Electric Stele

Esoteric Writings and Reference

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The Real Theophania, vol II ch 7

The Real Theophania

vol. II ch. 7

It was nearly high noon. Thia stopped at the edge of the clearing. She looked, still facing straight forward, at the field of wildflowers, remembering the girl she left behind in town. The sun, high above, carried down at the gap between trees, perfectly illuminating the clearing. She had been walking for 4 days straight through the wilderness. Her heart beat hard and weary with the burden of leagues. Her shoulders slumped, and the two heavy bags fell to the dirt for a thump. “I wish…”

Ophius slapped her once on the side of the head. “Get a move on. The wolves aren’t far behind us. You can rest when you’re dead.”

Thia sighed, just once, then picked up the heavy bags and kept walking.

~~~

They had stumbled onto an abandoned hut in the forest, bearing some of the signs of a long-dead witch-in-exile.

“Let me get this clear.” Thia said, breaking the sudden silence.

“Ok.” Ophius replied curtly, attention on the pin-and-tumbler lock securing the front door.

“That guy, the silk guy. The thief king of old town, or whatever.”

“Yes. The one we kidnapped and stuffed in a bag.” The first door swung open, revealing another one.

“He wasn’t just some local robber. Like the cleverest street urchin who stabbed all the other thieves, and now he’s in charge of that ghetto.”

“Correct.” Second mundane lock clicked open, revealing not a third door, but a perfectly smooth and flat glass wall. The lack of light beyond revealed no transparent window, yet it “reflected” the inner face of the second door. Curiously, however, Ophius and Thia, nor the field behind them. Like a broken mirror, frozen in time.

“That guy, who we thought was just some guy, is an agent of an ancient and powerful witch, who now needs us to bring this seven million gold piece ransom to liberate her other animate cloth golem doll thing, Edward. Who is not only also a king, but an actual king. Not a thief king of the slum of some backwater town. The actual king of a kingdom with armies and all that.”

“You thought. You assumed. I told you he had connections.” Ophius prodded the empty mirror with a bony finger, jolting with a precisely tuned bolt of magic. Arcane symbols swirled across the surface. Ophius gave it another few adjustments (delivered via a magnetized needle and steady hand), jostling the symbols into some esoteric pattern, unlocking the door.

“And the witch, who met us at the predetermined dropoff location, riding her broomstick, to hand us the gold, needs us to walk the to deliver the ransom. She couldn’t just have flown in and delivered it herself?”

Ophius rubbed their forehead. “No, look. She couldn’t have flown it in. The Witch-King has his own flying patrols, and the flying broomstick has limitations anyway, and – look, just forget it.”

~~~

Thia looked at the staircase. Thia looked back at Ophius. Thia looked back at the staircase, sat in the middle of the woods, carpeted steps, marble banister in all, rising 12 feet into the air to no second floor, building, or other artificial structure in sight. She reached out one tentative hand.

“Don’t touch it.” Ophius commanded.

“Why is there…?”

“Look, sometimes there’s stairs in the woods. Just ignore them. Do not go up them.”

~~~

It was nearly dusk. Ophius stopped at the cliffside. They looked at the hanging ivy and climbing vines that clung to the sheer face. Crimson rays glittered off the rock like a stream of gold. They dropped the two, heavy bags onto the gravel with a clatter.

Thia, smirking, raised one open palm and stalked forward, beginning to say, “Get a move on, you can-”

“I’m already dead.” Ophius interrupted, pointing one skeletal finger at a curious pattern in the growth. “But look there. See that? Where it repeats?”

Thia leaned in to get a closer look, and her half of the precious bounty swung forward. Instead of bouncing off the cliff, however, it carried straight through. The unexpected momentum pulled her off balance, and she fell to her knees, face first into the hidden tunnel.

“The adventure continues.” Ophius murmured quietly, and followed her in.

The Real Theophania, vol II ch 3

The Real Theophania

vol. II ch. 6

Thia inhaled deeply from the bouquet of wisteria her lover had just handed her. “Oh, I wish I could stay and smell this forever,” she whispered, wistfully, “I’m sorry I have to go.”

The buxom redheaded baker’s daughter, leaning over the second story handrail looking down at Thia, sighed dramatically. Thia appreciated the view from this angle and what the motion did to Rebecca’s nightgown. “Will I … ever see you again?” Rebecca fluttered her eyelashes enticingly.

“Oh, my love,” Thia began waxing, “if only were like only the winter, and an illusion of scarcity to be soon and surely proven false in the next spring. And when glorious summer was heralded by the marching of resplendent peacocks in the wood, and you felt my spirit always with you like the wind that shakes the barley growing the field, and to be in autumn rewarded for your faith by the bountiful harvest of my return. Your dutiful ministrations, digging furrows in my soil and sating my carnal thirst would never leave risk to failure that I would rise to you again. You are like a merciful mermaid rescuing a poor sailor from my shipwreck of lonliness. You are my seelie queen, guiding me when I am lost in the jungle of despair. You are-”

“Ahem. AHEM.” Ophius sharply slapped the thighs of the poetic princess perched atop their alchemically augmented shoulders, since she wasn’t deigning to stop at his polite taps. “Tick tock. Tick tock. Time to go. We need to get out of the city before the Night Watch starts looking for those filthy interlopers who ransacked the Thief King’s manse. The fire I started in his granary won’t be distracting them for much longer.” The burlap sack on his bag wriggled aggressively, as if on cue.

“mmmr brpmm hmmrAAAAP,” came muffled murmurs from within, before being punctuated with a harsh rip, “AND THE STITCH WITCH WILL HEAR ABOUT WHAT YOU DID TO MY FACE! My kingly visage was sewn with the finest Melcene silks! That, eueugh, HEMP twine you stitched my mouth shut with wasn’t even tensioned proper-” Ophius shut up their kidnapping victim with a sharp thump to the spongy skull. Cloth golems could be so dramatic.

