reduc­ing them to ash and stink­ing ozone. Only thought is required to acti­vate an anode bone, a dead­ly reflex which takes prac­tice to restrain.
6. Ano­dyne bone. Uncom­mon. A greasy-black prox­i­mal pha­lange, too small for any fin­ger but the pinky. It is unadorned, except­ing the upper joint head, which is a lac­quer­like red sub­stance. Abscis­sion of the bone takes dou­ble the usu­al time to heal, remain­ing inflamed and weep­ing, but caus­ing sus­pi­cious­ly lit­tle pain. When popped, the bone pro­duces a spread­ing warmth that dulls pain and soothes the mind. It con­jures a fla­vor of raw sug­ar under the tongue. The effect is deli­cious, able to mul­ci­fy even pro­found injury and woe into more man­age­able terms. It is, how­ev­er, addic­tive, and becomes less use­ful with abuse.
7. Ataraxic bone. Rare. A licorice-col­ored medi­al pha­lange suit­able for the thumb. The implant­ed ataraxic bone will reject unless pro­vid­ed sub­der­mal injec­tions of cere­brospinal flu­id, placed with­in the web­bing of the thumb twice a day for a week. When popped, elic­it­ing a greasy sen­sa­tion with­in the joint, the bone releas­es a bril­liant sen­sa­tion up the arm and with­in the chest. This hair-rais­ing sen­sa­tion accom­pa­nies an exhil­a­rat­ing clar­i­ty of mind that sweeps away dis­trac­tion, inde­ci­sion, and anx­i­ety, pro­vid­ing a few min­utes of pel­lu­cid focus and unim­ped­ed thought. It begets inspi­ra­tion and real­iza­tion even in the exhaust­ed mind. It is best used spar­ing­ly, how­ev­er, as its overuse will build strange con­nec­tions with­in the mind that breed non­sen­si­cal causal­i­ties and hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry rev­e­la­tions.
8. Awe bone; AKA magi­cian’s glam­our. Extreme­ly rare. A glis­ten­ing hematite metacarpal. It inflicts inter­mit­tent goose­bumps and chills with­in the wear­er for months after abscis­sion. The bone is acti­vat­ed by pinch­ing it with­in the palm, a pen­sive ges­ture, elic­it­ing a pow­er­ful fris­son and an expand­ing low-fre­quen­cy thrum that stirs the chest, sick­en­ing. Sur­round­ing peo­ple are intense­ly affect­ed, struck by an exhil­a­rat­ing, pen­e­trat­ing shud­der that rais­es hairs, stut­ters the heart, and robs breath from the lungs. It is so sud­den and inex­plic­a­ble as to instill exis­ten­tial dread, or deep cer­tain­ty that some­thing super­nat­ur­al and awe­some has come to pass. It is as ter­ri­fy­ing as it is euphor­ic, and if played wise­ly by a charis­mat­ic sor­cer­er, can aid in the instal­la­tion of fear and awe in even stead­fast hearts. Any­one aware of the bone, how­ev­er, is large­ly immune to the tur­moil it inspires.
9. Beau­ty’s hand. Rare. Sought after by magi­cians of a provoca­tive pre­dis­po­si­tion. A lus­trous mag­netite scaphoid bone. Implant­ed and ful­ly healed, it sum­mons dread­ful pain in the fin­ger­tips, which over a course of days slough their nails, leav­ing sen­si­tive, fleshy beds. These emp­ty beds are assumed by new, dark nails con­struct­ed from bio­log­i­cal alloy. They grow slow, sped only by a diet rich in heme iron, in fish and meats, and in cit­rus. Grown, they are steel-hard, per­fect­ly straight, and read­i­ly filed to vicious points. They are durable, rein­forced by a vault­ed curve more pro­found than in human nails. The Beau­ties of ancient Idra, in their plen­ti­ful, dis­turbed fres­coes, are depict­ed with these nails, which they wore long and sharp­ened in each impe­ri­ous hand.
10. Bone of acu­ity, AKA the fore­hand­ed bone. Excep­tion­al. Curi­ous­ly, the bone of acu­ity is one of few to be worn as a carpal. The pisi­form bone, specif­i­cal­ly, on the side of the palm. It is a del­i­cate plat­inum cage con­tain­ing shrunk­en matri­ces of old organs. It caus­es an inter­mit­tent rac­ing heart, when heal­ing, evi­dence of its re-hydrat­ed glands’ inte­gra­tion with the endocrine sys­tem. Wear­ers of the bone of acu­ity are hyper-sen­si­tive to motion. Fast, incom­ing objects trig­ger the entire body as effec­tive­ly as a nee­dle held close to an open eye, ini­ti­at­ing a men­ace reflex that launch­es them swift­ly, if not grace­ful­ly, away. It is a bone for magi­cians who fear injury by phys­i­cal blows. Indeed, it will save them from sud­den strikes, though it will also cause them to dodge things as innocu­ous as swoop­ing pigeons or falling acorns. The bone of acu­ity is lim­it­ed in scope and can­not spare the wear­er from the swift flechettes of mod­ern pro­jec­tile weapons.
11. Bone of dor­veille. Uncom­mon. This prox­i­mal pha­lange is craft­ed from nar­whal ivory. It is sooth­ing to hold and begs to be turned through the fin­gers like a wor­ry stone. Wear­ers tend to become pro­tec­tive of it, liable to cos­set the installed dig­it, a behav­ior which must be con­scious­ly un-learned. Once installed, crack­ing the relat­ed knuck­le flush­es the wear­er with a sen­sa­tion akin to emerg­ing from pro­duc­tive, heal­ing sleep. It clears the grime of fatigue from the mind, at least tem­porar­i­ly. Overuse of the bone com­mits the wear­er to a con­tin­u­al sen­sa­tion of hav­ing awok­en mid-sleep. Not ful­ly aware, but not ful­ly fatigued. They may exist like this indef­i­nite­ly, at some cost to their body and mind.
12. Bone of lament. Rare. A fin­ger­tip, semi­trans­par­ent green, resem­bling chrome chal­cedony. It is deeply uncom­fort­able in the heal­ing hand, post abscis­sion, spoil­ing sleep and sour­ing the mind. It is a bone of sim­ple device: A touch by the fin­ger­tip inspires agony in oth­er crea­tures. Unmit­i­gat­ed, pound­ing pain, trans­mit­ted through the skin and nerves with no real injury, that fades soon after the touch is removed. Its inten­si­ty induces pan­ic and recoil in most, though some are reduced to par­a­lyt­ic sub­mis­sion after no more than a momen­t’s touch. It is the worth of an entire tor­tur­er’s arse­nal in a sin­gle fin­ger­tip. Its wear is sneered at even by the oth­er­wise amoral major­i­ty of the digi­rati, who con­sid­er its sim­ple sadism gauche.
13. Bone of ruin. A leg­endary weapon. An entire point­er fin­ger wrought in open­work alloy, com­plete­ly hol­low, del­i­cate­ly artic­u­lat­ed. Its instal­la­tion is a sur­gi­cal feat, demand­ing the exen­ter­a­tion of an entire fin­ger, plus the micro­sur­gi­cal attach­ment of liv­ing blood ves­sels to hid­den chan­nels with­in the bone. In order to heal, the wear­er must con­sume vile, dan­ger­ous elixirs loaded with heavy met­al salts. In time, the hol­low bones fill with hid­den, sor­cer­ous mar­row; the machin­ery of their potent design. Final­ly healed, the bone is a weapon both pre­cise and cat­a­stroph­ic. With a thought, the point­ed fin­ger gen­er­ates a blind­ing, instan­ta­neous lance of ener­getic destruc­tion: A par­ti­cle beam, mas­sive­ly potent, that instan­ta­neous­ly boils flesh, bone, and steel. It explodes fist-sized paths through foes, cre­at­ing gouts of steam and expand­ing plas­ma, sear­ing its bright path and resul­tant explo­sion into onlook­ing eyes. It is a weapon not read­i­ly brought to bear, how­ev­er, for its use requires fatal rare blood salt con­cen­tra­tions.
14. Bound­ary bone. Semi-rare. A pol­ished chal­cedony prox­i­mal pha­lange. It seems to resist move­ment, as if fixed in place by an inter­nal weight. The bound­ary bone’s pur­pose is dif­fi­cult to dis­cov­er, if one is not already aware of it, for it acti­vates only in tru­ly rare places. Like a mince toad, it func­tions as a warn­ing against near­by inter­stic­tion points; against the bound­aries of encroach­ing worlds. It warns of entrances to the fath­om­less Under­world, gates to the path­less and fatal fairy­land of the Oth­er­world, sea­ways to the track­less Dark Con­ti­nent, and pas­sages to all oth­er worlds alike. Unlike a mince toad, help­ful­ly, the bone does not dis­ap­pear upon prox­im­i­ty to the oth­er­world­ly and instead flares, heat­ing alarm­ing­ly with­in the hand, prompt­ing the wear­er to stop in their tracks, lest they dis­ap­pear for­ev­er.
15. Cale­fa­cient bone. Par­tic­u­lar, but not rare. A dark alloy metacarpal, heat tint­ed an apri­cot hue, engraved with a line of smooth, unknown glyphs. When abscised, the bone becomes uncom­fort­ably hot before set­tling in and match­ing the heat of the body. In the hand, it is heavy, though not uncom­fort­ably. The bone’s util­i­ty is seen when the hand is clenched, which caus­es the it to warm pleas­ant­ly with­in the palm, pro­tect­ing the entire hand from frost and con­tribut­ing extra warm to the body’s blood sup­ply. It is a fine ally against frost­bite and hypother­mia. It is effi­cient, requir­ing only a few com­mon salts. Its only dis­ad­van­tage is a propen­si­ty to make the hand sweat, while in use.
16. Cata­bol­ic, or sap­per bone. Rel­a­tive­ly com­mon. This light, coral-like medi­al pha­lange can be uncom­fort­able to implant, as it becomes dry and abra­sive if kept out­side the body. With­in days of implan­ta­tion, it estab­lish­es new, tiny organelles in the fin­ger and changes the user’s fin­ger­print to a porous mass of tiny holes. Upon touch­ing anoth­er crea­ture’s skin, the sap­per bone puts out wrig­gling micro­tubules through these holes. They invade the tar­get’s skin and begin extract­ing salts at a steady rate from their blood­stream, pro­duc­ing an itchy sen­sa­tion for both par­ties. The sap­per bone does not work on tar­gets whose hearts have stopped.
17. Cibar­i­ous bone. AKA the taster bone. Uncom­mon. A brass medi­al pha­lange, green with pati­na. It must be pol­ished before instal­la­tion. Worn through­out mod­ern his­to­ry by magi­cians fond of prepar­ing curi­ous game, by hunters and eaters of rare plants, and by those fear­ing assas­si­na­tion. Its util­i­ty is sim­ple: It judges the safe comestibil­i­ty of any morsel of food held in the hand, or any bev­er­age in which the fin­ger is dipped. Poi­soned or bioin­com­pat­i­ble sub­stances cause the bone to twinge sharply. The bone is not eas­i­ly fooled, but it can­not detect harm­ful bac­te­ria.
18. Col­let bone. Uncom­mon. A sil­ver pha­lange. Vari­ants have been found for every joint in the thumb and fin­gers. It is strange­ly cratered, as if struck by a tiny ham­mer. Its pur­pose is entire­ly dec­o­ra­tive: Via a coat­ing-and-place­ment process involv­ing a serum of blood plas­ma and zinc, gem­stones may be set into the back of the implant­ed col­let bone, through the skin, allow­ing them to be worn as a sort of band-less ring. It is thought that Dark Age sor­cer­ers trad­ed reg­u­lar­ly in gems and wore their favorites with the aid of this bone.
