20 Dusts

Pigments for sale in Goa, India. Photo by Dan Brady, Wikimedia Commons.

1: Dust of Disappearance. The all-time family favorite for decades! Renders objects or creatures temporarily transparent to visual rays, causing them to be invisible.
2: Dust of Dispersal. Though physically lightweight, this magical dust is so dense as to distort the local fabric of space. Causes targets to teleport short distances in random directions.
3: Dust of Discussion. A soothing perfumed incense with a calming, soporific effect. While it burns, encounters have a greater chance to react favorably.
4: Dust of Disturbance. A potent hallucinogenic drug derived from crematory ashes. Induces terrifying visions, duplicating a Cause Fear spell.
5: Dust of Dismemberment. A metallic powder composed of countless tiny razor-sharp blades. Must be handled with a metal gauntlet or thick leather glove, as it wounds any exposed flesh.
6: Dust of Disgust. A horrible nerve agent absorbed through the skin. Causes itching, nausea, chills, loss of constitution, vomiting, and all manner of horrible physical symptoms.
7: Dust of Discovery. Each individual granule is painstakingly coated in gunmetal-blue wizardly ink. When cast at an invisible entity, the inky particles cling to it, allowing its silhouette to be seen.
8: Dust of Disrepair. The dormant sporelings of ravenous magical fungi, similar to yeast. They cannot feed on living matter, but will eat through any dead organic material - they can destroy a wooden door entirely (except its metal locks, hinges, &c.) in a single turn.
9: Dust of Disaster. Made from the crushed wings of that most dire of omens - the butterfly. In 1d100 months, a terrible natural catastrophe (hurricane, earthquake, vampire, thaumatomic bomb, &c.) will befall the location where it was sprinkled.
10: Dust of Disarray. The shed skin cells of brownies, domovoi, and other household spirits. Sprinkling over an organized assortment of items will cause them to immediately become jumbled at random.
11: Dust of Disconnection. Tiny, specialized spatial portals permeable only to living creatures. Sprinkling or rubbing on a joint allows a portion of the body (finger, arm, leg, head, and so forth) to 'detach' from the rest and move independently, an effect that is profoundly upsetting to the recipient.
12: Dust of Discordance. This is not a pitch-black, deathly cold dust left behind by concepts annihilated from reality. It is, however, a powder of crystalized fragments of pure sound, creating a terrible clamor whenever it lands against a surface other than its magical velvet carrying pouch.
13: Dust of Disembodiment. Shavings of skymetal from the astral plane, imported at considerable risk and expense (or so the merchants who command extravagant prices for it claim). Snort it, and you can project your consciousness into higher spheres - your body remains in the material world, however.
14: Dust of Disencumbrance. A substance so light, it actually has negative weight! Carrying a pouch will reduce the weight (but NOT the volume!) of your carried equipment.
15: Dust of Disintegration. Beware this agglomeration of miniature spheres of annihilation! Though the scale of the destruction they can inflict at a touch is smaller, it is just as utter and just as painful.
16: Dust of Disinfection. A society of generally cooperative Poindrones, the least of Modrons. If quickly applied to an envenomed or diseased creature, they can scrub the system utterly of toxins, curing the symptoms and leaving the area cold and unnaturally pale for several weeks.
17: Dust of Disorientation. A parasitic colonial organism that takes root in the inner ear. If blown or thrown at an opponent's face, it will burrow into them, disrupting their sense of balance and severely limiting their motor control.
18: Dust of Distillation. A fine sediment originally discovered in the vats of Siegmund, the first alchemist. When mixed with a potion, the liquid component is evaporated, leaving a solid residue with doubly potent effects. However, the process of properly ingesting this residue (by carefully applying to the gums and nasal membranes) takes a full turn.
19: Dust of Diseasedness. A culture of horrific deeply infectious hell-bacteria, causing a nightmarish contagious illness that causes the living skin to fall off like flaking dandruff. The bacteria and the contaminated victim's remains both linger in the air - unless a gas mask and full protective clothing is worn, it is quite likely to backfire on the user and any allies.
20: Dust of Disappointment. It's... just dust.

