Magic Mondays

For Magic Mondays this week there will be no devious offensive arrays or cruel bombs, but rather a tool that you can use in your games.

This week we give you the Phantom Cell array.

Notation Top Array: Send Human within an area twice the size of the array, if Antimony and Sulphur is present.

Notation Bottom Array: Receive Human from within an area twice the size of the array, if Mercury and Arsenic is present and Pull Human.

Description: The Phantom Cell is an example of what can be done when you combine the arrays with technology. At first glance the arrays seems quite simple: they simply teleport a human from one array to another. However, it is the details of it which can confuse you if you don’t know how it is used. The arrays only send and receive within a very short distance, they have to be right next to each other, so it seems a rather useless teleport array. Not to mention the odd requirements for activating it: antimony and sulphur to send and mercury and arsenic to receive? Seems rather restrictive doesn’t it? Not the sort of thing you would carry around every day. It just doesn’t look like something you can use in combat or any other rushed situation.

That is until you know how it is used. The Phantom Cell is inscribed onto two metal plates not much larger than the palm of your hand and held inside a metal “booklet” that can fold closed for easy carrying. This metal booklet also holds four vials for the four triggers and handy little levers that, when pressed, will empty the contents onto the send or receive array. So now you have a booklet that can send and/or receive a human at a push of a button. But why would you?

The answer is quite simple. To send anything, the send array needs to be powered. That much is obvious, but it also is true for the receive array. If the receive array isn’t powered then it doesn’t receive. So, you might be thinking, what happens to something when it is sent but the receive array isn’t powered? The answer is that whatever is being sent, a human in this case, is caught inside the receive array and kept there until it is powered. No time passes for the person inside the receive array and they can stay in there for as long as the array remains intact, but if the array breaks the person disappears forever.

So what does this mean for the Phantom Cell? Well simply put that, by pressing one of the levers on the metal booklet, you can capture someone within the array and leave them there until you have need of them. The Phantom Cell is exactly that, a prison cell that doesn’t actually exist.