19. Cortege bone. Scarce, bor­der­line unknown. A hideous black fin­ger­tip, pit­ted and spongy. Few would nat­u­ral­ly dis­cov­er its pur­pose, for the cortege bone makes the wear­er a true agent of plague, the invis­i­ble yet omnipresent human afflic­tion. It launch­es an infes­ta­tion of plague with­in the wear­er’s bones so thor­ough­ly that they will rise as a grue with­in min­utes of death. They will also rapid­ly rein­fect near­by humans who do not cur­rent­ly car­ry it and speed their infec­tion at a sim­i­lar­ly ter­ri­ble pace. This is a mere side effect, how­ev­er. The cortege bone’s intend­ed pur­pose is sub­tle, but unique: It makes the wear­er a friend to grues. The wear­er may walk among the scut­tling dead as eas­i­ly as if they already were them­selves.
20. Coun­ter­sign bone. Uncom­mon. A pinky-tip of soft iron traced with the rem­nants of old micro-hiero­glyph­ics. Dark Age sor­cer­ers used these exten­sive­ly as a badge of fra­ter­ni­ty. When for­mal­iz­ing a new coterie or assum­ing new mem­bers, mem­bers would, as stan­dard prac­tice, open their pinky-tip and grave a sig­na­ture, a secret phrase unique to their alliance, upon the soft met­al the bone. All mem­bers would share the same phrase with­in their coun­ter­sign bones, mark­ing their con­fed­er­a­cy. This process was crit­i­cal for iden­ti­fy­ing mem­bers, as coun­ter­sign bones grow warm if brought near anoth­er shar­ing the same sig­na­ture. As such, par­ti­sans, hav­ing nev­er met before but shar­ing alle­giance could be assured of each oth­ers’ loy­al­ty by a brief hand­shake. Strangers refus­ing a hand­shake could not be trust­ed.
21. Cras­sa­men­tum AKA clot bone. Uncom­mon. A rust-red twist of some wire­like sub­stance bunched into the shape of an inter­me­di­ate pha­lange. It demands a weary­ing bulk of salts when heal­ing. This demand lessens to near-noth­ing after some time, but resumes if the wear­er ever need recov­er from sub­stan­tial blood loss. It is a nec­es­sary drain, for the clot bone con­tin­u­al­ly occu­pies itself with the break­down and altered recon­struc­tion of every one of the wear­er’s throm­bo­cytes. Each platelet becomes a motile, eel­like agent. These squirm­ing cells are a con­sid­er­able upgrade, for they enable near-instant coag­u­la­tion, dri­ven as they are to swift­ly gath­er and rank-up like sol­diers at the site of hem­or­rhag­ing. For its prop­er­ties in first aid, the clot bone is sought after by magi­cians, if only for its util­i­ty in aid­ing lat­er abscis­sions.
22. Dead­latch bone. Com­mon. A heavy brass medi­al pha­lange. If iron fil­ings are brought near it, they dance into a pecu­liar, invari­able shape. Not a nat­ur­al mag­net­ic field at all, but a unique fig­ure. The shape is like a passphrase, keyed to the sen­si­tive inte­ri­or of some lock or locks out in the world, meant to act upon the fine mech­a­nisms with­in and turn its oth­er­wise-inac­ces­si­ble latch. Inside innu­mer­able ruins, mans­es, chests, and lock­ers, there dwell hid­den locks meant only for spe­cif­ic dead­latch bones. Of course, the task of find­ing the match­ing bone usu­al­ly impos­si­ble. As such, these locks go unopened, if they not destroyed by a skilled lock­break­er. The key bones, how­ev­er, still see use: New locks can be keyed to them, giv­en some knowl­edge of sor­cer­ous lock­smithy, built to match the needs of magi­cians and neosor­cer­ers in need of a bit of per­son­al­ized secu­ri­ty.
23. Death-knell. Arrant, mytho­graph­ic sor­cery. A long, ivory bone that fits not at all in a mor­tal hand. With a thought and the crook of a fin­ger, the wear­er may dis­charge a shock­front capa­ble of rip­ping all life from a human body. It quakes the heart from its hous­ing, bursts blood from the tis­sues of the lungs, and rup­tures the frag­ile ves­sels of the mind. Only the most stout­heart­ed can sur­vive, leav­ing even them on the brink of death. A death-knell bone does not hard­en its host against this mor­tal blow. Addi­tion­al­ly, dis­charg­ing it requires fatal blood lev­els of rare, tox­ic salts unknown to the human body. How the cre­ators of such a weapon wield­ed it and sur­vived can only be sup­posed. Chi­rol­o­gists believe it a weapon from before the com­ing of Aveth, when some sor­cer­ers com­mand­ed pow­ers over life and death unknown to mod­ern minds.
24. Decid­u­ous bone. Very com­mon. Naught but a com­mon, pol­ished grey bone of some sil­i­cous mate­r­i­al. It occurs in many forms, every vari­ant of which may be locat­ed with not too much effort, among the digi­rati, at least, to fit any bone in any por­tion of the hand. It has no prop­er­ties at all, save for the sim­ple util­i­ty of fill­ing an emp­ty sock­et. If in the event a magi­cian must remove a mag­ic knuck­le­bone from one of their dig­its, due to dys­func­tion, dis­com­fort, or some oth­er rea­son, they should hope to have a decid­u­ous bone to stand in its place, rather than suf­fer a use­less, crip­pling gap in their oth­er­wise full hand. Decid­u­ous bones are still made today, and many prac­ti­tion­ers pos­sess the recipe. Since a nat­ur­al bone is required to make one, a well-pre­pared magi­cian might grad­u­al­ly con­vert all their nat­ur­al knuck­le­bones into decid­u­ous bones as they are replaced with more potent sur­ro­gates, a prac­tice both prac­ti­cal and sen­ti­men­tal.
25. Delam­i­nant bone. Deeply rare; most are ruined. A tung­sten fin­ger­tip. It is eas­i­ly ruined, for it dis­solves if exposed to nat­ur­al blood, fatal­ly poi­son­ing the wear­er. Before abscis­sion, the sub­ject must with­stand a water fast for a fort­night, then con­sume a dread­ful philter meant to dena­ture spe­cif­ic blood com­po­nents. Implant­ed, the bone demands a steady sup­ply of rare salts. The implant­ed fin­ger­tip los­es its print. The nailbed falls away, leav­ing a mere smooth nub. A touch by this dig­it, which is per­pet­u­al­ly coat­ed in an unpleas­ant dew, applies a hor­ri­ble, pen­e­trat­ing ven­om. It sab­o­tages the con­nec­tive tis­sues of liv­ing things, caus­ing flesh to sep­a­rate into its con­stituent lay­ers in a sick­en­ing wet rip­ple; to sag like cooked meat off the bone. Mus­cles release from their inser­tion points, slack and use­less. Fat and skin, sep­a­rat­ed from their blood sup­ply, tempt gan­grene. Blood ves­sels tear, caus­ing hematoma through­out. Tis­sue dam­age is lim­it­ed only by the life of the ven­om, which spreads only so far. Usu­al­ly, a sin­gle touch can sab­o­tage half a limb. The wear­er is immune to their own ven­om.
26. Demul­cent bone. Uncom­mon. A plat­inum prox­i­mal pha­lange inlaid with rue flow­ers; tra­di­tion­al Nôr sym­bols of good health. It is of rel­a­tive­ly new man­u­fac­ture, cre­at­ed a mere 950 years ago by sor­cer­ers in the employ of King Alfward the Iron, first King of Fir­lund. The abscised bone yields lit­tle inflam­ma­tion while heal­ing, and takes some time to take up ful­ly and health­ily with­in the hand. When popped, it has lit­tle imme­di­ate effect. With­in an hour, how­ev­er, it grad­u­al­ly soothes com­mon ills, reduc­ing fever, mol­li­fy­ing aches, and dimin­ish­ing hay fever. Pop­u­lar rumors sug­gest that this mild, help­ful bone was designed by the order of the old King him­self, who was by the end of his lengthy reign, had become an arthrit­ic, tired old monarch. Fur­ther rein­forc­ing the bone’s con­nec­tion to Alfward, who died of renal dis­ease, overuse of the demul­cent bone exhibits notable wear upon the kid­neys.
27. Earhorn bone. Uncom­mon, but only because they are regard­ed as unstyl­ish; often dis­card­ed in favor of more excit­ing bones. An inter­me­di­ate pha­lange formed of a smoky red stone, like arag­o­nite. The bone is marked with inden­ta­tions like invert­ed cones. These cones fill with a spongy tis­sue, once abscised and are scarce­ly pal­pa­ble under the skin. Some weeks after implan­ta­tion, the bone shows its char­ac­ter: When pressed against a sur­face, the implant­ed fin­ger, or more accu­rate­ly, the bone with­in, becomes micro­phon­ic. Like a remote ear. Eas­i­ly pressed to a shut door, it glad­ly receives the vibra­tions of con­ver­sa­tion or move­ment beyond. It is dis­ori­en­tat­ing, lis­ten­ing through a clutched wine­glass or dag­ger-hilt, but it is a dis­ori­en­ta­tion that comes with cer­tain ben­e­fits to an enquir­ing mind. The bone, should it ever be removed, leaves its ex-wear­er with a feel­ing of deaf­ness that takes some time to fade.
28. Empasm bone. A car­nelian pinky metacarpal stocked with yel­low inclu­sions resem­bling insect eggs. Its effect with­in the hand is large­ly indis­cernible to the wear­er, deeply sub­tle: It changes the wear­er’s scent. The com­mon human odors of sweat and osmidro­sis are utter­ly replaced, super­seded by a basil­ic, spir­i­tous accord that grows pun­gent only when the wear­er goes unwashed for some time. It is an unnerv­ing fragrance—not for its own char­ac­ter­is­tics, for it is not unpleasant—but for its com­plete replace­ment of the odors that con­note a human being. It labels its wear­er as not a mor­tal, but as a sorcerer—an unnat­ur­al crea­ture. Notably, crea­tures hos­tile to or fond of eat­ing humans will treat the wear­er with neu­tral­i­ty, if they acknowl­edge them at all.
29. Ersatz bone; AKA an os réplique, or a late-age repli­ca. One of many imi­ta­tion knuck­le­bones cre­at­ed dur­ing the Epiphaenid Revival, a short-lived but indus­tri­ous sor­cer­ous civ­i­liza­tion that exist­ed in what is now Alder­reach. Caches of these imi­ta­tions appear spo­rad­i­cal­ly on the black mar­ket, sourced from ven­tures with­in ancient Epiphaenid cities. † An ersatz bone takes the form of any nor­mal com­mon-to-uncom­mon bone, such as a bone of woe or a thun­der­crack bone, albeit with slight vari­ances, which are indis­cernible to a novice. The bone func­tions as expect­ed, but heals slow­ly when abscised, invit­ing infec­tion. It also con­sumes salt at an ele­vat­ed rate. Some, the poor­est in qual­i­ty, may sub­ject the wear­er to heavy met­al poi­son­ing over time. Many fledg­ling magi­cians, often cut­ters, wear ersatz bones, unaware that their cheap­er-than-aver­age hand is full of fakes.
