The Diadem of Medea
Excerpt from the Book of Shadows of Sapphire Circe*:
Dear BoS, The "Diadem of making far things near" sounds like a very useful magical artifact. My mentor, WOW, advised me before she moved on to the next life that I should try for something useful as my second magical artifact, not a weapon or piece of armor. In a sense it will be my first, because WOW did most of the work in crafting my Belt of Binding, which is great for binding spells. No complaints there. I'm kinda on the fence, BoS, because a magical artifact which is a method of transportation would be even more useful. Written legends speak of flying carpets, winged horses, and cloaks of levitation. But those would all be pretty flagrant, and one of the rules of magic is that working within Nature's laws always has less cost and less risk of unintended consequences than something flagrant. So this is just about as good, I mean, bring distant objects to me instead of flying myself through the air to get them. Want to get a frisbee off the roof? Easy. No need to fly up there. This story in the book says the diadem was last seen guarded by a minotaur in... I think it was the island of Crete. WOW was pretty sure the minotaur couldn't have lived this long, even if Theseus didn't kill it, and it probably didn't have little baby minotaurs, so that means there is an unguarded magical artifact in Crete. That's a fairly touristy destination, so I could easily enough get a plane ticket. I need to do more research online to see what the minotaur's labyrinth looks like from satellite photos before I head out and find I need earth moving equipment. This diadem supposedly was owned by Medea, the powerful witch who helped Jason find the Golden Fleece and escape with it, (niece of Circe, another powerful witch/goddess/nymph/or-whatever-you-want-to-call-us). Ya know, she gave him so much help it's a wonder she didn't just go get it herself, which she totally could have done, but I guess Jason wouldn't have appreciated it so much if she just gave it to him. Not that that saved their marriage. But if some hole ass wants to trade you in for a younger model, then I don't guess there's much you can do about it besides set her on fire. So, none of the publicly available translations of the legends of Jason and the Argonauts mention how Medea did what she did, but witches of the Wiccan tradition will recognize her results as typical spells any witch can cast, home-made sunscreen lotion to resist burning, charm to make animals friendly, sleeping potion, et cetera. Like any legends, the storytellers only tell of the successes, and not the times you get "sadder but wiser" as the result of your spell. So anyway, if Medea had this Diadem which can be used to summon far things near, if she could make wormholes in space, then that would explain how she got such good results from several of her more flagrant spells. Pulling the plug on the bronze robot, Talos, would have been easy enough just by making the plug near while Talos stayed far. And one of the weirder ones. She and her husband Jason were fleeing with the treasures, and her big brother, Absyrtus, shows up at the most inconvenient time as big brothers are apt to do. So she chops her brother up into pieces, as little sisters are apt to do. Then when her father is chasing them down the road with his armies, she tosses the pieces of her brother on the roadside, and her father has to stop racing to pick up the pieces. Well now, that is directly stolen out of the legend of the footrace of Atalanta and Hippomenes. I just don't know if it was a playwright or Medea who stole the idea. So if she used her diadem to bring her brother's arm nearer, and then his leg, et cetera, then he would appear to be in pieces, but he would still be alive, just warped through space, until she ended the spell, and then he would pop back into one piece fully alive. At least, that's my theory. That would explain why the father took the time to collect all the pieces instead of just being mad at her for killing her brother and chasing faster. Now all the legends say the brother died and stayed dead, but maybe he just didn't do anything else of historical significance. And then years later, there's another example. Medea chops up a ram and puts the pieces in a pot with secret magic herbs and spices, and Poof!, out pops the ram all young and fresh and dancing around. And she shows that to 3 princesses that asked her to make their dad younger, but she doesn't like the guy, so she tells them, "Just do that," and they chop up the guy for reals and throw the pieces in the pot, but this time he's real dead. The diadem could have totally made that fakearoo look totally convincing. I think it's real. Some stories are just stories, but I think this one is real.
Item type
Clothing / Accessory
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