The Ten Foot Pole Store

Read this post as if it's a goofy merchant character trying to sell you something. Prices are given in ten-foot-pole-equivalents.

Ten-foot poles:

Ten-foot pole - 1 - it's a pole, about ten feet long. Cumbersome but useful.

Decempeda - 1.5 - it's a pole, exactly ten feet long. Perfect for precise measuring, still cumbersome.

Jointed ten-foot pole - 2 - Unscrews at three points so it can fit in a pack or something. Can be separated into four 2.5 foot poles. Takes a minute or so to set up and pack up. If you buy multiple you can construct a longer pole with the parts! But the ends only have one joint, so you only get 5 extra feet per additional pole.

Folding ten-foot pole - 2 - Folds up in a zig-zaggy pattern with joints that lock. Quicker to fold and unfold than the standard jointed model, but can't be separated into four 2.5 foot poles.

Telescoping ten-foot pole - 4 - Very quick and easy to extend, but a bit flimsy. You can swing it to open it and you will look very cool.

Elastic ten-foot pole - 10 - Can be bent all the way round so that it touches end-to-end and still spring back into shape. Could be considered a minor magic item, as the material it is made of is fantastical in nature.

Other ten-foot products:

Ten-foot ladder - 1.5 - Two ten-foot poles connected by a bunch of rungs. Probably useless, to be honest.

Ten-foot rope - 2 - An amazing pole that can twist and bend in any direction!

Ten-foot chain - 20 - Like the ten-foot rope but metal!

Ten feet - 1 - From rabbits. Very lucky. Enough to share.

Magical ten-foot items:

He probably doesn't have all of these on hand - maybe the ones he doesn't have are legends he is seeking.

Staff of Ten-Footness - 100 - Once per day, a successful DC 15 spell check makes anything shorter than ten feet expand to ten feet long. Now I know what you're thinking, and I will not be liable for any damages!

Immoveable ten-foot pole - 250 - The infamous immoveable rod but ten feet long. Very dangerous.

Sun's Pole - 3000 - Extends and contracts at the will of the holder, but is very heavy. Has seemingly no upper limit on length.

Platonic ideal potions

Alchemists of old used to work with materials. They tried to turn iron into gold and find cures for ailments. These are still valid pursuits, of course, though medicine these days is left to the apothecaries and creating valuables from trash tends to require more magical capability than most are willing to sell their soul for.

Modern alchemy focuses instead on the abstract. Rather than distilling and modifying things, the art has moved on to distilling capital "T" Things. The ideas and concepts of our world rather than mere substances that exist within it. Ask a carpenter if you want a chair. Ask an alchemist if you want the very essence of chairness.

What's in this health potion? Why, health, of course.

A potion is the purified, liquified, and conveniently bottled essence of a concept. Drinking a strength potion simply makes the imbiber become more like the concept of "strength". A love potion makes a person love, and a health potion makes a person healthy. It is that simple. It's not always necessary to drink the potion - a bottle smashed open to quickly coat a substance can have the desired effect. This is a much more practical use for a potion of burning than drinking it. Trust me.

Potions of water breathing are often actually potions of fish. It is imperative not to screw up the dosage on that one.

It is even possible to brew a death potion - a substance which will kill, but will not show any signs of poisoning or any discernible cause of death. The drinker simply becomes dead. Equally possible and significantly more horrifying (or hilarious, depending on your perspective) are the results of drinking a potion of chairness.

The very same mechanism that allows potions to work is also what makes them so dangerous. Typically, ideals will come from a variety of ingredients and must be carefully distilled. Any number of other ontological contaminants can distort the effects, giving the appearance of chaotic unreliability. In reality, the reason your luck potion accidentally melted the person who drank it was because water is a primary ingredient, and wateriness was the concept that ended up being distilled. Honestly, it was an amateur mistake to even attempt to distill luck.

You can use a list of random concepts such as the one I threw together for freeform magic to come up with endless ideas for potions.

The Make Potion spell (DCC RPG p. 223) is one method of distilling concepts into liquid, though as with all magic, many of those casters of the spell do not understand what it is truly doing.