30. Excar­nate bone. Very rare. A lead­en cap­i­tate bone. Its implan­ta­tion presents a par­lous aspect to any would-be sur­geon, for its intend­ed home is with­in the very core of the wrist, a loca­tion not eas­i­ly dis­turbed with­out harm. Implant­ed, it pre­cip­i­tates for some weeks, goad­ing painful twinges through­out the hand. Even­tu­al­ly, in a turn mis­tak­able for rejec­tion and necro­sis, the hand swells, under­goes a sort of auto­genic deglov­ing: It sheds its flesh and fat, reveal­ing a skele­tal neo-extrem­i­ty. A beau­ti­ful, skinned appendage sheathed in a trans­par­ent, durable, gut­like mate­r­i­al that dis­plays all the hand’s pre­cious bone with­in a dense cabling of sil­ver integu­men­tary tis­sue. Rud­dy mus­cles twitch through­out, wrapped by stiff cobalt-and-carmine venous trees. This nou­veau-limb extends to the wrist, where reg­u­lar flesh resumes. In this form, the hand is strength­ened. It is large­ly cut­proof. Most notably, it can be induced, via an elixir of sol­vents, to open its vault of metal­lic ten­dons, allow­ing access to the pre­cious knuck­le­bones with­in with­out need for surgery.
31. Excur­sive bone. Rare, but unpop­u­lar. A pol­ished prox­i­mal pha­lange with a steel lig­a­ture mid­way down its length. With­in the hand, a ring­like band of scar tis­sue, scored in the mid­dle, forms over this lig­a­ture. The band’s util­i­ty is revealed via a sick­en­ing twist­ing ges­ture that, with a suck­ing sound, caus­es the fin­ger to sep­a­rate at the band, spilling a faint quan­ti­ty of blood. The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, this allows the swap­ping of fin­ger­tips with oth­ers sim­i­lar­ly con­nect­ed to excur­sive bones. It is lim­it­ed, how­ev­er, by the avail­abil­i­ty of said bones and also by the life­time of a fin­ger­tip sep­a­rat­ed from its body, which is dis­tress­ing­ly low. Mod­ern magi­cians sup­pose that some func­tion of the excur­sive bone is for­got­ten or miss­ing, that it must pose some greater util­i­ty; or offer a con­nec­tion to some greater, more impres­sive sor­cer­ous device.
32. Focus. Uncom­mon. A cop­per prox­i­mal or medi­al pha­lange with grey glass insu­lat­ing its joint ends. Wave­like folds com­pli­cate the met­al of its under­side. When implant­ed adja­cent to cer­tain potent bones, the focus bone engen­ders unique, flat, metal­lic tis­sues under­side the implant­ed fin­ger. These crin­kle soft­ly, near­ly unde­tectably. The bone and its tis­sues have no indi­vid­ual func­tion. Rather, they com­pli­ment bones that emit killing ener­gy, con­cen­trat­ing and aug­ment­ing the range and pow­er of their rays. Sev­er­al focus bones, in addi­tion to cer­tain ges­tur­al tech­niques, will great­ly enhance the excru­ci­at­ing radi­ance of scream­er bones and magi­cian’s fire.
33. Germ; AKA fomite bone. Uncom­mon­ly worn, but not rare. A translu­cent medi­al pha­lange with micro­tubes feed­ing a tiny organelle. The appear­ance of the organelle is vari­able. When found, it is usu­al­ly necrot­ic black with plague. This betrays the germ bone’s pur­pose: A con­tain­er for dis­ease or micro­bio­ta. It may be eas­i­ly col­o­nized with a new infec­tion by plac­ing it on an agar plate con­tain­ing the tar­get microor­gan­ism. Once col­o­nized and implant­ed, a germ bone may be hyper­ex­tend­ed to pro­duce an invis­i­ble burst of bac­te­ria or virus par­ti­cles. Wear­ing a germ bone usu­al­ly inoc­u­lates the magi­cian against its con­tents. This can­not save them from plague, how­ev­er. As such, germ bones, when excised from the hands of dead magi­cians, are often filled with plague, recol­o­nized by the latent infec­tion in the wear­er’s bones.
34. The guilty bone. Rare indeed. This medi­al pha­lange is craft­ed from blood­stone. It requires a peri­od of “set­ting in,” after abscis­sion before it can be used, dur­ing which the wear­er suf­fers brief mem­o­ry black­outs at ran­dom. Its func­tion is sim­ple: Pop­ping the bone elic­its imme­di­ate, tem­po­rary amne­sia. The wear­er may do any­thing, com­mit any deed, with­in this time and store no mem­o­ry of it, save their inten­tion. Using the bone even once caus­es patch­es of déjà vu for weeks.
35. Hemo­tox­ic bone; AKA the stran­gler’s bone. Few are known to exist. A cold, heavy, medi­al pha­lange, made of some­thing resem­bling black mar­ble streaked with bur­gundy. While heal­ing in the abscised hand, the bone caus­es its wear­er severe ane­mia. Ful­ly healed, the bone is always active. It affects only the bare skin of oth­er crea­tures. A slight touch by the implant­ed fin­ger is harm­less. A firm hold, how­ev­er, is inju­ri­ous indeed. The vic­tim expe­ri­ences weak­ness, faint­ness, as if sub­ject­ed to a choke­hold. Their skin grows pal­lid as the anox­ic bone rapid­ly destroys the vital char­ac­ter­is­tics of their blood, chang­ing it from bright red to sick­en­ing brown. A mere ten sec­onds of con­tact with the anox­ic bone will induce a swoon. Any more will spell death.
36. Hiero­d­ule bone. Com­mon, but rarely worn. Thought to be an arti­fact of ancient Idra. Specif­i­cal­ly, a bone worn by hiero­d­ules, by human slaves kept by the autarch Beau­ties of that bygone domin­ion. It is one of few bones made to replace a carpal. Specif­i­cal­ly, the trapez­i­um of the thumb. Chi­rol­o­gists assume this posi­tion with­in the hand was cho­sen for its incon­ve­nience if removed; cho­sen to dis­cour­age a slave from sim­ply sev­er­ing a fin­ger to remove the bone. The hiero­d­ule bone’s func­tion in that seat is a sub­tle one: It alters the wear­er’s blood type to one suit­able for uni­ver­sal dona­tion and use by oth­er bod­ies. How the Idrans exploit­ed this hemat­ic alter­ation in their slaves is not clear­ly none. Per­haps they con­sumed, or took with­in their own veins, the blood of their chat­tel.
37. His­tolyt­ic bone. Extreme­ly scarce; desired for its hor­ri­fy­ing util­i­ty as a weapon. A seg­ment­ed prox­i­mal pha­lange formed of smooth, glassy grey chitin. Implant­ed, it proves dis­turbing­ly flex­i­ble for a time before accli­ma­tiz­ing. In this time, a line of pores devel­ops under the wear­er’s fin­ger, unde­tectably small. The bone is acti­vat­ed with a flick­ing ges­ture, per­formed as if to fling water from the fin­gers. Fine jets of clear, cloy­ing poi­son project from the pores. On con­tact with flesh, the poi­son inflicts imme­di­ate cel­lu­lar death. Foam­ing and stink­ing, it dis­solves flesh, blood, and bone into raw organ­ic sludge. If not quick­ly washed away or oth­er­wise removed, the stuff will quick­ly destroy much or all of a human body. The resul­tant sludge is rich in salts, hand­i­ly absorbed by a sap­per bone.
38. Hypocaust. Scarce. A brick red metacarpal glit­ter­ing with agate inclu­sions. The wear­er expe­ri­ences per­spi­ra­tion and hot flash­es for days fol­low­ing implan­ta­tion, accom­pa­nied by severe fever. The fever nev­er dimin­ish­es. Rather, the wear­er adapts, liv­ing com­fort­ably there­after at a home­o­sta­t­ic tem­per­a­ture far above the norm. They give no out­ward sign of this change, save the curi­ous warmth of their skin. This change makes them large­ly immune to the typ­i­cal host of human viral infec­tions, which can­not sur­vive in so fer­vid an organ­ism. Despite this change, the bone’s wear­er is still vul­ner­a­ble to hyper­ther­mia if heat­ed any fur­ther, though they are some­what resis­tant to cold.
39. Ictus bone; AKA Magician’s rack. An entire set of pinky bones cut from pale sap­phire. Use­less unless held in a set. Few com­plete sets remain today, mak­ing them extreme­ly rare. A mere caress by the implant­ed dig­it instant­ly elic­its mus­cle con­trac­tions so vio­lent as to take limbs out of joint and twist bones to splin­ters. It is an effort­less weapon, but it comes at a cost: The rack must recharge between uses, draw­ing large quan­ti­ties of rare salts from the blood. And when charged, the rack is always active. Gloves must be worn to pre­vent acci­den­tal killings. The wear­er is immune to their own touch. Reser­voir bones dou­ble the rate of recharge.
40. The Immac­u­late hand. Uncom­mon. A thumb metacarpal, utter­ly smooth, worked from white met­al. Implant­ed, it caus­es the hand to flake all over, as if afflict­ed by dan­druff. With­in the course of months, the skin tex­ture changes entire­ly. Where once there were palm and fin­ger-prints, there stretch­es only pris­tine vel­lum-like hide. Utter­ly with­out mark and quite dry. It nev­er sweats. To a mod­ern magi­cian of sneak­thief ambi­tion, a pair of these bones makes them large­ly immune to the mod­ern prac­tice of foren­sic fin­ger­print­ing. This, how­ev­er, is not the bone’s orig­i­nal design: Immac­u­late bones were craft­ed for and forced upon the house­hold staff of ancient sor­cer­ers, who were required to leave no human mark upon their mas­ters’ spot­less châteaux, manoirs, and palaces.
41. Incar­na­dine bone. Very rare. A smoky glass medi­al pha­lange. While heal­ing, it reduces the implant­ed fin­ger to a spongy white wreck, as if all blood had fled the dig­it. This must be coun­ter­act­ed with mas­sages meant to increase blood flow and by tar­get­ed injec­tions of salts into the low­er joint of the bone. Prop­er­ly healed, the bone is a devi­ous, tor­tu­ous thing. If popped, it sweats incar­na­dine tox­in, a sub­stance leg­endary among tomb-delvers and among schol­ars of Ancient Idra. Known also as exsan­guina­tion flu­id, the tox­in wreaks a cat­a­stroph­ic effect on liv­ing skin: It caus­es flesh’s pores to swell wide as pin­pricks and let forth beads of blood, evi­dence of burst ves­sels below, that soon pour forth like a hun­dred open veins. Blood spills from affect­ed flesh in red sheets, unable to clot. Even a spill of incar­na­dine tox­in on bare flesh tempts fatal blood loss, as the stuff can­not be neu­tral­ized. One can only hope it inflicts a limb, that the extrem­i­ty can be sev­ered, spar­ing them from cer­tain exsan­guina­tion. Appro­pri­ate­ly, the bone makes the wear­er immune to the fatal tox­in it pro­duces.
42. Incubo bone. Rare. A thin, sil­ver fin­ger­tip. Once abscised, it turns the wear­er’s nailbed a wor­ri­some blue. Sil­ver flecks appear spo­rad­i­cal­ly in the fin­ger­nail. Its util­i­ty is some­what per­verse: A caress from the fin­ger­tip elic­its instant sleep paral­y­sis in a slum­ber­ing crea­ture. If awak­ened by the caress or by oth­er stim­u­lus, they become ful­ly aware, but main­tain a state of total tetraple­gia. The effect lasts for sev­er­al min­utes. It is a ter­ri­fy­ing expe­ri­ence. Crea­tures sub­ject­ed to it too often are prone to night­mares and may store altered, hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry mem­o­ries of their time spent par­a­lyzed.
