Earrings of Switcheroo
Item
This is a pair of earrings. They can look like any earrings, but they’re usually high quality, like all magic items. Why would you cast an enchantment on low-quality goods? The earrings, when commanded, will allow you to store a number of wearable magic items. Only wearable items will work: clothing, footwear, hats and the like, jewelry, etc. You cannot store non-magical items in the earrings. What you do is, you take the wearable magic item you want to store, touch the item with one or both of the earrings, utter the store command word, and the magic item will shimmer and disappear, leaving only the earrings. The item is now stored in the earrings. They’re not actually in the earrings, of course; they’re in an extradimensional space connected to the earrings. If the earrings are already storing too many items, the item you’re trying to store will not disappear, and you will know the earrings are full. This does not harm the earrings or the item.

When you wear the earrings, you will be aware of all the items that are stored in them. you can retrieve or deploy any of the items at any time. Speak the retrieve command, and the item will appear in your hand. If you don’t have any hands free, it will be placed on the floor/ground at your feet. Bummer if you’re standing in a river or sitting on a ski lift.

Speak the deploy command, and the desired item will appear on your person, properly worn and fully powered, conferring its benefits on you. If you are already wearing a magic item on that particular area of the body, the item will not be deployed, and you will know why.

When an item has been deployed onto your person from the Earrings of Switcheroo, you can send the item back into the earrings by uttering the restore command. The item will simply disappear off of your body and return to the extradimensional space, ready to be retrieved or deployed once more. If you remove the item from your body by some other means, you will have to touch it to the earrings and use the storage command again.

So. Four commands: store, retrieve, deploy, and restore. They’re almost always single words, easy to remember. Note that you can’t use any of the commands on more than one item at a time.

I would tell you the number of items that the earrings hold if I could, but it just depends on the particular earrings. “Cheap” Earrings of Switcheroo might store 1-3 items. Which is still quite valuable, and you’ll pay less money for them. Nicer ones can store more, usually around 4-9 items. The legendary Earrings of Reka Corbulo, which were lost centuries ago, were purported to be able to store 39 items, but this obviously cannot be corroborated.

About the Magic

Light Without Heat
Spell
A ball of light appears where you specify. It is spherical, about the size of a tennis ball. You can change the location of the ball by concentrating, but it doesn’t move very fast. It’s not feasible as a light that you can walk around with or whatever. It goes in one place, and you can slowly change that place if you concentrate. Or you can dismiss it and recast in the new location. You can use that method to use the spell like streetlamps. Cast it, walk along until it starts to get dark, dismiss and recast ahead of you.

The light can be however dim or bright you want, though it can’t be brighter than the sun. It can be any color or combination of colors you want. It can be muted or glaring, and anywhere in between. It can strobe, cycle through colors, etc. Just think about what you want it to do, and it’ll do it.

The ball has no substance; it’s just a light source. And as the title implies, it doesn’t generate heat. So you can throw objects through it or even put your hand through it if you want. It won’t hurt anything.

You can only ever have one at a time. It lasts until it is dismissed or until you die, whichever happens first.

About the Magic

Gurgi’s Water Bottle
Item
This is a water bottle, say maybe a 1-liter capacity. Sometimes more, sometimes less. They are almost always very good quality, and rarely flashy or fancy. As with all the Gurgi items, Gurgi’s Water Bottle offers an endless supply of something; in this case, an endless supply of clean potable water. It never runs out. Drink as much as you want; when you tip it back, there is always something to drink. The catch is, it’ll only dispense water that you actually drink. What I mean is, it won’t pour water out unless it is into your mouth, and subsequently swallowed. You can’t even pour it in a cup and then drink it. And you can’t fake it out. The magic knows your heart; it will only dispense water that you swallow. Or that someone else swallows. Presumably this limitation is in place to prevent the bottle from upsetting ecosystems.

On the other side of the coin, you can’t pour anything into the bottle. If you try, the liquid will just deflect from the mouth of the bottle and run down the outsides. Also, if you submerge the bottle with the lid off, it won’t take on any of the liquid it’s submerged in. Non-liquids cannot be forced into the bottle either.

