A Dissertation on Alchemy

Oil of Thunderous Detonation: This fine, honey-coloured liquid is usually stored in very stout, very thick, glass phials, which are usually fused shut. The oil tends to spontaneously combust when brought into contact with air, but when introduced to air and heat simultaneously, it doesn't just burn - it explodes. Oil of Thunderous Detonation, when broken into a fire or high-temperature situation explodes in a 20-foot spread of bright orange fire, dealing 10d6 fire damage, with a reflex save for half damage (DC 20). However, the fire is accompanied by a booming clap of noise, dealing 10d6 sonic damage in the same area, with a fortitude save for half damage (DC 20).

Oil of Thunderous Detonation is sensitive to changes in temperature, and on any day with a temperature of 30 degrees Celsius or more, there is a 5% chance it explodes spontaneously at some random time.

Caster Level: 13th; Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Brew Potion, fireball, crafter must have the Energy Admixture (Sonic) feat. Market Price: 9,100 gp; Weight: 0 lb.

Morpheus' Swords: These phials of sick, green poisonous-looking liquid are more akin to acid than they are to poison. Made of a powerful base alkaline, Morpheus' Swords smell faintly of rosewater and are kept in tightly-sealed flasks of acid, stoppered with wax. When used as grenadelike weapons with a range increment of 30 feet, Morpheus' Swords explode in a small shower of gluggy liquid. This spray of base fluids deals 20d6 acid damage (Fortitude Save half, DC 20), and spreads a thick contact poison into the target's veins, through the skin. The Poison's primary and secondary damage is the same - 1d10 Constitution damage (Fortitude negates, DC 19).

Caster Level: 13th; Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Brew Potion, Melf's Acid Arrow, Poison. Market Price: 16,900 gp; Weight: 0 lb.

Skinslivers: These small tubes of powder are not even made of glass - instead, they're wrapped in fine paper cigarettes, and the end is ripped off before the mixture is expelled from the tube as a cone. The mixture is composed partly of fine-ground pepper powder and a strained mixture of nettle leaves and poison ivy, and small, fine, slivers of tendriculous fibers. The fluffy, free-floating slivers are pretty much impossible to avoid, but only deal 1d4 damage. However, the powder, coupled with the stinging pain of the slivers, forces a fortitude saving throw (DC 11) or the target is overwhelmed with pain (treat as dazed).

Caster Level: 3rd. Prerequisites: Brew Potion, Craft Wondrous Item, Daze, Prestidigitation. Market Price: 200 gp; Weight: - lb.

Foglobes: These small, tightly bound paper globes hold a tightly compressed alchemical compound composed primarily of condensed milk and some obscure stomach acid of the psionic vermin Puppeteers. The are tightly wrapped and smoothed over with paste. This paste, however, is chalky and tends to break up on impact - and the nature of the compound is such that sudden exposure to air prompts a sharp explosion.

When a foglobe is tossed against a hard surface as a grenadelike weapon, it immediately bursts into a large cloud of fog. The mist, however, is filled with stinging particles that crackle and spark when exposed to friction - friction that can be as subtle as the movement of a body through air. Any moving creatures within the fog are highlighted by sparkling crackles of light. Finally, just to make an escape easier, the particles, when they settle upon a surface, liquefy swiftly, and become a thick patina of magical grease, as the spell. The fog and the grease are both highly transitive, however, and dissipate into nothingness in a mere three rounds.

Caster Level: 3rd. Prerequisites: Brew Potion, Craft Wondrous Item, Glitterdust, Grease. Market Price: 800 gp; Weight: - lb.

Downfluff: This fine, chalky powder is typically contained in solid, tightly wound bags tightly bound. The string is usually dipped in parraffin, and ends in a solid ring. If the ring is pulled sharply, the string starts to burn very quickly, and the wielder must throw it in the same action or risk being doused in the powder himself. A downfluff bag has a range increment of 30 feet.

The bags explode, but not too violently - about as impressively as a flour bomb. The problem is, instead, the 10-foot burst of white dust that then coats everything. The dust completely negates all magic in its area. Airborne creatures can fly over the dust and not suffer the antimagical effects, but those who were under the bag when it exploded would be thoroughly covered in it.

The chalky powder otherwhise duplicates an antimagic field and lasts for two hours before the powder absorbs so much latent magic from the world around that it spontaneously combusts in a flare of fire, dealing 10d6 fire damage in a 20-foot spread.

Caster Level: 12th. Prerequisites: Brew Potion, Craft Wondrous Item, Antimagic Field, Fireball. Market Price: 9,600 gp; Weight: - lb.

Spellstash Snuff: This fine powder, when inhaled by a spellcaster, allows them to recall up to nine levels of spells. A single dose of the snuff is only good for one use, and the spell levels must be used within fifteen minutes or be lost.