43. Inkwell bone. Com­mon. This ebony dis­tal pha­lange instills an ugly alter­ation in the fin­ger­tip. With­in weeks of implan­ta­tion, the fin­ger­print is lost, sub­sumed by a swelling of the pores. They dimin­ish in num­ber and grow to a bul­bous size, even­tu­al­ly resem­bling close­ly-grouped octo­pus suck­ers. Each is pen­e­tra­ble at its puck­ered cen­ter, ide­al­ly by a pen or quill, and imparts a gen­er­ous coat­ing of blood to what­ev­er pierces it. This dis­taste­ful func­tion is one deeply use­ful to sor­cer­ers, who, among oth­er uses for their own blood, require it as ink for com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the liv­ing tomes of old sor­cery.
44. Inter­cala­tive bone. Cov­et­ed by the digi­rati. A prox­i­mal pha­lange, though rar­er exam­ples suit the thumb or pinky. The prox­i­mal end is smooth and creamy, while the dis­tal end is a mass of cal­care­ous hooks and pro­tru­sions that come togeth­er to form an uncom­fort­able pseu­do-joint. Installed, bone is deeply uncom­fort­able and will not bend. Heal­ing pro­vides no relief, for the fin­ger quick­ly swells, becom­ing ede­ma­tous and itchy. With­in the inflam­ma­tion, over the course of months, the bone gen­er­ates anoth­er fin­ger­bone, com­plete with vas­cu­lar and integu­men­tary tis­sue. It extends the implant­ed fin­ger by one joint, cre­at­ing a new, ful­ly artic­u­lat­ed nat­ur­al pha­lange between the medi­al and prox­i­mal ones. This new, inter­calant bone is total­ly mun­dane, exist­ing only to be replaced by a more pow­er­ful, sur­ro­gate medi­al pha­lange. A magi­cian would, at this time, remove the inter­cala­tive bone and swap it to an adja­cent fin­ger, begin­ning the process again in pur­suit of a com­plete bat­tery of long, four-joint­ed fin­gers, an achieve­ment the digi­rati refer to as a roy­al hand.
45. Ker­at­ic bone. Unfre­quent and unpop­u­lar with mod­ern prac­ti­tion­ers, who pre­fer gloves lined with del­i­cate fin maille to the pro­tec­tion afford­ed by this bone. A mat­te, ochre metacarpal. Its unpop­u­lar­i­ty is quick­ly real­ized after the bone is abscised and healed, for it cre­ates a notice­able and rapid change in the hand. With­in weeks, her­ald­ed by itch­ing and heat in the palm, the entire hand cal­lus­es thick­ly in an armor of ker­ati­nous lay­ers. This armor cov­ers all, save for numer­ous gaps between that per­mit move­ment to joints and the web­bing of the hand. It is death­ly pale, unlike a com­mon, yel­low cal­lus, and its seg­ments and folds do not tru­ly resem­ble the armor of any oth­er ani­mal. Despite its appear­ance, the armor is appre­cia­bly pro­tec­tive, pre­vent­ing both cuts and burns.
46. Lode bone. Mun­dane, unpop­u­lar. Not to be con­fused with a magi­cian’s com­pass. †† A lode bone, a fin­ger­tip craft­ed from sim­ple steel, con­tains a crys­tal hol­low filled with liq­uid met­al. With­in, a red met­al bead floats, con­tin­u­al­ly pulled in one direc­tion. When implant­ed, the wear­er can feel its con­tin­u­al, gen­tle tug in that direc­tion. What lies that way, few have dis­cov­ered. It is not north and it is not con­sis­tent between bones. Some magi­cians pos­tu­late that it indi­cates a pla­nar ori­en­ta­tion impor­tant in the art of dows­ing. Oth­ers, that it points the way to the orig­i­nal wear­er’s trea­sure trove. Few know, how­ev­er, that every lode bone pos­sess­es a part­ner-arti­fact called a lodestar: An ornate, warm peb­ble, to which it will point unerr­ing­ly for­ev­er; a sim­ple loca­tor, to be stowed on some­thing pre­cious and worth return­ing to.
47. Loim­ic bone; AKA a patho­gen­e­sis bone. Pos­si­bly unique; one was recent­ly sold in a pri­vate auc­tion in Sil­ton. It is a fin­ger­tip tak­en from a grue, inlaid with gold­en com­plex­i­ties. Once implant­ed, the bone necro­tizes the sur­round­ing flesh, reduc­ing the fin­ger­tip to its raw, unclean form. A touch by said fin­ger­tip is a killing one, although not instant­ly. It poten­ti­ates the latent plague with­in a body, should there be any, trans­form­ing its patho­gen­e­sis from a patient, latent one to a vir­u­lent, killing infec­tion. Vic­tims suc­cumb with­in days, encrust­ed with scab­by buboes and with­er­ing away with hem­or­rhag­ic fever, becom­ing grues short­ly after death. Only those with no trace of plague in their skele­ton, those who are well med­icat­ed with griso­date, are immune.
48. Magi­cian’s armor. Extreme­ly rare, as its users are apt to per­ish. This inter­me­di­ate pha­lange, made stout for the thumb, is clear-lac­quered grey mar­ble. Its name is an oxy­moron, for the effect of the bone is not pro­tec­tive in the least. Instead, the implant­ed bone, when acti­vat­ed, which requires a lat­er­al twist of the thumb only pos­si­ble once implant­ed and healed, numbs phys­i­cal sen­sa­tion pro­found­ly. It allows touch to reg­is­ter, but com­plete­ly eras­es pain. The wear­er could bear a hun­dred axe blows and feel only the wet­ness of their blood. They could pass through fire, feel­ing only the light­ness of encin­dered flesh fall­en from bone. While the bone’s util­i­ty is incred­i­ble, it is also lim­it­ed, as the user may be func­tion­al­ly dead after test­ing its ben­e­fit
49. Magi­cian’s masque. Only rumored to exist. Per­haps sin­gu­lar, if at all real. Said to be a black glass prox­i­mal pha­lange, use­ful only if implant­ed in the point­er fin­ger. Among the Emper­oussin digi­rati, sto­ries abound of its most not­ed wear­er, described as a well-dressed, slight gamine who appears unin­vit­ed at the exclu­sive, dis­crete soci­ety par­ties of magi­ciankind to sow dis­cord and dis­may; who always leaves one mem­ber in atten­dance short a pre­cious fin­ger, sep­a­rat­ed with cloth­iers’ shears. Her vis­age, they say, is often veiled by fanned fin­gers held before the face, a coquet­tish ges­ture. A very inten­tion­al ges­ture, evi­dent­ly, per­formed to acti­vate the magi­cian’s masque, a bone which shields all behind it from mem­o­ry. Or, per­haps more like­ly, that emits some local­i­ty or radi­a­tion that pre­vents con­ver­sion and stor­age of short term mem­o­ries to long term. How, then, are these details of the bone’s nefar­i­ous use remem­bered? Some say the bone is bet­ter known than expect­ed, that it has been recount­ed in tomes of lore. Oth­ers say the rumors are the craft­work of the masqued magi­cian, that she her­self must glee­ful­ly sow them.
50. Mag­netif­er­ous. Com­mon. A sim­ple bone, more a tool than any­thing else. It is a heavy, shin­ing fin­ger­tip, unusu­al­ly flat. The wear­er must be care­ful to immo­bi­lize the implant­ed fin­ger while heal­ing, as the bone is capa­ble of actu­at­ing before ful­ly healed, risk­ing hematoma. If popped to the side, the fin­ger­tip becomes pow­er­ful­ly mag­net­ic, suf­fi­cient to lift sev­er­al-kilo objects with naught but the tip of a fin­ger. Drag­ging the fin­ger through a bed of sand will result in its col­lec­tion of many iron flakes. If popped to the oth­er side, like a switch, it deac­ti­vates. The bone asks lit­tle of the body’s salt reserves.
51. Mal­i­son bone. Very rare. This knuck­le­bone is a non­func­tion­al fake. It resem­bles one of any well-known, desir­able bones, such as bone of woe, though nev­er one so aston­ish­ing­ly rare as to attract overt scruti­ny. It is a good copy, dis­tin­guish­able from the real item only by a slight, hol­low slosh­ing with­in the space of the mar­row, dif­fi­cult to detect. This hol­low­ness belies the truth: A cursed bone is soaked full of ælf­blood, a sub­stance bound to bring mis­ery upon those who pos­sess it. Any­one even mar­gin­al­ly well read in fairy sto­ries knows that a per­son stained by ælf­blood is cursed, marked for­ev­er. Sur­veilled by the Oth­er, doomed to a life of tor­ment and grow­ing mad­ness per­se­cut­ed by its black­heart­ed denizens. Who man­u­fac­tures these bones, few know. Rumors abound of the pre­ma­ture demis­es of fool­ish, would-be prac­ti­tion­ers tricked into abscis­ing fairy-blood and per­ish­ing before they real­ize their mis­take.
52. Match­stick. Plen­ti­ful­ly avail­able in magi­cians’ cir­cles. A steel thumb-bone, oft marked with a man­u­fac­tur­er’s stamp. Some days after implan­ta­tion, broad, cal­loused pores form at the thumb tip. When scraped, they pro­duce a bead of volatile liq­uid that read­i­ly ignites upon a sec­ond scrape. The flame is like that of a prop­er lighter. Every day, the bone pro­duces suf­fi­cient fuel to burn for a half minute. While the heat of the flame may toast the host thumb some­what, lend­ing a sooty appear­ance, it is not inju­ri­ous.
53. Mnemon­ic bone. Semi-rare. A prox­i­mal pha­lange cased in snowflake obsid­i­an. As it set­tles into the hand, it caus­es ran­dom chills accom­pa­nied by sharp, dis­ori­en­tat­ing rec­ol­lec­tions of events from min­utes ago. When popped, it suf­fus­es its wear­er with a cold rush of neu­ro­trans­mit­ters and sor­cer­ous drugs that enhance cap­ture and stor­age of mem­o­ry, per­mit­ting per­fect, pho­to­graph­ic knowl­edge of all expe­ri­ences for but a few min­utes. Look­ing back on their record­ed mem­o­ries, the wear­er could recite turned pages of a book with­out hav­ing ini­tial­ly read them, or count the petals of a flower glimpsed for but a sec­ond. These mem­o­ries do not retain their per­fec­tion for­ev­er, how­ev­er, and using the knuck­le­bone is exhaust­ing, so tax­ing is its phar­ma­co­log­i­cal wear upon the mind.
54. Moru­la bone. Rare, but deemed worth­less by most. Its pur­pose is unknown to most magi­cians. Even those who do under­stand it do not wear it, for its util­i­ty belongs to a par­a­digm of sor­cery most­ly for­got­ten. A car­ti­lagi­nous gib­bet of a fin­ger­tip, hol­low, enclos­ing the dried wreck of an organ, pur­ple and shriv­eled. The thing requires three months of set­ting-in fol­low­ing implan­ta­tion. These months are uncom­fort­able, for the bone is abra­sive, caus­ing inflam­ma­tion and stiff­ness. Dur­ing this time, the moru­la bone reac­quires the soft sheath­ing for its car­ti­lage and rehy­drates the lit­tle pur­ple organ housed with­in. Once estab­lished, the thing steadi­ly gen­er­ates minute clus­ters of cells, resem­bling mul­ber­ries, enclosed in flu­id with­in a blis­ter-like enve­lope. They push to the skin and estab­lish them­selves in a row on the back of the hand. They are read­i­ly plucked, leav­ing a tiny pock­mark. For what pur­pose the ancient sor­cer­ers required these morsels, few can say, but some guess that they are a com­po­nent use­ful for some recipe pre­pared in a bio­log­i­cal caul­dron.
