• TransmogrificationMachine

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The TransmogrificationMachine was discovered at T P Burnham's TravellingCircus during the events of TheGreatestShowOnEarth.

The body is a mixture of clockwork and glass orbs on four goats legs. Some orbs glow from within; some contain complicated glasswork; others contain shifting gray vapours. Attached to a long cable which enter the body is a glass bulb, and a stylus is attached on a large mechanical arm. On the side with the stylus is a wax tablet and several orbs which can be pressed, and next to the cable with the bulb is an aperture filled with pulpy organic stuff. There are also straps next to the bulb and the aperture, though these do not appear to be part of the original design.

If the bulb is held in a person's mouth, and their arms are plunged into the pulpy mass, the mechanical stylus will fill the wax tablet with symbols. According to JosephCarey (who has made a brief study of T P Burnham's Notes on the machine) these symbols represent the arrangement of the Filaments of Life, as described by Erasmus Darwin in his book the Temple of Nature, a copy of which he intends to obtain for TheLibrary.

Only four symbols are used - they are:

• 	conjunction		opposition
  	dragon's head		dragon's tail

Many more symbols than will fit on the tablet are available; there are two orbs which can be pressed to show other sets of symbols. The stylus can be used to alter the symbols, and if a third orb is pressed the changes are made to the arrangement of the subject's Filaments of Life. The effect of this is described under Usage.

It is difficult to reproduce the symbols perfectly, so it is always clear which ones have been altered, even across multiple uses of the machine. This does not seem to have any visible effect on the creature descibed by the symbols, however.

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Notes

Along with the machine, TheCharacters discovered a set of handwritten notebooks. The oldest ones of these are in multiple peoples' handwriting and describe the construction of the device, while the rest are in T P Burnham's handwriting and mostly concern calculations perfomed using the four symbols above, together with sets of codes for people who he had transformed for use in his TravellingCircus. These notes form a mythos tome with the following book profile:

mythos +8, san loss 1d6/2d6

||

These notes are in the care of JosephCarey.

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Usage

As the character studying progresses in their understanding of the device, they gain sufficient understanding to use the device in the following ways:

• Poor understanding

  • A character can use the device to alter a subject. The outcome is grotesque, and not viable; it will die within seconds. Think about the pig-lizard in Galaxy Quest, or maybe some of the things in the The Fly movies. Additionally, the character can recognise changes sufficiently to undo previous alterations, so long as they have a copy of the original code.

• Some understanding

  • A character can use the device to alter a subject, with some degree of control. The outcome will still be a grotesque creature, but the creature is pretty much always viable as a creature. Additionally, the character can recognise changes sufficiently to undo previous alterations as above, and if they do not have the original code they can successfully undo the changes given a successful min(Biology, Cthulhu Mythos) roll.

• Total understanding

  • A character can use the device to alter a subject, with a great degree of control. A successful min(Biology, Cthulhu Mythos) roll is required to alter the code for a specific end, failure indicating horrible cthulhoid side-effects, but they can (so long as the new creature doesn't eat them) try again. Undoing previous changes is easier, giving the character a 25-point bonus. The outcome is always viable as a creature, so long as that's intended.

Observing the subject changing requires a san roll. The san cost is 0/1d6 *plus* the san cost for the new form, if they haven't seen it before. Undergoing the change *willingly* causes 1d6 automatic san loss - assuming the mind is retained in the transformation. Undergoing the change unwillingly is 1d6/2d6 san. Usual san loss rules apply, though, so no more than 6 or 12 can be lost in any given day.

The device doesn't require that the subject be human (in TheGreatestShowOnEarth it was used to view the symbols for TracyTheApe, although not to transform them.) but it does require that they have at least one mouth and at least two arms.

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Lock

<<< I'm locking the Transmogrification Machine against it getting destroyed or stolen, but I'm open to other GMs using it in their stories so long as they talk to me first. -- SimonBooth >>>

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