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Klavekian Staffweaving

 

The Blank Staffs

When confronted with the strange Vikmordere magic the traditional wizards of the Klavekian Empire were at first at a total loss. No one had ever seen such magic as the savage Northmenn could wield. The Vikmordere wouldn’t explain how they did it for obvious reasons and Vikmorere prisoners sooner died then shared tribal secrets. Explorers sent to neighboring lands came back empty handed also.

Finally, Tarissov the Leprous, Magister of the Klavekian Academie of Magical Arts, came forth with a solution for at least part of the problem. He invented the famous Blank Staffs, magical tools to not only explore foreign magic, but to steal its secrets to a degree. When a spellcaster is hit with a Blank Staff she loses a prepared spell to it. The owner of the Blank Staff can then use the stolen spell. Strangely, when the user of a Blank Staff would be able to cast the stolen spell on its own, the magic vanished, but leaving the Blank Staff rechargeable once more. In the times when the Blank Staff was invented, those magic has not vanished at all, but been transferred to Tarissov the Leprous himself, who in this way became mightier and mightier. Finally, he felt strong enough to challenge the tsar himself, but he overestimated his abilities and was finally slain after what is known as the War Without Faces. Where the magic of a Blank Staffs vanishes now is uncertain, some speculate that Tarissov the Leprous isn’t dead at all, still accumulating power, other say the magic simply dripples away.

The magic needed to create Blank Staffs went to the grave with Tarissov the Leprous and is lost. But since the traitor-magician wanted the Blank Staffs to be spread wide he produced great amounts of them and sold them cheaply in what was viewed as a patriotic act those days. The Blank Staffs aren’t cheap anymore, but still readily available on the Magical Fair, charged or uncharged. Buyers have to beware though, there are Blank Staffs staffs with magic in them that no one can use, since the user has to be able to understand the magic in the staff on principle. An arcane specialist can’t used a stolen divine spell. The Vikmordere do have something entirely different sometimes, the so called mosaic magic. Only rarely are staffs with mosaic magic useable by any non-Vikmordere in Klavek.

 

Empty Staffs

While the magic to create Blank Staffs is lost, the general art of staffbinding has made strides in Klavek. In these days it is possible to create staffs that are empty in their own ways. The procedure of creating them is expensive and time consuming, but also very flexible. The exact method is a guarded secret of the Klavekian Academie of Magical Arts, but the effect is, when a buyer wants a specific staff, he has to pay an extra amount of money equal 20%, but gets his staff in but 24 hours, for the raw Empty Staff had been prepared in advance. Since other nations still use methods that take a hundred days to produce an individual staff, Klavek’s magicians have a sharp competitive edge in emergencies or with clients not known for their patience. On the other hand, the Magical Fair is known to have most common staffs readily available to buy at normal costs if one spends some time searching, so Empty Staffs would usually be only required for exotic or rare inventions if it was just a matter of speed. With a successful DC 15 Spellcraft check the Empty Staff can be filled with additional magic for the usual fees (and 20%) by a skilled staffweaver, though a failed check makes the Empty Staff unusable for a full moon circle (a month). Empty Staffs are used for Bonded Objects or by wizards who don’t want to use an Efficient Quiver to sort through their magical staffs.

 

Two Staff Weaving

Klavekian spellcasters have perfected the art of fighting with staffs since Tarissov the Leprous days. Lukov the Fencer was the first magician to invent the art of Two Wand Weaving, and this feat is still popular in modern Klavek.