About the Magic

Shower Idealizer
Item
This is a small doohickey. It can take any appearance; usually you’ll see them as a haphazard cluster of gemstones set in some kind of metal, usually something rust-proof. Most common color scheme is green, white, and silver. That color combo has culturally been the default color scheme for Shower Idealizers, at least here in the States. I’ve read that UK Shower Idealizers tend to be green, blue, and silver. But whatever. There are no rules; color schemes are used for doohickeys for the sake of convenience and ease of identifying, but that’s not a requirement for the item to function.

The doohickey will stick to most surfaces and won’t fall off until you pull it off with intention. I mean, a truck could shift it, but you’re unlikely to knock it off by accident.

When the Shower Idealizer is placed somewhere in a functioning shower, it does two things.

The first thing it does is regulate the temperature of the water.

A shower equipped with an Idealizer needs no warm-up time. The water will be the perfect temperature instantly. You can adjust the temperature up or down just by thinking about it, or you can think of a temperature, say 105 degrees F, and the water will adjust to the specified temperature. (The Shower Idealizer never confuses temperature scales, and always adjusts to the temperature you actually want. In the example above, you would not have been scalded to death if you had failed to specify Fahrenheit. It’s magic. It just works.)

The temperature changes take place gradually rather than abruptly. Depending on the temperature difference, an adjustment usually takes 5-15 seconds.

Throughout your shower, the temperature will remain constant unless you change it, at which point it will remain constant at the new setting until you change it again. The water is not magic; it’s the regular water that the shower would normally dispense. It’s just magically temperature corrected.

The second thing the Shower Idealizer does is purify the water.

Well, it’s not really purification. It’s idealization. It does purify the water, removing contaminants and toxins. But it also analyzes the water and can add minerals and whatnot to make the water better at being shower water. The result is a comfortable shower that leaves your skin feeling great.

If there’s a choice, you’ll want to not waste hot water and just run cold showers. They won’t really be cold, obviously — the Shower Idealizer sees to that.

Also. I almost forgot to mention. You can put the Shower Idealizer on a bathtub and draw an idealized bath. Water in the bath will be purified/idealized as it enters the tub. And water in the bath stays at or changes to the temperature you set mentally, just like when using it on the shower.

About the Magic

Thermostat
Item
This is a thermostat. It looks kinda like the classic round Honeywell thermostat (without the branding), and if you stick it on the wall of a room (more on that later), it will control the temperature in the room.

Instead of graduations, the Thermostat has a blue-red gradient that you position the needle along. The temperature range can vary by Thermostat, but generally speaking, you’re looking at a range of cold fridge to hot sauna.

When you place a Thermostat and set it, the magic exerts energy to make the room’s temperature more in line with what the thermostat says. This works similarly to a conventional furnace/air conditioner. The magic detects the temperature of the room. If it’s too cold, the magic spends energy to warm it up. Too hot? The magic spends energy to cool things down. Just like with a real thermostat, it takes some time, at least a few minutes, for the temperature to adjust.

Other factors can affect the temperature of the room, of course. An open window is the easiest example. Things like that will make the Thermostat’s job harder, but it will persevere.

Regarding the sticking of the thermostat to the wall, it feels like a moderately strong magnet to pull the thermostat off the wall and stick it back on, but it’s not magnetic; it’s magic. When I say “moderately strong”, I mean stronger than a refrigerator magnet, but not so strong that it’s actually difficult to pull off the wall with your hand. The force required to remove a thermostat varies from person to person and room to room.

When you place a thermostat on the wall, you’re basically making a proposal to the magic. You’re proposing that the “wall” (whatever form it takes) is part of a “room” (whatever form it takes) that the Thermostat can affect. If you try to use the thermostat in a way that is not valid (like if it’s too big a room, or it lacks sufficient cohesion for the magic to consider it a room), then it simply won’t stick. Adjust your environment (or find a new “room”) and try again. It’s a case-by-case, and it’s not consistent across different thermostats. Some might work in some “rooms” where others might not. Some might consider certain areas to be a part of the “room” where others might not cover those areas. You’ll just have to try it and see. That said, it’s usually pretty obvious whether or not something is a room, and in nine out of ten cases, using a Thermostat is perfectly straightforward.

