Lighting Balls
One magical/ technological item I have had for Elves and Dwarves are Glow Balls. It seems unlikely that Elves would risk fire in their natural environments. It seems unlikely that Dwarves would keep wasting precious oxygen to generate light. So I came up with these solutions.
Elven GlowBalls or Elven Lights are small baseball sized orbs (3 in/ 10 cms in diameter). Using a static enchantment, a stone ball is enchanted to glow like a firefly, with white/ green light.
The stones are normally milky white when not glowing. Certain craftsmen make them glow all the time, dimming when the ambient light is bright. However, more refined craftsmen allow the use of static magic to shift its brightness (the phrase/ or thought, 'Shine Forth' being the common command to turn on full light, 'Dawns Light', for moderate brightness, and 'Twilight's Home' for dim lighting).
DeepLights of the Dwarves are larger (11 in/30 cms in circumference). These are chemical lights mixing sulfer and some mushroom based microbes. If kept warm, deep lights will continue to give off an amber glow for quite a while. Sometimes the light will dim. The Deeplight's chemicals just needs to be 'swirled' a bit to brighten them up. If the ball is dead, they can be revivied by simply adding sulfer and a sprinkle of Thadian mushroom muck. In worse case situation, you dump it all out and start over with a fresh mix.
Necroballs are hybrids between DeepLights and ElvenLights. They are chemical balls enhanced by small spells. They give off a deep purple light. The closer they are to a tower (manna transducer), the brighter they glow. They will glow for a while if kept warm away from a tower, but they will eventually extinguish.
Humans just use candles or wasteful wood fires of course. Well that is not true in Antioch, and soon the entire Human part of the Known World.
Sphere Lanterns: They use sphere lanterns, a design similar to the one created by Leonardo da Vinci. It is a glass globe (usually held up from the ceiling by a macrome/ net mesh), with an interior globe. (Kind of like a thick sideways C, with the opening to the ceiling. The wick is in the bottom of the interior opening. The clear oil used in the sphere lantern is poured in from a stoppered opening on the top. The oil/ kerosene magnifies the light from the wick, spreading it out into the area. Kind of neat application of the laws of shape and the laws of projection, coupled with an understanding of optics. (Some will have magnifying lenses at the bottom of the spheres to 'spotlight' the light.)
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? Responses (8)
Simple but very useful.
Updated: Cleaned up some of the descriptions in terms of grammer and content.
Updated a bit more.
Here is the submission I was looking for earlier but could not find.
Interesting, and a logical development for the underground dwelling races.
And not just for underdwellers. Elves, who adore trees and nature, play with fire for their lighting? I really do not think people who live in a living, yet flamable, home, who have magic will use candles.
And for the Humans, well those are just interesting historically created lights.
This I like
Simple, logical and useful - and just the sort of thing that would almost certainly be created sooner or later
A good, solid background item
Nice one Moon
4/5
This is a good solid idea and it is well developed and well written. Thx.