~~~

The Real Theophania, vol II ch 3

The Real Theophania

vol II ch. 3

Thia quieted down as the barmaid dropped off their food. Her ravenous hunger overcame the desire to continue the story, and she tore off a comically large chunk of “turkey” (probably some god-forsaken hybrid of ultra-rat and ritualbound-kitsune, given how backwater this town was) off the comically large drumstick before continuing the tirade. “Listen, all I’m saying is, you can’t really claim to know that ‘Oh, this sword was called Excalibur, but that’s the one the lady of the lake gave him, the one he pulled out of the stone was Caliburn, his other sword.’ The story is so old, and the names translated so many times, there isn’t a real, canonical version of the swords you can say is true. That’s just something you say to sound clever to people who haven’t read as many scrolls as you.”

Ophius stared at their traveling companion, gaze a perplexing mixture of intense focus and complete disinterest, as if watching a wild animal partaking in a strange grooming behavior that you didn’t really understand, but were enraptured by the display of acrobatics. Of course, being ancient undead, Ophius didn’t need to really “eat” regularly, just absorb biomatter in order to fuel the alchemical spell engine to mask their constantly decaying flesh. “You’ve got a bit there,” Ophius pointed with a half carved flute (this decade, apparently, was Ophius’s bardic century), at the drips of hot oil and viscous gravy splattering Thia’s already muddy dress. The dirt, as well as the lingering stench, was a memento of today’s search. Thia was adamant she’d spotted a swarm of fireflies (probably Will-O-Wisps), and chased the lights right into a pit half-filled with brackish water. The other half was filled with the still-fleshy carcass of some unidentifiable large woodland creature.

~~~

Thia raised a torch to the dusty stone archway, brushing away dungeondeep cobweb.“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. What lies beyond is the empire of the dead,” she murmured along, tracing her fingers across the carved letters. “A warning, to turn back. Or caution, for those who continue.”

Ophius interjected, walking bravely deeper into the crypt, “Good thing I’m already dead.”