55. Needle­stick; AKA sting bone. An under­abun­dant vari­a­tion of the pock­etknife bone. This wide fin­ger­tip, backed by mot­tled brown alloy, sports a chan­nel on its under­side, as if meant for a miss­ing piece. Implant­ed, the fin­ger­tip swells hor­ri­bly while heal­ing. Prick­ling sen­sa­tions abound, as if a splin­ter were float­ing with­in the pad of the fin­ger. Once ful­ly healed, the wear­er notices new mus­cu­la­ture under the fin­ger­tip, hard and tense. Swift­ly tap­ping the fin­ger­nail against a sur­face, even a soft sur­face, caus­es a sting craft­ed from bio­log­i­cal steel to lance out from the fin­ger­tip, through the wear­er’s skin. The sting emits a sharp crack, a son­ic boom, so vicious is its speed. It is mere­ly two cen­time­ters long, but can pierce thick leather with ease. If worn adja­cent to a germ bone or ven­efi­cious bone, the sting deliv­ers a dose of the bac­te­ria or poi­son housed inside.
56. Nervure bone. Semi-rare. A medi­al pha­lange clad in gri­otte mar­ble. To the new wear­er, it is deeply uncom­fort­able, fos­ter­ing sen­sa­tions akin to glass beneath the skin of the hand and fore­arm. The pains last for weeks, dur­ing which the blood ves­sels of the hand swell and stand rigid with­in the flesh. In time, the swelling sub­sides, and the ves­sels become pli­ant again. They remain changed, how­ev­er. Quite vis­i­ble under the skin, the ves­sels of the altered hand appear par­tial­ly cor­ru­gat­ed, rein­forced. Arched, like the spi­dery rein­force­ments of a cathe­dral dome. They are hence­forth par­tial­ly cut­proof, pro­tect­ed as they are by new, car­ti­lagi­nous arch­es. For this, nervure bones are val­ued by the rare magi­cians who intend par­tic­i­pa­tion in close quar­ters com­bat.
57. Nutri­ment bone. Rare. Rumors speak of an Emper­oussin courtier who, dis­card­ed into the black­est dun­geon in all the Domin­ion, sur­vived and escaped only by this bone. It is like a hunk of dried sap. Slight­ly pli­ant. It is built as a metacarpal and remains sticky for a time while heal­ing, stiff and dis­con­cert­ing. It invokes a change in metab­o­lism in the wear­er, caus­ing them, after a fast of 48 hours, to dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduce their ener­gy require­ments. It slows both heart and breath to a stand­still, plung­ing them into a con­ser­va­to­ry tor­por indis­tin­guish­able from death. Tor­por, in which the body wrests all pos­si­ble vital­i­ty from its reserves, inter­spersed with gaps of lucid aware­ness. It is an ally against star­va­tion, equip­ping the wear­er with ages of pen­sive, preser­v­a­tive thought punc­tu­at­ed by oppor­tu­ni­ties for deci­sive action. The effect can last six months, so long as the wear­er has access to at least a lit­tle water.
58. Omen bone. Quite scarce. Craft­ed from crys­tal, this medi­al pha­lange con­tains a wilt­ed, dry sub­stance resem­bling dry leaves. Those aware of its pur­pose know its con­tents as alf­bone, a dead­ly dif­fi­cult thing to acquire. In the hand, it lies silent and unno­ticed unless crea­tures of the oth­er­world draw near, in which case it begins to twinge rapid­ly. It acts as a pre-admo­ni­tion against the Oth­er, a vig­i­lance his­tor­i­cal sor­cer­ers would deeply desire, fear­ful as they were of the encroach­ing sol­diers of fairy­land.
59. Oneir­ic bone. Extreme­ly rare. A wavy, salmon col­ored metacarpal of fos­silized brain tis­sue. While many bones entail them­selves in human sleep, the oneir­ic bone is per­haps the most potent. And the most vile. In the hand, it does noth­ing to the wear­er save invite sooth­ing dreams. Dreams so reg­u­lar, restora­tive, and plea­sur­able as to mea­sur­ably increase the wear­er’s wak­ing vital­i­ty and lifes­pan. To those sur­round­ing the wear­er, how­ev­er, it is a hor­ror: The oneir­ic bone acts upon the uncon­scious minds of humankind, sour­ing their dreams and rob­bing them of pro­duc­tive rest. Worse, pro­longed expo­sure to these dreams tempts the encroach of lurk­ing, preda­to­ry night­mares: Hor­rid, unknown crea­tures that dri­ve men to mad­ness. Notably, the bone caus­es no ill to rag­men or mice at all.
60. Oxide bone. Scarce. A light­weight dis­tal pha­lange, pos­si­bly alu­minum, with nar­row slots in its under­side. While heal­ing, the implant­ed fin­ger-pad devel­ops a stri­at­ed cal­lus align­ing with the slots. Pop­ping the joint, which is squashy and may be popped repeat­ed­ly, caus­es an oil to well from it. It beads on the fin­ger­tip, reluc­tant to break unless applied to an iron or steel sur­face, in which case it spreads, dis­trib­ut­ing into and and rapid­ly weak­en­ing the met­al. It pro­duces bit­ter vapors and great flakes of rust, rapid­ly con­vert­ing a small sec­tion of met­al into naught but brit­tle oxide. It is an ally against the tyran­ny of locks, restraints, or even iron hatch­es, if giv­en suf­fi­cient time and blood salts.
61. Pal­lia­tive bone. Rare. A red porce­lain thumb-tip. Fresh­ly abscised, it cre­ates numb­ness in the implant­ed dig­it which takes some months to fade. Accord­ing to recent unver­i­fi­able “stud­ies,” like­ly drawn from inter­ro­ga­tion of an incun­able by the Mont­coy Coterie, the pal­lia­tive bone is an old tool of the Idran Beau­ties, who used it to soothe their beast­man chat­tel-reavers. The touch of the bone is sooth­ing to non­sapi­ent, warm-blood­ed crea­tures, who are cowed, soothed by it, made prone to lat­er ser­vil­i­ty. The bone’s pow­ers, unknown in their mech­a­nism, would appear mere­ly tame. Tame, notwith­stand­ing their util­i­ty in mas­ter­ing all manor of awful chimerae.
62. Par­fum; AKA the redo­lent bone. An inter­me­di­ate pha­lange of pol­ished rose crys­tal. Inside lie minute com­plex­i­ties of organs in a won­drous array of col­ors and curlicue tex­tures. Implant­ed, the bone faint­ly alters the flesh of the fin­ger’s sec­ond knuck­le: Faint cracks, pain­less and moist, appear in the wrin­kles under­neath the fin­ger. When popped, the joint exudes a scent­ed oil that is both sophis­ti­cat­ed and orgu­lous. The stuff is pro­duced in quan­ti­ties suf­fi­cient to apply as per­fume through­out the day. It fea­tures accords of jas­mine, light musk, and a soft but pruri­ent ani­mal­ic tone that draws more than aver­age atten­tion to the wear­er. Oth­er par­fum bones exude dif­fer­ent accords, but they are rar­er and are often more disturbing—sometimes arousing—to mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties.
63. Phlo­gis­ton bone. Uncom­mon. An eggshell-green thumbtip with a hol­low in its sur­face. The nail of the implant­ed thumb becomes con­spic­u­ous­ly trans­par­ent, reveal­ing the hol­low, which con­tin­u­al­ly, grad­u­al­ly fills with gold­en goo. When squeezed par­tic­u­lar­ly hard, the thumbtip lets its dol­lop of goo bead from under the nail, where it may be eas­i­ly removed or fin­ger-paint­ed onto a sur­face. The stuff, despite its innocu­ous appear­ance, is potent­ly pyrotech­nic. Ignit­ed, it under­goes a ter­rif­ic exother­mic reac­tion, vapor­iz­ing near­by mate­ri­als, includ­ing iron, in a reti­na-sear­ing, ear-split­ting flash. The ther­mic effect is dis­crete, lim­it­ed to sur­faces direct­ly paint­ed with the goo. The goo, lim­it­ed by its pea-sized quan­ti­ty, can­not destroy much at a time, but it is a great ally in break­ing locks. The goo does not keep. It spoils rapid­ly out­side the bone and can­not be stock­piled.
64. Phy­lax­is bone. Com­mon. A flaw­less, smooth prox­i­mal pha­lange pro­duced dur­ing the Near-Anther Con­tin­u­ance. ¶ The phy­lax­is bone pro­vides immu­ni­ty to a tar­get infec­tion, an effect which must be pro­grammed into the bone’s immu­niz­ing organelles. The pro­gram­ming requires a prepara­to­ry process before implan­ta­tion. It requires the phy­lax­is bone be steeped in a slur­ry of the to-be wear­er’s blood com­bined with pul­ver­ized tis­sue from a per­son infect­ed with a tar­get ill­ness. It is a process that holds cer­tain risks, for even if the prospec­tive wear­er escapes infec­tion while har­vest­ing sam­ple tis­sue, they may expe­ri­ence a fiendish reac­tion from the bone itself fol­low­ing implan­ta­tion, a bod­i­ly response to the bone’s alien immune organelles, which may result in rapid rejec­tion. Despite this cost, the bone is a pow­er­ful one, capa­ble of inoc­u­lat­ing the wear­er against even plague and blight.
65. Pock­etknife. AKA cat’s claw. A gar­den-vari­ety bone. A fin­ger­tip, some­times a thumb-tip, craft­ed from pol­ished pet­ri­fied wood. There is a rec­tan­gu­lar hol­low in the very tip, with­in which lies a tiny, stout blade. Once implant­ed, the blade can be extend­ed by a flick of the wrist. Doing so does cause the blade to painful­ly erupt from the flesh of the fin­ger­tip, but this wound is a minor one. This grows to be a non­is­sue, with use, as the blade estab­lish­es a chan­nel in the flesh. This chan­nel also allows the blade to be oiled, which increas­es its reli­a­bil­i­ty and com­fort of wear. Two or more cat’s claws turn the hand into an ade­quate weapon.
66. Poten­tia­tor; AKA gal­van­ic bones. Semi-rare. A weighty inter­me­di­ate pha­lange, often uncom­fort­ably heavy. Some are etched in weird dialects of Ancient Nôr, lines describ­ing elec­tri­cal prop­er­ties and capac­i­ty. They are indeed elec­tri­cal in nature, capa­ble of grad­u­al­ly con­vert­ing the salts of the body into sub­stan­tial charge wait­ing to be put to use. Poten­tia­tor bones are of no use on their own, but ful­fill their name more than ade­quate­ly when used to empow­er oth­er, com­pli­men­ta­ry bones.
67. Pro­pa­gant bone. Unique. It lies some­where, in a jar of brine, still con­nect­ed to the decayed medi­al pha­lange of its pre­vi­ous wear­er. It is a rugose, flex­i­ble pink organ shaped to inhab­it the pinky-tip. Abscised, after an accel­er­at­ed heal­ing process, the nail of the implant­ed fin­ger ablates, leav­ing the end of the fin­ger entire­ly squashy. In the nail’s place, a clus­ter of swollen, ulcer­a­tive pores appear. From with­in, they bud small ten­drils of flesh. These even­tu­al­ly birth them­selves, like mag­gots, slid­ing wet­ly out of their pores and flee­ing the wear­er, seek­ing to wrig­gle into and plumb the earth. Most of the grubs per­ish short­ly after birth. The rest bur­row away, hope­ful­ly nev­er to be seen again.