If there is more than one thermostat placed in a single room, only the first one placed will function. But then if you pull that one off, control passes to whichever of the remaining thermostats was placed first.

Temperature changes are magical rather than physical, so in a room with a Thermostat installed, hot or cold temperature shifts will not happen outside of the confines of the room. This can lead to abrupt temperature shifts when entering and leaving the affected area.

About the Magic

Tree Collar
Item
This is a band of what appears to be a canvaslike material. The band is maybe a foot wide and ten feet long. You wrap the band, or tree collar, I suppose I should call it, around the trunk of a tree. The tree collar must go all the way around the tree. If the tree is too thick for the standard ten-foot tree collar to go all the way around the trunk, larger tree collars can be created. Expensively.

Anyway, what is it all for? If you’ve got a tree next to your house, say, and you’re worried about it falling over and crushing the house, if you put a tree collar on the tree, that tree (or material from it) will never damage the house.

Installing a tree collar is easy. Just wrap it loosely around the tree as well as you can, and then utter the incantation, and the tree collar will act like shrink wrap, tightening up to cleanly wrap around the tree, all fitted up nicely and everything. Wind cannot blow off a tree collar, but pranksters or animals can remove them, so it’s a good idea to check the integrity of your tree collars periodically. You can get different colored ones to match your particular house.

A tree with a tree collar can still drop branches and fall over and die and stuff. It’ll just never damage the house.

About the Magic

Disk of Force
Spell
Cast this spell, and a force field appears. It is disk-shaped, a circle a meter in diameter and an inch or so thick. The disk appears translucent, kinda milky and cloudy. It can be positioned and oriented in any way the caster see fit. It’ll stop bullets, is immovable if the caster wills it to be so (a backhoe or equivalent can shift it), and when oriented horizontally it can carry stuff, including people. Weight limit is one ton. The caster can cause the disk to move by concentrating a little bit, but it can’t move very fast. Only about as fast as a slow walk. The Disk of Force stays around until it is dismissed by the caster, or until the caster dies. It disappears if it ever is more than a hundred yards from the caster. You can only ever have one at a time.

About the Magic

Turn Signal Lever of Opportunity
Charm
Cast this charm on the turn signal lever of your car. When properly cast, the turn signal lever will take on a faint glimmering which can be easily detected if you look closely, but isn’t distracting. Henceforward, provided you use your turn signal for every turn, and provided you stop and look like a normal driver, you will never have to wait for an opening to turn. Like, say, out of a driveway, parking lot, or side street. There will be an opening every time, right away.

However, if you ever should make a turn and fail to use your turn signal, the charm is dispelled. You’ll know because it’ll stop glimmering. The charm may be recast on the same turn signal lever any number of times. The thing is, unless you’re a magic user, you’ll have to pay somebody to do the charm for you, and that isn’t cheap. A turn signal charm will usually set you back about $350. I don’t know why they cost that much; I’m not a magic user. I can just tell you what they charge.

About the Magic

Convenience Juice
Item
This is like a juice box except it’s thinner, so it can slide into a pocket easily, and the straw is built-in and never leaks. It appears to be made of some kind of cardboard, just like its mundane counterparts, but Convenience Juice is much more durable and resistant to damage. You’ll have a hell of a time cutting into the thing, for example, and even if you do, it won’t leak. Liquid only ever comes out of the straw, and only then if it’s going into a living human mouth.

Furthermore, it never runs out of juice. Further furthermore, the juice is whatever flavor you want. Apple, orange, grape, etc. Whatever you feel like, you can mentally request it before you put your mouth on the straw, and then that flavor of juice will be dispensed to you. It has to be fruit juice. It won’t dispense anything else.

The first Convenience Juices were limited, in that they would only dispense so much juice in a 24-hour period. These were (and still are) generally geared towards children, so they don’t make themselves sick drinking too much juice. Later, versions for adults were created that removed the limit.

Convenience Juice was invented in 1980 by Jane Gross, a kindergarten teacher and amateur artificer. It was a rare case of a magic item developed by an amateur that became popular worldwide, particularly in the education industry.

About the Magic