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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 5035868" data-attributes="member: 54707">PC, just watch the news every night. You'll catch up pretty quick.I was reviewing a series of pieces by van Eyck the other day and it made me think of creating an adventure which is a progression of various illusions, each produced by a glass (mirror) within a glass within a glass. Each illusion would constantly shrink in effect into the background but focus more clearly on something that was not immediately apparent. I've always liked van Eyck for that kinda thing.The man in this painting for instance always reminded me of a Magician hiding in plain sight, and his looking glass in the background not as a reflecting glass, but a sort of crystal ball always looking inwards at ever smaller things in the world around him.<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zEP3SuLSU5w/SwMfUroyRFI/AAAAAAAAAMw/NX4uFJ0ECjU/s1600/eyck2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Otherwise, when driving I've been listening to a series of lectures on Napoleon. Last night coming back from the party for my squadron I listened to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plot_of_the_Rue_Saint-Nicaise" target="_blank">Affair (or Plot) of the Infernal Machine</a>, in which various men tried to assassinate Napoleon on his way to the Opera to hear Haydn's Creation for the first time (I always thought that incredibly ironic for several different reasons). Anyways, the whole incident gave me the idea of building an Infernal Machine which is secretly a Artifact with a mind of it's own. It's an insane device which is suicidal and desires to destroy itself, but cannot, because without help it cannot move any of its own components. Outwardly it appears as Complex Clock but also radiates magic (in a D&D setting, in another setting it would seem different) and has a series of "settings"  or configurations. You can turn and twist and reconfigure the device and each setting has a different magical, illusory, or psychic effect on those near enough to be within the area of effect. One final, very complex configuration will "light the magical fuse" which will cause the device to explode (releasing all of the pent-up magical energy and killing the inhabiting mind) so powerfully it is like the explosion of a small tactical nuclear warhead, only the "after-effect" is not an EM pulse and lethal radiation, but magical radiation (in this case, a fantasy game) which will have various effects on magical fields, crops, animals, and people for years to come.(Only slowly, with the help of various rumors, legends, and yet to be discovered lost sections of hidden texts will the players come to realize the true nature of the Infernal Machine, which all the locals just call the Clock of the Configuration.)</blockquote>

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