The Seas of Heaven and the Moons of Hell

    Heaven has seas deeper and stranger than the world of men. Just as the land issued forth from the primal unformed waters, so did the pillared halls and wide promenades of Heaven rise from depths you could scarce fathom. Where the earthly sea grows dark, Heaven's grows ever brighter: you can see as clear as day whenever you are below, and as you dive deeper it grows so intense that you must wrap your head in layers of sackcloth to avoid going blind. At the very floor, the boundary between light and water blurs, dissolves - both are one, a sea of liquid brightness surrounding you as beings of graces far stranger than the ones on land swim and scuttle and writhe. The deepest of trenches lead directly into the Positive Energy Plane, the realm of pure Phlogiston, the axiomatic and undeniable substance. It is impossible to return from these deep vents if you return - to perceive Phlogiston's burning beauty is to be filled with the blessed and pure truth of it, and both your mind and body will turn to more of the perfect and colorless solid light.

Tranquil statues, not shaped by any human hand but merely present, are recognizable features of the shallows. Also commonly encountered is the bishop-fish.

Angelic fauna of the bright abyss (1d8):
1: Towering faceless humanoid formed of pure ivory. Ponderous footfalls. Occasionally digs into the glittering sand as if searching for something buried.
2: 50-foot feathered eel, with a serene death mask for a head. Pulsating veins of bright colors shift beneath its plumage.
3: Immaculately formed septopus, each arm bearing a tablet with the name of a forgotten god. Each can be used as a scroll of a 5th-level clerical spell, but mortal men turn to clay after 1 such use.
4: Five-mouthed colorless flame, razor teeth dribbling gold venom. Save vs. poison or be purified of sins you have no word for.
5: Man-sized barnacle in a shell of marble, filigreed in gold. Its cirri could be used as bladed whips. May portend a phlogiston vent.
6: Scuttling silver crustacean, four eyes alive with terrible energies. Speak a command in an ancient tongue, and it will unerringly seek out 1 living creature anywhere in creation.
7: Predatory fish, stained-glass skin pulled taut over intricate metallic skeleton. The beautiful scenes it depicts do not ease the pain of the deep lacerations it can inflict.
8: Gelatinous colonial organism of morally pure subsapient souls. Though its form is malleable and of many bodies, most often it is shaped like a gentle hand.

    Hell is the place where Negative Energy moves from potentia into definite physical form. The boundless black sky of the void is a place of pure might-and-could-be - anything COULD lurk in the darkness - but to become real, it must shed some of its purity and take on a true and knowable shape. This process is strange and often upsetting to the minds that descend from the Negative Energy Plane to become demons - if their efforts are not rudimentary and feeble, they are liable to be hideously distorted, loathsome both to look upon and to occupy. It is said that the great lights of the countless moons in Hell's eternal night are the eldest to have passed into Being, and they swirl and jockey for position in the firmament in an elaborate and endless dance of celestial politics.

The names of countless moons are recorded in Hell's chronicles - Allabar, Remina, Atropus - but some are known by many courtesy names, and some are long-dead or yet to be born.

Which Moon shines brightest in this part of Hell? 1d8:
1: Nicator, coldest and most covetous. Spilt blood freezes into blades.
2: Urb'luu, whose solemn green light shrivels tongues. No words may be spoken under it.
3: Murmur, the forgiving and timeless. Whenever a roll is made, roll twice and use either result.
4: Gurthang, darker than the night sky around it. None who die beneath it can ever return by any means.
5: Zkauba, clamorous self-devouring catastrophe. Any damage prompts a morale check as the wound erupts into writhing gore-tendrils.
6: G'broagfran, patron of poisoners, arsonists, and weavers. In your dreams, you see a masked and bound figure. You may ask one question of them - their answer will be a lie.
7: Quine, who calls thousands of thousands of beetles to coat all available surfaces. They bite at exposed skin.
8: Sárku, thrice-shattered mirror. Its sickly purple glow turns organic forms into rigid angles.