Caster Level: 17th. Prerequisites: Brew Potion, Craft Wondrous Item, Limited Wish, Haste. Market Price: 8,100 gp; Weight: 1 lb.

Oil of Return: This oil has to be rubbed on a character at most four hours before death. Once a character so prepared has been slain, one full minute later, they return to life as if affected by the spell reincarnation.

Caster Level: 7th; Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Brew Potion, Reincarnation, Death Watch. Market Price: 2,800 gp; Weight: 7 lb.

Stoppered Beasts: These fine phials filled with glittering, star-dust-like powder contain a momentary shadow of a creature, frozen forever in time. When the phial is broken, the strands of time and ectoplasm swirl around the dispersed dust and the creature's existence continues for a tiny while. The creature so created may well be long dead. All the phials do is capture a truly real memory of them - and preserve that shadow to be used again.

Stoppered Beasts are generally only psionically adept creatures, or generally unintelligent beasts. The phials themselves, composed of resonant crystal, are able to communicate to the person carrying it their alignment and predisposition, and will only function for a character whose alignment and tendencies match their own; if otherwise utilised, the creature released will turn on the person who released it immediately.

Everything about a Stoppered Beast is completely transient. After their duration expires, a Stoppered Beast simply ceases to exist, as does all their equipment and any poisons or similar effects they established upon their release.

If a phial containing a stoppered beast is broken in an area too small to contain it, the temporal energies instead un-break the phial and restore it for later use.

The Bottled Rage of Delvargun: Delvargun the Black was a half-dragon troll who was eventually curbed to a degree of societal notion by an evil cleric of the Lord, Markon. Eventually, he was defeated by the winged paladin, Cayden Willowby, and left Markon's service. Delvargun turned his talents towards battery and deception, but found his insatiable lust for violence a great hindrance to truly clever political maneuvering.

So, he engineered - after much dealings with a rather cunning young Telepath - to bottle his rage, to put in places it would not be used. But by giving this rage a place to stay, it gave it a name - and around that name, little fractions of reality did accrue, until an accident resulted in Delvargun fighting, for the most furious minute of his life, his own furious self. And so, the two discovered, they could market Delvargun's fury.

Little did either of them realise that the contained whirlwind of destruction that was Delvargun would be such a boon to many an unscrupulous adventurer in need of some strong-arming.

These flasks are hard, bound, and usually made of pure iron. This doesn't keep them from being incredibly fragile, however - the flasks break quite easily when they strike a solid surface. Once broken, the flask unleashes a shadow of Delvargun, an enormous aspect of pure half-draconic rage, who fights for one full minute, then vanishes.

Manifester Level: 11th; Prerequisites: Craft Universal Item, Call Cohort, Recall Death. Market Price: 6,370 gp; Weight: - .

Flask of Buried Error: Everyone, some psionics say, has something about their mind that isn't normal. Ironically, these aberrations are completely normal. And it is that which this fine misted powder intends to bring out.

A Flask of Buried Error has to strike a target as a grenadelike weapon, or it simply doesn't break. If it does, however, it releases a cloud of white mist, as the spell obscuring mist. This is the secondary affect of the item, however - rather, the flask draws out from the target's psyche some strange psychosis or deep-seeded issue, birthing for a brief while, a Phthisic in the fog, somewhere near the person from whose mind it comes. It then attacks in a way that best fits the psychosis it fits, before vanishing, along with the mist, 10 rounds later.

Manifester Level: 11th; Prerequisites: Craft Universal Item, Psychic Chirurgery. Market Price: 6,800 gp; Weight: - .

Kuroki Dokan: At first glance, the Kuroki Dokan phial holds a pickled toad, held in formaldehyde. As best anyone can tell, this is exactly what it is, but scale is being played with. Kuroki Dokan is no more and no less than an utterly enormous toad.

Kuroki Dokan is generally pacifistic and will only fight back if attacked by someone significant enough for it to notice. However, because of its ridiculous size and prodigious weight, it has been used by more than one wily character to stop pursuing forces.

Manifester Level: 7th; Prerequisites: Craft Universal Item, Recall Death. Market Price: 10,710 gp; Weight: - .

The Red Razors: The Red Razors were a mercenary crew of Bladelings who recognised that their capacities as mercenaries were in fact best multiplied through selling their services in Stoppered Beast form. After realising this, they began to produce the phials as quickly as they could. The majority of the Red Razors are retired now, and live quite well on the proceeds of their mercenary services - which continue to this day.

The Red Razors are utterly mercenary and will serve anyone who has paid for their services. If a Red Razor flask is found, stolen, or taken from a dead foe, it will demand its fee be sent to an appropriate beneficiary before it will fulfil any services. A Red Razor who is appeased will persist and fight for seven rounds.

Manifester Level: 7th; Prerequisites: Craft Universal Item, Recall Death. Market Price: 2,800 gp; Weight: - .