Writober! Torches! Shadowdark Post-a-Day In October

This month is a new Drawtober: 31 drawing prompts related to the Shadowdark RPG, 1 a day, each day through October. But I’m borrowing the daily drawing prompts for a series of writing prompts. They’ll usually be short. Today’s prompt is Torches.

Torches make for great 1-use area spell effect magic items.  Much like a potion is a great way to encapsulate a spell in an item for a later single use, you can make a torch (or lantern oil for that matter) a way to have a single uses of an area of effect spell. The torches should also give off light as well as the spell effect.

Good candidate spells to be made into torches are:

• Alarm: This torch’s light lasts 1 hour, then it gives off a bit of smoke as the magic effect lasts  7 more hours. The last person to have touched it hears the alarm.
• Detect Magic: Lasts one hour or until dropped. Magic items glow in its light, and the bearer learns their properties if they focus for two rounds.
• Detect Thoughts: Lasts one hour or until dropped. May only be used on one target.
• Illusion: Lasts one hour or until dropped. The illusion must be in the torch’s light area.
• Magic Circle: Lasts one hour or until dropped.
• Plane Shift: Spell effect only occurs when a command word is spoken. For the rest of the hour it is a normal torch.
• Resilient Sphere: While the light lasts one hour, the spell effect only lasts 5 rounds, beginning when the bearer speaks a command word.
• Silence: Lasts one hour or until dropped.
• Zone of Truth: Lasts one hour or until dropped.

Many of the spells have a ‘focus’ requirement which is why these torches spell effects end when the torch is dropped.

A torch of the light spell doesn’t make sense because of course the torch itself does that.