~~~

Ancient gears and chains screamed in protest at being reawakened from their long slumber. A cacophony of old iron and stone sang from the darkness, as the guardian statues awoke, slamming the swords down the hallway and against the walls. Gleaming sawblades rose from between the flagstones, scythed through the air where Thia had stood moments before, and sank back into the floor. Ophius, hoisting the startled princess, threw her back onto solid ground without even a backwards glance. Their eye sockets flashed a malevolent fuschia as they pierced the darkness for motion. “I told you: in the old alphabet, it was spelled with an ‘I’, not a ‘J’.”, Ophius explained, exasperated, gesturing at the letters painted on the tiles – one pressure plate already sunk. “And speaking of old secrets lost to time, his sword was named Arclight. Any idiot can write a scroll and say it’s antediluvian lore. I was there.”

~~~

Ophius waited for the barmaid to walk off again, then dipped a clean kerchief into the strong spirits she had just dropped off. Thia raised her own glass and tapped it to Ophius’s. “Another job well done,” the refugee princess celebrated.

Ophius shrugged one sleeve back, revealing a small golden figurine of hummingbird, and began polishing it with the cloth. “The Wings of Nirva recovered. Thought lost forever, since the dragonkin lost their war with humanity. The Radiants will pay a princely sum for this.”

Thia grinned, downing her drink. “Can’t wait to spend it on wenches, drink, and a midnight haywagon ride to the next town.”

How many enchantments can I have at once?

Author’s Note 4/28/2023: This was originally written during Amtgard v8.4 Sunny. As of 7/18/2022 and the release of v8.5 Spicy, this is no longer completely accurate, following the clarification that extraordinary enchantments of the same name cannot be stacked. You can, however, still cast a very large number of Sleight of Mind on someone, as it is magic.

In a full class game of Amtgard, what’s most enchantments I could have at once?

Every now and then, someone asks, “What’s the most enchantments I could have at once?” Technically, this is a request for a clarification of the bounds of the rules, so I don’t get too annoyed when it’s posted on Official Amtgard Rules Clarifications for the fifth time this month.

Normally, of course, you have a maximum of one magical enchantment. Extraordinary enchantments (usually martial classes’ self-only abilities) don’t count towards this limit, so you could have a Warrior with her own Harden (ex) and Ancestral Armor (ex) up at the same time, in addition to an Imbue Armor (m). Scout even has Evolution, which just gives her a whole extra enchantment slot.

Certain enchantments behave specially with regards to the enchantment limit. Blessing Against Wounds doesn’t count towards the limit, but you can’t have any other Protection school spells with it (probably to keep you from stacking ridiculous numbers of Blessings on top of each other). Phoenix Tears does count towards the limit, and gives you one extra enchantment, but only from the Protection school. Most commonly, Druid’s Attuned and Essence Graft increase the enchantment limit altogether.

Usually, it’s an Essence Graft build that gets crowned most-enchantments-at-once. In fact, that’s even my most common build at a Kingdom level event: Essence Graft, Golem, Lycanthropy, Ironskin, Imbue Weapon. If I look annoyed at you after you ask me to declare enchantments, it’s not because I don’t want to tell you. It’s because in the time it took me to say them all, I could’ve killed you already.

The Cancel/Sleight of Mind Trick

Sometimes, people get very clever and propose casting Cancel on the Essence Graft then applying Sleight of Mind on top of the stack. This combination works because Sleight of Mind doesn’t take an enchantment slot, and enchantments only check conditions when they’re first cast, not continually.

Common Misconceptions, 27 (p. 74)

The +3 enchantments don’t get retroactively removed (because the slots were available when they were cast), and Essence Graft is now gone, so anyone can cast enchantments on this person. It’s also actually a seriously effective build, because the Sleight of Mind will now protect your extremely valuable enchantment stack from Dispel Magic. On the other hand, however, this combination doesn’t work, because of Rule 0: “Yeah, I understand that the RoP says that, but also a real human person with a modicum of cleverness is in charge of the game, so no, you can’t do that.”

Common Misconceptions, 15 (p. 73)

So, usually, which is to say, feasibly, if not commonly, the maximum number of enchantments someone wears is 5. Theoretically, you could put this all on a Scout with Evolution, and get one more enchantment. Realistically, though, why would you give all that to a Scout?


What’s the most enchantment strips I could wear at once?

Sometimes, people mix up the question and change it to “What’s the most enchantment strips I could wear at once?” My {EG, Golem, IS, Lycan, IW} combo is 7 spell strips. Since Ironskin and Imbue Weapon are only 1 each, we can replace them with Gift of Fire and Troll Blood (2 and 3) for 10 total strips. Put it on a Scout, give her Gift of Water, too, that makes it 12. Since we’re counting spell strips, you might be tempted to throw in the big “put on 5 spell strips and do something with each of them” spells (Naturalize Magic, Battlefield Triage, etc.). Phoenix Tears + Troll Blood only gets you 5. Add Attuned (6) and Corrosive Mist and we’re only back to 11. Well, let’s give that Scout Corrosive Mist, too. Essence Graft (1), Golem (2), Gift of Fire (2), Lycanthropy (2), Troll Blood (3), and Corrosive Mist (5), make for 15 total spell strips.

