Artistic Supplies

Chalk

This fat piece of white chalk easily marks wood, metal, or stone. You can write with it for about 24 hours before it is expended. Chalk also comes in other colors, but these are rarer and can be more expensive.

Charcoal

Sticks of charcoal are useful for marking floors and walls, writing on paper or parchment, and making rubbings of engravings or other markings. In a pinch, they can even be burned to stay warm. A good quality rubbing generally takes 1 minute per sheet of paper.

Ink

This vial contains 1 ounce of ink. Ink in colors other than black costs twice as much.

Ink, Fire

This rich yellow ink reacts with a creature's body heat to create a flickering, flame-like glow. It takes 10 minutes to apply fire ink, and 1 dose covers an approximately hand-sized area. Once applied, the ink glows as a candle for 24 hours. Four or more doses applied to the same part of the body glow as a torch for 24 hours. The alchemical reaction of the ink to the target's skin and body heat is painful and irritating, giving the target the sickened condition while the glow lasts. A DC 15 Heal check can temporarily soothe these sensations, negating the sickened condition for 1 hour. Creatures immune or resistant to fire are immune to this sickening effect. Ifrits are especially known for their fondness for fire ink, and ifrit fire-dancers often decorate their skin with flaming designs before performing. A concentrated version of the ink costs 10 times as much and can be used to make permanently glowing tattoos.

Ink, Light on Fire

This alchemically infused ink ensures secret messages destroy themselves after being read. If light strikes the ink after it has dried, chemicals cause it to spontaneously combust within about a minute. The combustion is small—not significant enough to ignite anything but paper. Ink used on other materials such as stone or wood simply vanishes, leaving no trace of the writing. A vial of this ink holds enough to write 10 brief messages of no more than 50 words each.

Light fire ink can be created with a DC 25 Craft (alchemy) check.

Ink, Ghost

Pale blue when wet, ghost ink quickly dries to near transparency 1 minute after application. Ghost ink is most often used to blaze trails and mark locations in a subtle manner. The pigment shines with a warm red glow under the light shed by fire beetle glands and sunrods, but under optimal normal conditions (such as a pale surface like parchment or a plaster wall) can only be noticed with a successful DC 25 Perception check. One vial of ghost ink is the size of a potion vial and sufficient for writing a page’s worth of characters.

Ink, Glowing

Glowing ink emits a faint but steady light (typically red or green) that allows you to read it even in normal darkness. You have a +2 bonus on Perception checks to locate objects with glowing ink. Mixing glowing ink with marker dye makes the dye glow in the dark until it fades.

Ink, Stink

Stink ink is a special, pungent, musk-based ink that allows its user to encode information with smell rather than visually. Stink ink dries clear but its sharp, extremely localized smell can be picked out by those with sensitive enough noses to make it possible to read by sense of smell. Only creatures with the keen senses trait or scent ability can read stink ink without aid of some form of magic. Reading or writing something with stink ink takes twice as long as going through the same amount of information written in normal ink.

Chalkboard

A wooden frame approximately the same size as a large book surrounds this thinly sliced piece of polished black stone. Rubbing a simple damp cloth over the slate erases anything scribed with chalk on its surface.

Paper

A sheet of ordinary paper typically measures 9 inches by 6 inches and is unsuitable for making magical scrolls. It has hardness 0, 1 hit point, and a break DC of 5.

Ink, Invisible

Messages written with invisible ink only become visible under specific circumstances. Revealing the secret message with the proper triggering agent is a full-round action per page of text.

Simple:

Create Craft (alchemy) DC 15; This ink is keyed to a single, fairly common trigger, such heat or vinegar. A successful DC 20 Craft (alchemy) check takes 1 hour and reveals the message without the proper trigger.

Average:

Create Craft (alchemy) DC 20; This ink is keyed to either two common triggers or one uncommon trigger, such as blood or acid. A successful DC 25 Craft (alchemy) check takes 1 hour and reveals the message without the proper trigger.

Good:

Create Craft (alchemy) DC 20; This ink is keyed to either two uncommon triggers or one rare trigger, such as a specific vintage of wine or a specific kind of monster’s blood. A successful DC 30 Craft (alchemy) check takes 1 hour and reveals the message without the proper trigger.

Superior:

Create Craft (alchemy) DC 25; This ink is keyed to either two rare triggers or one unique trigger, such as the blood of a specific person. A successful DC 35 Craft (alchemy) check takes 1 hour and reveals the message without the proper trigger.

Inkpen

This is a wooden stylus with a metal tip that retains a small amount of ink after you dip it in a vial of ink.

Glue Paper This 1-foot-square piece of paper is coated on one side with a weak glue or sticky material such as tree sap or even honey. It is stored folded in half. If you apply glue paper to a window before you break it, the broken pieces stick to the glue rather than noisily falling to the ground. Glue paper is good for a single use.

Stationery

Generally used only by the wealthy, fancy stationery is a finer-quality 9-inch-by-6-inch paper, often embossed or engraved with the owner’s personal seal.

Pantograph

This metal framework of parallel strips is used to duplicate drawings, allowing enlarging (up to twice the original size) or shrinking (down to half the original size) of the copy in the process. The pantograph is anchored, then fitted with a stylus and a writing implement such as chalk, an ink pen, or a pencil. As the stylus is traced over the drawing or other item to be duplicated, the pantograph reproduces the motions, creating a copy. While handy for making quick, accurate copies of ancient carvings, runes, and drawings, a pantograph is unable to produce a convincing forgery. More elaborate and expensive pantographs allow even larger or smaller copies to be made, or multiple copies to be made at the same time.

Wax, Sealing

Solid wax used for sealing scroll tubes or scrolls together.

Printing Press

A hand-cranked press uses a plate on which all of the text on a page is carved in reverse. Changing the plate is a simple process, but creating a new one is expensive and labor-intensive. The press prints one page at a time, at a rate of about five pages per minute. A stationer then needs to cut and trim the pages and bind the book.

Case, Map or Scroll

A bone, leather, or wooden scroll case easily holds four scrolls; you can cram more inside but retrieving any of them becomes a full-round action rather than a move action. You must destroy the scroll case to damage its contents (hardness 2 for leather or 5 for wood, 2 hit points, Break DC 15). A scroll case is not water-tight.