68. Quick­sil­ver. Scarce. A pol­ished prox­i­mal pha­lange craft­ed from flow­ing cru­cible steel. A con­cave chan­nel lies in the bel­ly of the bone. When installed, the dig­it under­goes increased vas­cu­lar devel­op­ment. Var­i­form pat­terns of blue veins form just below the knuck­le. When popped, which is dif­fi­cult, as the knuck­le is stiff, the bone dumps a stu­pen­dous shot of adren­a­line, plus stranger, unique drugs, into the blood­stream, enhanc­ing strength, reflex­es, and speed. The effect lasts for but a few moments, but in that time, the user is capa­ble of furi­ous, agile phys­i­cal­i­ty far beyond their real means. Mem­o­ries of this time are stored in excru­ci­at­ing detail, as if the moment last­ed min­utes rather than sec­onds. The quick­sil­ver bone does not spare its wear­er: An unfit user may be left utter­ly wast­ed by their exer­tions, and even the strong will suf­fer strained mus­cles, trou­bled joints, and a rac­ing heart.
69. Raze bones. AKA magi­cian’s vengeance. An obscure, ruth­less vari­a­tion of the scut­tle bone. A nat­ur­al bone metacarpal set with red­dish, dry recep­tors. It has no func­tion while the magi­cian is alive. How­ev­er, if it detects ces­sa­tion of blood flow, the raze bone ini­ti­ates a cel­lu­lar wild­fire that det­o­nates the body’s remain­ing salts in a blind­ing instant, pro­duc­ing an expand­ing blast of ener­gy that con­sumes the body and immo­lates any­thing with­in five meters. This det­o­na­tion also occurs if the host hand is sev­ered. How­ev­er, its det­o­na­tion is great­ly reduced and con­sum­ing only the hand and all bones with­in.
70. Reboan­tic bone. Uncom­mon to rare. A medi­al pha­lange of light­weight ceram­ic cov­ered in del­i­cate, sil­very tain. The wear­er must take care with the implant­ed dig­it, as this bone, even more­so than oth­er already-frag­ile knuck­le­bones, is eas­i­ly shat­tered. The reboan­tic bone is a musi­cal arti­fact. When hyper­ex­tend­ed, the bone sum­mons a ghost­ly tone shim­mer­ing with vibra­to. Its pitch and tonal­i­ty may be mod­u­lat­ed, manip­u­lat­ed by sub­tly adjust­ing the posi­tion of the bone rel­a­tive to its start­ing posi­tion. With a great deal of dab­bling, a musi­cal­ly-inclined wear­er may pro­duce from the bone ephemer­al music, per­form­ing with a series of ges­tures not unlike a con­duc­tor address­ing some invis­i­ble choir. Mul­ti­ple reboan­tic bones may be worn and played togeth­er, increas­ing the poten­tial com­plex­i­ty of the wear­er’ per­for­mance.
71. The bones of redoubt. Epic, but not unique. A thumb metacarpal and prox­i­mal pha­lange of del­i­cate open­work enam­el sheath­ing tor­tu­ous duochrome mar­row. When acti­vat­ed, a motion requir­ing prac­ticed hyper­mo­bil­i­ty, the bones cause dust to spring into the air, and elic­it auras and after­im­ages in the eyes of those near­by. These benign effects betray a pow­er­ful, invis­i­ble local­i­ty emit­ted by the bones: a two-meter sphere cen­tered on the thumb. Fer­ro­mag­net­ic objects enter­ing the local­i­ty are redi­rect­ed with incred­i­ble vio­lence, like a ric­o­chet. Small pro­jec­tiles leav­ing the local­i­ty do so white-hot and smok­ing, such is the force of their ejec­tion. Larg­er objects, even steel-plat­ed men-at-arms, are dis­card­ed with casu­al force. In exchange for their defen­sive pow­ers, the bones of redoubt make awful demands of the wear­er’s blood salts: They may drink up the salt of a magi­cian’s lifeblood after but a few deflec­tions.
72. Reful­gent bone; AKA the red lantern. Com­mon, but unfash­ion­able. A vit­re­ous sil­i­ca fin­ger­tip, slight­ly wider than nor­mal. Inside is sus­pend­ed a turbinate sil­ver fil­a­ment. After accli­ma­tiz­ing for some days, the bone induces a change in the fin­ger­tip’s flesh, turn­ing it semi­translu­cent. The bone becomes par­tial­ly vis­i­ble, flanked by arter­ies and nest­ed in cap­il­lar­ies. If hyper­ex­tend­ed with some force, the reful­gent bone caus­es the fin­ger­tip to illu­mi­nate vivid­ly from with­in, like a cher­ry coal. It is slight­ly brighter than a can­dle flame, and projects lit­tle heat. As the light is red, it pre­serves the wear­er’s night vision some­what if used in dark­ness.
73. Relict bone. Quite scarce. While most knuck­le­bones are ancient, this shrunk­en, taupe metacarpal is clear­ly old­er than all the rest. It is traced with sunken whorls. Relict bones are nev­er worn, for their pres­ence in the hand is inex­orably fatal. They draw a fine, con­stant stream of rare but essen­tial salts from the blood, induc­ing a grim pal­sy in the wear­er that gives way to seizures, and, over a peri­od of weeks, leads into total catalep­sy. This demise can be delayed by con­sum­ing addi­tion­al rare salts, and it can be avoid­ed only by the bone’s exci­sion from the hand. Most prac­ti­tion­ers eschew relict bones, declar­ing them mal­func­tion­ing, ancient odd­i­ties; their true use lost to time. Oth­ers, deemed mad chi­rol­o­gists, ‡ most­ly, hypoth­e­cate they are a path­way to tan­ta­liz­ing pow­ers unknown since the time of the Nôr, pow­ers that may be unlocked only by feed­ing a relict bone aston­ish­ing quan­ti­ties of rare salts. None have sur­vived an attempt to test this hypoth­e­sis.
74. The Renascent Hand. Hyper-rare. Deeply desir­able. Despite its name, the Renascent Hand com­pris­es a set of only two bones. They are carpals, specif­i­cal­ly the scaphoid and lunate bone, bones deeply dif­fi­cult to abscise with­out crip­pling the wrist. Only a tru­ly skilled sur­geon equipped with the spe­cial­ty instru­ments of the digi­rati could ever prop­er­ly implant the pair. Each bone is a smooth, dark amber struck through with blood­red micro­tubules and capped with red gold. Once implant­ed, it acti­vates only if the host hand is dam­aged, at which point it induces regen­er­a­tion far beyond the body’s nat­ur­al abil­i­ty: Abscis­sions close and set in faster. Fin­gers crip­pled by vio­lence or botched implan­ta­tions right them­selves. Even miss­ing dig­its are slow­ly reac­quired by the Renascent Hand. The Hand is not with­out flaws, how­ev­er: It will glad­ly enecate and dis­card old or dam­aged tis­sue, which falls from the body, necrot­ic and foul, tak­ing with it any implant­ed knuck­le­bones that may be attached, requir­ing they be reim­plant­ed. Addi­tion­al­ly, any tis­sue the Renascent Hand regen­er­ates is sub­tly dif­fer­ent than the body’s native flesh, soft­er and more tawny, and will rot if the Hand itself is dam­aged or removed. Final­ly, the Hand can­not be worn with inter­cala­tive, ama­ran­thine, or relict bones, lest it bloom with vile, mutant malig­nan­cy.
75. Reser­voir. AKA salt­cel­lar bone. Wide­ly used. Unlike most bones, which have not been man­u­fac­tured for cen­turies, salt­cel­lar bones are still man­u­fac­tured by clois­tered Coastal prac­ti­tion­ers. They are crys­tal, hol­low prox­i­mal pha­langes. Each has a sym­bol scratched in its cen­ter, denot­ing a clas­si­fi­ca­tion of blood salt. Imme­di­ate­ly once installed, they fill with blood plas­ma and begin stock­pil­ing their favored salt in a con­cen­trat­ed solu­tion. A full salt­cel­lar bone safe­ly increas­es the vol­ume of one salt in a magi­cian’s blood­stream by 30%. If a salt­cel­lar bone is des­ig­nat­ed to hold a tox­ic salt, it does not harm the user so long as it is con­tained in the bone.
76. Sac­cha­rine bone; AKA the milk bone. Uncom­mon. A slight­ly opaque fin­ger­tip, stri­at­ed like a fan­cy rock can­dy. A gooey yel­low organ shows with­in, pre­served. The bone does noth­ing unless the implant­ed fin­ger­tip is sucked at like a nip­ple. In this case, it exudes, with a deep sore­ness, a sweet nec­tar from the pores of the fin­ger­tip. Pre­sum­ably, it is meant for the feed­ing of pix­ies and oth­er pets. It is evi­dence of the idle plea­sures of antique sor­cer­ers, who are known to have kept lit­tle mutant pets and large, trou­ble­some vari­etals of pix­ie.
77. Saltern bone. Uncom­mon. A hol­low thumb metacarpal of cut crys­tal, rem­i­nis­cent of an over­wrought spir­its glass. Sim­i­lar to the reser­voir bone, this bone acts as a store­house for salts. Unlike its more com­mon coun­ter­part, the saltern bone holds only rare salts. A respectable stock, rep­re­sent­ing the body’s rarest com­pounds, all of which are tox­ic at any con­cen­tra­tion above base­line. It keeps them iso­lat­ed from the gen­er­al body of blood, releas­ing them only when the bone is popped. This action should only be under­tak­en with an intend­ed out­let for the salts, for the saltern bone’s stocks are more than enough to poi­son an unwise wear­er.
78. Sana­tive bone. Uncom­mon. A fin­ger­tip of gore-pur­ple por­phyry. The implant­ed joint must be kept entire­ly straight as it heals, lest it form a stiff, painful thatch of scar tis­sue. Post recov­ery, the sana­tive bone may be popped side­ways, caus­ing yel­low­ish dew to gath­er between the whorls of the fin­ger-pad. This dew is potent­ly bioac­tive. Upon con­tact with wet, exposed flesh, like an open wound, it stim­u­lates rapid, ago­niz­ing for­ma­tion of scar tis­sue. Draw­ing the acti­vat­ed fin­ger­tip through a gash will cause it to close in a minute or less, sutured by a cob­web of squirm­ing scar fibers. Clo­sure is accom­pa­nied by a dread­ful, suck­ing pain, as if the scar fibers were being drawn from deep with­in the flesh. Wounds closed this way are per­ma­nent­ly twist­ed and knot­ty, and may remain aching­ly painful. Addi­tion­al­ly, clo­sure may incur a loss of mobil­i­ty should its course inter­sect mus­cle and con­nec­tive tis­sue. As such, heal­ing via the sana­tive bone is best kept as a tool of last resort.
79. Sar­cot­ic; AKA the bone of mend­ing. Com­mon enough. This black-grey osmi­um alloy metacarpal is smooth­ly inlaid with sim­ple images of med­i­c­i­nal plants. It must be kept in a pint of the poten­tial wear­er’s blood, changed dai­ly, for a week before implan­ta­tion. When ready, tiny, mouth­like lacu­nae open down its length, welling with blood. The implant­ed bone is a use­ful one, for it speeds the wear­er’s nat­ur­al rate of regen­er­a­tion. Often, it is the first knuck­le­bone obtained and worn by novice magi­cians, as it speeds recov­ery times for lat­er abscis­sions. The bone of mend­ing ceas­es func­tion and aches if not pro­vid­ed ample salts, and it is apt to ache fero­cious­ly when the body is heal­ing. The wear­er must nour­ish them­selves rich­ly with fish, fruit, and pick­led foods to sat­is­fy it.