May thy power remain, may thy power remain, may thy power remain. May thy power remain, may thy power remain, may thy power remain. May thy power remain, may thy power…

Here’s the other thing, though. Remember that Sleight of Mind trick from earlier?

Magic and Abilities, Sleight of Mind (p. 64)

Does not count towards the bearer’s enchantment limits. That doesn’t just mean we can slap a Sleight of Mind on top of other enchantments. That means we can slap Sleight of Mind on top of itself. Of course, they don’t actually do anything extra – all of them are removed by the first Dispel Magic. We don’t care about practicalities, though. We gave that up as soon as we put Essence Graft on a Scout. All we care about is maximal magic – total enchantments, total strips, it doesn’t matter. They’re both the same. The answer is infinite Sleight of Minds.

Or is it?

Infinite Sleight of Mind was my go-to answer for a while, mainly because it came naturally from the “what if we Cancelled Essence Graft and put Sleight of Mind over it?” build. Sleight of Mind, unlike, for example, Blessing Against Wounds, which also does not count towards the enchantment limit, Sleight of Mind does not have “cannot be worn with” restriction. As long as we have Sleight of Minds available, we can keep putting them on. Sleight of Mind is limited, however, by the number of Bards you have. With Look-the-Part and all points spent, each Bard can only cast 16 Sleight Of Minds per refresh.

The real question, therefore, isn’t “How many enchantments can I wear?”. It’s “How many enchantments can I give?”


Infinite Enchantment Stacks

There are 3 ways to cast infinite enchantments without a refresh.

The first method is Assassin’s or Antipaladin’s Poison (self-only) charge x3 (ex). Since enchantments cannot be Experienced, we need an ability which is already chargeable. Additionally, since these are (ex), they automatically do not count towards the enchantment limit, meaning we can stack them infinitely.

Magic and Ability Mechanics Defined, Ability, 2 (p. 48)

The second method is with Druid’s otherwise little-used Poison Glands spell. Poison Glands grants the bearer Poison, self-only (ex) charge x3. Essentially, this method mimics Assassin’s and Antipaladin’s class ability, allowing infinite stacks of Poison on anyone (except for Barbarians, who cannot receive enchantments).

Magic and Abilities, Poison Glands (62)

The third method is a combination of Warrior’s Harden and Druid’s Golem. Warrior’s Harden is (ex), per life, and, unlike Poison, not chargeable. This does not stop the precocious Warrior, however – instead of charging, she just needs to die a lot. Normally, the enchantment would be lost upon death and respawn, but Golem makes all enchantments worn persistent.

Magic and Abilities, Golem (p. 58)

Not one other, not other (m)agical enchantments, all. She needs only to cast Harden, die, respawn with her persistent Hardens, cast Harden and die again, and repeat infinitely.

Infiniter Enchantment Stacks

At first, we might think, infinite enchantments is infinite enchantments, how does it matter which one? Strictly speaking, any of these applications only gives Aleph-Null infinite enchantments, and are therefore the same number. However, we can give more infinite enchantments per player depending on the method used.

We might think Assassin/Antipaladin is the best plan. An Assassin can just cast Poison and charge by himself forever – a 1:1 infinite enchantment stack to player ratio, whereas both other methods require an entire Druid in addition to the enchantee.

What we do is combine methods 2 and 3.

Out of every 5 players, we need 4 Warriors and 1 Druid. The Druid needs Summoner, 2 purchases each of Attuned, Poison Glands, and Golem. Because of Summoner, each of those enchants have 4 uses per refresh. Cast Poison Glands, Attuned, and Golem on a Warrior, who can now infinitely cast Poison and Harden on herself. Each Warrior now has two infinite enchantment stacks on her – an efficiency ratio of 8:5, 60% higher than the Assassin plan.

You may be considering two objections to this plan: Poison is Death school, and Golem confers Immunity to Death; and a Druid can only have 1 active Golem at a time.

The first objection, however, does not work, because we know that enchantments do not interact with immunities.

States Defined, Immune (p. 51)

We see that a player can still benefit from the Poison from Poison Glands, even if they are Immune to Death.

The second objection also does not work, because of the same Cancel trick from before. Because enchantments only check conditions when they’re first cast, we are free to move Golem around. Enchant Warrior 1, let her create an infinite stack of Hardens. Then cancel Golem and cast it on Warrior 2. Warrior 1’s Hardens are no longer persistent, but they remain active even after Golem is removed.

So now, whenever someone asks you, “What’s the most enchantments I could have?” you can tell them: 8 infinite enchantment stacks for every 5 players, or, if no one is cooperative, 1 infinite enchantment stack for yourself.


All Rules of Play citations refer to v8 – Snowy. Thanks to Heron, Paragon Warrior of the Northern Lights for introducing the Infinite Harden-Golem trick to me.

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