Dream Keeper

Dream Keepers are magickally enhanced items that store pre-charged spells. They originated in the city of Salem and are very popular nowadays amongst mages that depend on personal magick. Mages can unleash these pre-charged spells with a relatively small magick cost whenever they are in need, thus diminishing the risk to their souls.


 * Spells are ‘used up’ thus a specific number of spells must be stored and only that number of spells can be used before the item must be remade.


 * Items can range from wands and staffs to rings, books, pendants and anything else that can be written on in some fashion. The nature of the item does limit the number of spells that can be imbued into it, but the method of its creation is the most important element of the actual creation process.


 * Books are seen to be the most effective kind of item for this use, each page can be imbued with its own spell and once used will burn away.


 * Alternative forms that have become common, wands and staffs infused with a single specific spell. With each casting the wand or staff is burned or marred in some fashion, once the writing of the spell etched into the staff or wand is completely gone the item must be remade. Staffs can also be imbued with several spells, though it takes considerable effort to include any more than 3 or 4 while still allowing for multiple uses.
 * Dream Keepers and its forgers are easy to find in Salem with great diversity of items used and spells stored, and also also varying degrees of quality.

Creation
The creation process includes 2 distinctive phases.

First is the creation of the Dream Keeper. This has nothing to do with the spells that are going to be imbued into the item. Rather it is enchanting the item with the ability to store that kind of magick for an extended period of time. This part of the creation process can be performed by any mage with the ability to perform the needed magick, the final user of the item does not need to have a part in it. (Often items are enchanted in this fashion and then sold to future users who are either not trained in this kind of magick or not interested in expending the energy required). The cost of creating an item capable of storing upwards of 25 spells takes the effort of at least an afternoon. The spell itself does not take that much time, but the mage is unable to safely practice magick until they are again recovered. For larger items, of more than 50 individual spells the mage responsible for the creation will require at least a full day to recover before casting further spells. This part of the creation process can be split between several mages, dividing the cost and the recovery time required between all involved.

Second, is the imbuing of the spells themselves. This part of the process does not need to be conducted by the mage who intends to use the item, but the mage who attempts to use it must be proficient in that specific spell or otherwise risks injury and even death. The cost of each spell must be paid nearly in full at this time. Depending on the power of the spells being stored in the item it can take upwards of 2 or 3 days to safely fill a book able to contain between 30 and 50 individual spells. For typically small utility spells, ones that have low initial costs, it will take about as long as the creation of the item to fill it with spells. Thus for 25 low cost spells an entire day would be required where the mage did nothing else with their magick. And so on for every additional 25 spells. So 50 would be 2 days, and 75 would be 3 days. As the cost of the spell increases so too does the time and energy required.



Use
The rituals, if any, required for the spell are not negated and any time requirements or sacrifices associated with them must still be performed at the time the spell is used.

The spell must be read in full as it appears in or on the item it was stored in, and the gathering of the stored magicks is not instantaneous. For utility spells this can be a matter of moments, for more complex spells it can be as long as a full hour to weave the proper forms with the magic.

There is still a cost for calling forth the magick, this cost is the same regardless of how powerful the stored spell in (differences in power only effect the cost of actually storing the spell in the item) and a good rule of thumb is that the average mage is still only able to cast at the rate of about 25 spells in an hour. These do not have to be spaced out equally over the hour, all 25 spells could be cast in immediate succession of each other, but after that the mage will be required to rest and recover or risk serious costs to their souls. Mages are able to train themselves to increase this number, and newer mages are likely only able to cast at a lower overall rate. But 25 is seen as a relatively constant average.



These items can be destroyed in several ways. The easiest are magical in nature as most items are also enchanted with some sort of defense from more mundane dangers. Though truthfully, anything that destroys the item completely would be effective. If any of the written spell remains on any surviving part of the item, however, it can still be used, though the spell stored will suffer a degradation in power equal to the extent of the damage to the item. An example of this, if a book is burned and only the a damaged page survives, then the spell that was stored on that page can still be cast, but will only have maybe a fourth of its original potency.



The magick used in the initial creation of the item does not degrade over time so it is possible to find old tombs from centuries past still able to be imbued with spells. Hpwever, the spells stored during the second phase of creation will degrade over time. A typical spell will have 80% potency after a year, 60% after 2 years, 40% after 3 years, 20% after 4 years and will have completely decayed after 5 years. If additional magic is imbued into the item on top of the cost of the spell itself this time frame can be stored. There are tombs containing single spells that have survived through generations. These books are often seen as sources of knowledge more than of power and most mages, especially those linked to the college in Salem, would never consider using the spells contained in them.



The rule of thumb for extending the potency of the spell is that of a simple buffer. For every 20% of the initial cost of the spell that you include on top of it another year is added to the total life of that spell. Basically the buffer will decay first, and once it is gone the spell will begin to decay as it normally would have. Thus if you double the power needed for a spell it will last for 5 years without decaying at all, then after 6 years it will have only 80% potency and so on until it completely decays at the end of 10 years.  -- Royal Seal 19:33, July 19, 2013 (UTC)