80. Savour bone. Rare. A dis­tal pha­lange of brown jasper dot­ted with chan­nels and holes, as if for blood ves­sels. New­ly implant­ed, it gath­ers an unnerv­ing sen­sa­tion in the fin­ger­tip. A gus­ta­to­ry per­cep­tion, as if the dig­it had become a tiny tongue bathed in some subacid, metal­lic broth. In fact, the dig­it does devel­op a mild bumpy tex­ture not unlike taste­buds. The metal­lic fla­vor, which the wear­er will come to real­ize is the tang of their own blood, fades as the bones sets in and heals. Even­tu­al­ly, the dig­it reli­ably pro­vides an altered sense of taste. Not the tongue’s sense, but some­thing sim­pler: A cat­e­gor­i­cal sense of the major blood salts in foods. With prac­tice and ref­er­ence, the wear­er can plunge their fin­gers into a fruit or a cut of meat and glean, by its fla­vors, the rudi­men­ta­ry make­up of its nutri­tious salts.
81. Scream­er bone. Scarce. As a com­bat bone, it is con­sid­ered more gra­cious than the bone of woe, though it may still rup­ture organs, name­ly eardrums. An alloy metacarpal pat­terned with shal­low rills, with a hol­low bel­ly filled with the rem­nants of some­thing like cop­per leaves, crum­pled and bro­ken. Fol­low­ing abscis­sion, the ranks of leaves, and their accom­pa­ny­ing gel-tis­sue cas­ing, are regen­er­at­ed, entail­ing a tax­ing recov­ery. When acti­vat­ed, a ges­ture requir­ing hyper­ex­ten­sion of the fin­gers, the bone leaps to life, vibrat­ing with such inten­si­ty as to shake the flesh of the hand, pro­ject­ing from the palm an oppres­sive beam of sound. It is a con­tin­u­ous, mod­u­lat­ing scream, alter­nat­ing in fre­quen­cy between pierc­ing highs, caus­ing split­ting, deaf­en­ing pain, and inaudi­ble lows that res­onate with the body itself, dis­rupt­ing bal­ance and invok­ing nau­sea and explo­sive sen­sa­tions with­in the skull. A sin­gle shriek­ing bone has lim­it­ed range and inten­si­ty. Worn in dupli­cate or trip­li­cate, how­ev­er, the bone gen­er­ates crisp, imbri­cat­ed metal­lic struc­tures with­in the palm that mas­sive­ly enhance range and beam focus. When worn with dupli­cates and with focus bones, and by uti­liz­ing focus­ing ges­tures shared by bone of woe, the beam may be nar­rowed to a rel­a­tive­ly accu­rate 5 degree cone.
82. Scut­tle. Increas­ing­ly rare. They are sim­ple, nat­ur­al human metacarpals with con­spic­u­ous­ly large pores. A scut­tle bone has no every­day util­i­ty while implant­ed. How­ev­er, if the bone fails to receive fresh blood cir­cu­la­tion, it acti­vates, incin­er­at­ing itself and the cir­cum­am­bi­ent hand in an instant, pre­sum­ably as a fail­safe against theft by ampu­ta­tion. Scut­tle bones are con­sid­ered a tes­ta­ment to magi­cians’ vicious­ly com­pet­i­tive nature.
83. Scy­tale bone. Scarce. A fin­ger­tip of pol­ished pyrite. It is use­ful only to read­ers of ancient secret-writ­ing, a sys­tem of hid­den script used pro­lif­i­cal­ly by the dead empire of Aga­dion, and spo­rad­i­cal­ly by imi­ta­tors there­after. The secret-writ­ers of Aga­dion con­coct­ed a tac­tile writ­ing sys­tem com­posed of tiny bars. Minis­cule bars, read­able under a sin­gle fin­ger­tip. This, they pro­grammed into reac­tive alloy bands that would raise their script only under the touch of a scy­tale bone. They employed this alloy pro­lif­i­cal­ly, for it was then cheap to pro­duce, dec­o­rat­ing count­less arti­facts and struc­tures with hid­den writ­ing. In mod­ern days, read­ers and scribes of Agadese secret-writ­ing are scarce, and the remain­ing scy­tale bones are scarcer still. As such, the secrets of old Aga­dion lan­guish, unread for mil­len­nia, wait­ing for a let­tered hand.
84. Seal­bone. Uncom­mon. A medi­al pha­lange of lapis lazuli shot with dry, rusty veins of dried gore. Once implant­ed, the wear­er’s blood dark­ens with­in a mat­ter of days, hyper­ox­y­genat­ed. The effect of this change is unno­tice­able until the wear­er holds their breath, for the seal­bone per­mits them to avoid asphyx­ia for many min­utes at a time. If sub­merged, tiny pores open along­side the fin­ger and begin bub­bling, spew­ing car­bon diox­ide. This effect is ben­e­fi­cial, as it enables long dives with­out the burn­ing of hun­gry lungs, but it is also dan­ger­ous, as the wear­er is unaware of dead­ly hypox­ia up until the moment it snuffs them out.
85. Sem­a­phore bone. Avail­able enough; how­ev­er, a sin­gle unit is rather use­less. A tin fin­ger­tip set with con­cen­tric cir­cles at its tip. While they are nowa­days named for the flag-based sys­tem of com­mu­ni­ca­tion used by sail­ing ships, sem­a­phore bones are more accu­rate­ly likened to tele­type tow­ers. They enable trans­mis­sion of cod­ed infor­ma­tion over dis­tance. Infor­ma­tion, played out via a series of taps, in a code known as “magi­cian’s ordi­nary,” trans­mit­ted to linked bones via queer radi­a­tion, and rep­re­sent­ed by the receiv­ing bone as a series of clicks and twinges cor­re­spond­ing to the sender’s taps. Not just any sem­a­phore bone may send and receive, how­ev­er: Ahead of implan­ta­tion, they must be “aligned” by heat-cur­ing all the bones involved in a cru­cible of hot mer­cury. After­wards, any code tapped out by one will be felt by all the oth­ers, and vice ver­sa. Mod­ern magi­cians use these bones pro­lif­i­cal­ly, and many have deter­mined an order of eti­quette to deter­mine who is cur­rent­ly speak­ing and when the next wear­er may speak.
86. Signet. Mun­dane. A wide thumb-tip cov­ered in con­vo­lu­tions. It alters the skin of the thumb-pad, trans­form­ing the stan­dard whorls and val­leys of the fin­ger­print into raised, cal­lus-like ridges two mil­lime­ters high. They take the shape of a crest, or sig­il, and may be used like a signet ring to press seal­ing wax. A new sig­il may be pro­grammed into the bone by paint­ing it with lead oxide paste applied over a del­i­cate sten­cil and let­ting it rest for a week before implan­ta­tion.
87. Soothe bone. Rare, avoid­ed by those who know it, though some do seek to wear it explic­it­ly for its nature. It is a semi­trans­par­ent, rich caramel prox­i­mal pha­lange. A vas­cu­lar­ized struc­ture of ruby trac­eries glit­ters with­in. Like the ano­dyne bone, the implant­ed soothe bone releas­es a warm, heady nar­cot­ic into the blood­stream when popped. It, how­ev­er, is far more potent, plung­ing the wear­er into a beatif­ic stu­por with the ini­tial pop. It wash­es over the limbs and mind, deeply com­fort­ing, and sum­mons a hint of caramel in the mouth. Sub­se­quent pops are equal­ly strong, and will eas­i­ly adhere the wear­er to a lan­guorous depen­dence near-impos­si­ble to deny. Per­ni­cious, the soothe bone grad­u­al­ly increas­es the mag­ni­tude of its nar­cot­ic dose, account­ing for tol­er­ance, draw­ing ever more vital salt from the blood. If not sev­ered, it will even­tu­al­ly destroy the wear­er, either by a fatal dose of its hypop­ne­ic prod­uct or by rob­bing them of their cells’ very vital­i­ty.
88. Spin­neret bone; AKA the magi­cian’s rope. Rare. Often worn under a gloved hand, giv­en its sub­tle but notice­able appear­ance. A thumb tib formed from lay­ered iron scutes, like a pine cone. The thing anchors itself rig­or­ous­ly in the adjoin­ing joint with rein­forc­ing lig­a­ments not present in a nat­ur­al thumb. It also alters the thumb­nail, caus­ing the nat­ur­al nail to fall away, replac­ing it with a white, enam­el-like coun­ter­part after a peri­od of some weeks after abscis­sion. Once healed, the nail may be peeled away and removed, attached by a length of bio­log­i­cal cord. Silky, durable gos­samer. With gen­tle ten­sion, more can be with­drawn from the thumb, induc­ing an uncom­fort­able sen­sa­tion— a rush of blood to the dig­it and a deep, suck­ing unease, like a nee­dle with­drawn from bone— as the spin­neret pro­duces more cord. A suf­fi­cient length of cord, held tight­ly using the false thumb­nail and wrapped around the source thumb as an anchor, cre­ates a very ser­vice­able gar­rote. Once uti­lized, the cord is eas­i­ly sev­ered at the tip of the thumb with flame or with the wear­er’s teeth. A new thumb­nail grows with­in a week.
89. Tal­is­man bone. Rare. A frost­ed, green­ish glass prox­i­mal pha­lange. If held to a light, a wrin­kled, plum-col­ored organ can be seen inside. With­in the hand, it pro­tects against cursed auras. Not auras of folk­loric evil, despite the its super­sti­tious name, but against the actu­al, cor­rupt­ing aura known as “hex.” Hex is a dead­ly pres­ence, sup­pos­ed­ly a vari­ety of curse placed to deter loot­ers, com­mon to the ruins and leav­ings of bygone sor­cery. It read­i­ly inhab­its liv­ing bod­ies, mutat­ing them, sap­ping vital­i­ty and invit­ing ear­ly death. It is near-impos­si­ble to uproot once lodged with­in the flesh, mak­ing pre­ven­ta­tives such as this a dear neces­si­ty. Indeed, the bone is an effec­tive pre­ven­ta­tive: The wear­er may tra­verse even the most cursed halls of old sor­cery, accu­mu­lat­ing no cling­ing evil at all.
90. Teles­thet­ic bone. Very rare. A crys­tal medi­al pha­lange of a peri­win­kle hue. Inside shift red grains, flow­ing as if drawn about by mag­net­ism. With­in the hand, the teles­thet­ic bone begets a grow­ing, unnerv­ing sen­sa­tion. A roam­ing pres­sure, as if ephemer­al crea­tures were mov­ing, brush­ing close to the hand, that occurs only when peo­ple are near­by. Specif­i­cal­ly, human peo­ple; mice, rag­men, and oth­er crea­tures do not affect it. In time, the wear­er real­izes the extent of their new, super­nat­ur­al sense: It is a detailed, con­tin­u­al aware­ness of humankind, of their prox­im­i­ty and move­ment. With prac­tice and obser­va­tion, the sense may be honed to detect near­by humans even through thick walls. Even­tu­al­ly, the wear­er adapts to the sense, becom­ing unnerved by the absence of shift­ing human lives if sep­a­rat­ed from pop­u­la­tions for too long.
