Smoke Pencils

These pencils were created for use in the colleges of magic during the second age. Once one end is lit the pencil will produce coloured smoke which can be used to write or draw in the air. Unless there is a strong breeze, the smoke will remain in place for up to 3 hours. Most smoke pencils can only produce 1 colour of smoke, but some rarer ones can prodice up to 3 colours. A smoke pencil can produce smoke for up to 1 hour before it is consumed. They can be extinguished and relit as necessary until the pencil has produced smoke for a total of 1 hour.
The pencils were first created by Bronwyn Haversham, a lecturer at the College of Transmutation, as a way to show her students how to enchant items. Initially there was only a single colour of pencil, but some of the more ambitious students took to experimenting with the spells to see what other effects they could produce. Not all these experiments worked but the spell formulas for those that did were made available to the next sessions batch of students. Bronwyn gradually built up a supply of these pencils and began sharing them with other lecturers. The pencils quickly grew in popularity when the lecturers found that arcane symbols could be drawn with the smoke with no chance of activating a spell. This made them incredibly useful for demonstrating spell diagrams, and provided a safer way for students to practive drawing their own formulas.
Almost overnight the pencils became the new must have item in wizarding circles, and creating the pencils became a regular task for students at the college of transmutation. While this provided a boost to the income of that college they were unable to keep up with demand, and the other colleges petitioned the mages' council to force the transmuters to share the spell formula for the pencils. The council agreed and students at every college were put to work making the pencils.
While relatively common in the second age, the pencils were designed to be consumed on use and are easily destroyed by fire so few have survived to the fourth age. Adventurers frequently ignore the ones that are found, or use them as normal pencils unless they have a wizard with them who knows about such things. As magic is currently taught through a master/apprentice system rather than in schools there has been little demand for the pencils and as yet there has been little incentive for anyone to try to recreate the process for making these pencils.

Manufacturer

Colleges of Magic