91. The­ri­ac bone. Rare. Wide­ly desired. A moss green inter­me­di­ate pha­lange. It must be rehy­drat­ed in a solute bath of select inor­gan­ic salts before abscis­sion. When ready, the bone devel­ops an algae-like slime, and pores open at its joint caps, ready to inter­face with cir­cu­la­tion. The bone’s pur­pose is pow­er­ful­ly anti­tox­ic, grant­i­ng wear­er either immu­ni­ty or strong resis­tance to tox­ins that would end most lives deci­sive­ly. Rumors sug­gest that it hosts a phar­ma­copeia of tox­ins, to which it grad­u­al­ly sub­jects the body, immu­niz­ing it. Oth­ers pro­pose that it rapid­ly fil­ters tox­ins from the blood, encap­su­lat­ing them in some form of gel before send­ing them to be fil­tered by the kid­neys. What­ev­er its mech­a­nism, the the­ri­ac bone is a potent uni­ver­sal anti­dote, grant­i­ng the wear­er a fight­ing chance against oth­er­wise fatal sub­stances. As a side effect, it mas­sive­ly increas­es the wear­er’s tol­er­ance to com­mon drugs, most notably alco­hol.
92. Thun­der­crack bone. Uncom­mon. A porce­lain bone, made for the inter­me­di­ate pha­lange of the pinky. Inlaid with cop­per con­tacts on the joint. When the joint is popped, it cre­ates a son­ic boom akin to that of a light­ning strike. An effec­tive, deaf­en­ing weapon, but a haz­ardous one. Thun­der­crack bones require small quan­ti­ties of phos­phate salts in the host blood­stream in order to pop, and stiff­en dis­pleas­ing if not popped in some time.
93. Thun­der­flash. Uncom­mon. A prox­i­mal pinky pha­lange of liv­er-dark agate. Its for­ward joint is hol­low and clad in cop­per. Spiny, argent struc­tures pro­trude with­in. The implant­ed bone caus­es a strange split in the flesh of the knuck­le. It gapes wet­ly when curled, reveal­ing curls of del­i­cate metal­lic ele­ments with­in the joint. If popped, a motion best per­formed by hook­ing the pinky inward with the thumb, the split widens and dis­gorges a spray of tiny, insub­stan­tial fil­a­ments that con­fla­grate in a flash so bright as to briefly blind even periph­er­al onlook­ers. If worn adja­cent to a thun­der­crack bone, the thun­der­flash bone may be trig­gered con­cur­rent­ly, cre­at­ing a pow­er­ful, dis­ori­ent­ing audio­vi­su­al stun.
94. Vac­u­ous bone. Leg­endary. Said to be an unholy rel­ic; the sup­posed fin­ger­bone of a de-can­on­ized Saint, name now for­got­ten, who lived when Aveth was still imag­ined as a hoplite with a skull helm and blaz­ing halo. ‡‡ It appears to be a nat­ur­al inter­me­di­ate pha­lange, unblack­ened by plague, carved with ancient Umainic sym­bols pro­claim­ing woe upon the faith­ful. In the hand, it swells, con­struct­ing a jack­et of sup­ple­men­tal ner­vous tis­sue under a stiff per­ineuri­um. The bone’s wear­er will, so long as the bone remains in-hand, be passed over by the eye of Aveth, invis­i­ble and unvis­it­ed in dreams. Those around them, like­wise, are invis­i­ble to the noc­tur­nal aware­ness of the Lord. They will find no divine com­fort or suc­cor grant­ed dur­ing prayer or hard­ship, as they are divorced from Her pres­ence. The bone affects a sig­nif­i­cant dis­tance, a mile or so, capa­ble of sep­a­rat­ing hun­dreds or thou­sands from the holy aus­pice, replac­ing Her com­fort­ing dream pres­ence with only dis­qui­et sleep.
95. Ven­efi­cious bone. Few exist. A prox­i­mal pha­lange of the thumb. It is a glassy, opales­cent gar­net bone, with a sock­et in the cen­ter, emp­ty and crust­ed by some dimin­ished bio­log­i­cal con­tents. Some days after heal­ing, the abscised bone begins an insid­i­ous alter­ation of the wear­er’s blood serum. While this alter­ation affects the wear­er not at all, it is quite destruc­tive to any crea­ture that con­tacts or ingests the stuff, for the ven­efi­cious bone makes the wear­er’s blood a dead­ly poi­son. It is a vile coag­u­lo­path­ic agent, derang­ing the hemo­sta­sis of the tar­get and draw­ing forth their own blood in spurts and rivulets from any tis­sue it touch­es, inter­nal or exter­nal. It is dead­ly to blood­suck­ers, and deeply dan­ger­ous to any near­by com­bat­ants who may draw the wear­er’s blood.
96. Ver­vain bone. Extreme­ly rare. A prox­i­mal pha­lange of red chal­cedony carved with tiny, gap­ing faces. After its instal­la­tion, the wear­er dis­cov­ers numer­ous new, cher­ry freck­les on their body. Most magi­cians would kill for this bone, § for it is among the most pow­er­ful of all: It grants immu­ni­ty to dae­monism, to the assump­tion of the wear­er’s flesh by dae­mons; by the viral, out­world life­forms sum­moned, con­tained, and wrung for knowl­edge by magi­cians in the for­bid­den art known as xeno­man­tia. Dae­mons are siphoned into ten­u­ous con­tain­ment with­in res­o­nance spheres, where they hang, con­tained by bru­tal forces, inhab­it­ing chunks of meat. They are so con­tained, for free, they are bio­log­i­cal wild­fire, assum­ing the cells of liv­ing crea­tures with no abide for immu­ni­ty or nat­ur­al con­straints, rapid­ly build­ing in the human Coast some sem­blance of the unrec­og­niz­able, plas­mic flesh-hell from which they hail. These life­forms con­stant­ly seek escape. And, deeply intel­li­gent as they are, they some­times suc­ceed. Xeno­man­tia rep­re­sents among the most advanced sor­ceries still known, and the risks entailed in its prac­tice are equaled only by the knowl­edge gained.
97. Vesi­cant; AKA the hor­net bone. Scarce, excep­tion­al. A yolk-yel­low inter­me­di­ate pha­lange, with­ered and sere. Though shrunk­en and thin, it expands some­what after implan­ta­tion as it rebuilds its lost organelles, lend­ing the implant­ed fin­ger a meaty, soft feel­ing. No mat­ter how often it is washed, the fin­ger will main­tain a waxy, dis­col­ored sheen. Touch­ing anoth­er crea­ture’s skin with the fin­ger will cause them instant, sear­ing pain, and leave behind a patch of wheals that rapid­ly blis­ter into a pro­found­ly painful burn that will weep and threat­en infec­tion in com­ing days. Addi­tion­al vesi­cant bones may deliv­er more ven­om, cre­at­ing an even more potent, sting­ing touch. The wear­er is immune to their own ven­om, as are any oth­er crea­tures who wear vesi­cant bones.
98. Ves­per­tine. Uncom­mon. A jade medi­al pha­lange, green as wheat­grass. Fresh­ly abscised, it caus­es chaot­ic sleep for some nights, forc­ing the wear­er abrupt­ly awake at unex­pect­ed hours. Healed, it may be used to deliv­er a sort of wake-up call: The implant­ed fin­ger may be twist­ed at any giv­en hour, a ges­ture which caus­es the ves­per­tine bone to creak and flush with cold. Doing so assigns that hour as the time to next wake, and aligns the wear­er’s sleep pat­terns to respect it. Indeed, 24 hours lat­er, the bone will flood the wear­er with wake­ful­ness at that pre­cise time, rous­ing them rest­ed and aware with­out fail. It may be used to man­age sleep with great reg­u­lar­i­ty.
99. Vimi­neous bone. A gross rar­i­ty. Few still exist, they are so frag­ile. The vimi­neous bone is a bun­dle of small, dry, fine­ly seg­ment­ed bone strands lashed togeth­er by sil­ver bands carved with organ­ic con­vo­lu­tions. Once cut into the fin­ger, its heal­ing process is defined by vast and pecu­liar pain, rife with sen­sa­tions of sharp move­ment with­in the tumid fin­ger, which leaks from under its nail. Final­ly, once the bone ceas­es its extend­ed recov­ery, the wear­er dis­cov­ers its util­i­ty: Under the loos­ened, moist nail, there dwell minute ten­drils. Neo-extrem­i­ties. They may be extend­ed and fine­ly con­trolled at will, con­vert­ing the fin­ger­tip into a kind of vul­gar hand all its own. Each is fine­ly boned, like the tail of a shrew, and tipped in a sharp met­al claw. The ten­drils are a fine ally in minute tasks, such as the abscis­sion of future knuck­le bones. The ten­drils heal, if dam­aged, but can­not be replaced, if sev­ered.
100. Woe; AKA stoke bones or magician’s fire. Slight­ly scarcer than uncom­mon. Sought after for their vio­lence. A cop­per metacarpal, thick­er than is nat­ur­al, with bot­tle-green glass joint-ends. Coiled gold rests neath the glass, and a long, con­cave focus­ing-plate lies along the bone’s under­side. Also known as “stoke bones” or “magi­cian’s fire,” bones of woe are per­haps a magi­cian’s most rec­og­niz­able and noto­ri­ous­ly awful weapon. When acti­vat­ed, a queer ges­ture which requires lock­ing the involved joints, the bone begins to burst direct­ed, invis­i­ble radi­a­tion with every heart­beat, click­ing capac­i­tive­ly, painful­ly loud. This radi­a­tion quick­ly boils water and heats met­al. The effect of a sin­gle bone of woe is dif­fuse and inef­fec­tu­al at range, but scales with addi­tion­al, adja­cent bones, which serve to focus and inten­si­fy the bursts. Plac­ing one’s palms side by side fur­ther focus­es the effect, with prac­tice. A sin­gle bone at touch or close range caus­es sen­sa­tions of dread­ful burn­ing. Two may boil flesh at two meters, giv­en time. Three or four makes a weapon of rare hor­ror indeed. Cut­ters rarely earn more than one full hand. Woe bones’ oper­a­tive organelle will only func­tion with an appro­pri­ate mea­sure of phos­phate salts in the blood­stream, and will greed­i­ly con­sume them. Full rules are in the playtest.

Notes

Edit: since post­ing this, I have been asked: “cool, but I still don’t get what these are.”

My answer is: In RPG terms, knuck­le­bones are like car­ry­ing a set of wands, each of which allows you to cast a spell. Except they’re not wands at all, but lit­tle mag­ic bones, and you keep them sur­gi­cal­ly implant­ed in your hand.

d100 mag­ic knuck­le­bones. Eas­i­er said than writ­ten. This one rather got away from me.

Writ­ten on an SP-111 under the influ­ence of a lot of post rock. ~13,000 words, 53 writ­ing ses­sions. I will still be tweak­ing it for a while.

In tra­di­tion­al D&D terms, this turned out to be the spell list for my game, albeit with­out rules. I do have rules for some knuck­le­bones, but they are for the Incunab­u­li sys­tem playtest (which you are wel­come to play, but won’t pro­vide rules that fit either 5E or a deli­cious retro­clone.) I will write them large­ly as they are need­ed for use in my own game.

Upcom­ing entries to the Incunab­u­li project will include: Idra, and the Beau­ties there­of; xeno­man­tia, and the dae­mons entailed there­in; and hex, and what begets it.

Peo­ple have DMed me about sup­port­ing the site. You are very kind. Soon, since we are near­ing the end of an epic in my own cam­paign, I will edit and release my own cam­paign notes doc­u­ment (it is 45,000 words, at the moment, and con­tains a lot of ideas and sce­nar­ios from the coast) for a small fee, prob­a­bly on Pay­hip or some­thing, if you want to sup­port the project. I’ll release the edit­ed Incunab­u­li world map as well (in typ­i­cal super-high res­o­lu­tion.)

If you have not read any­thing on this site before, check out What is this Place?

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Thank you for read­ing.