Notebugs and Bookflowers
The books of Etherheim are created by bestowing enchantments upon any variety of flower, thus creating a bookflower. Bookflowers often grow much larger than their non-enchanted counterparts (although small bookflowers do exist) and their petals are resistant to various forms of damage including tearing, burning, waterlogging, etc. Sippers are able to write on the petal's surface by using their glamour magic, while other races can do the same with special ink.
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Depending on how you touch the bookflower, a different enchantment is activated to aid in writing or reading. Touching the topside of a petal causes the color to bleed away until becoming off-white, while touching the underside triggers the whole flower to shift into a more book-like arrangement. Both changes are completely temporary and will revert back after a few minutes.
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Plucking a flower from its stem will complete it, triggering a final shift into book shape, which can then be arranged, trimmed, and bound in leather or other material for further durability. Bookflowers processed in this way greatly resemble traditional earth books.
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Bookflowers remain alive indefinitely, and grow more petals or flowerheads as its pages are filled. While normally grounded (literally), they can be dug up and moved around, usually with a small pouch of water or soil tied around the roots.
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Any completed books, even processed ones, can develop a bookmark-like seedpod. Seeds from these can be used to grow the exact same bookflower, ink and all, allowing for copies of books to be grown and distributed. Coming across a stray bookflower seed can be quite exciting, since it's always a surprise what sort of book you'll end up with.
to be continued...I'd like to finished more illustrations for notebugs in the future, in particular I'd like to show how they look when writing is on their wings! For now, this is just space filler.
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NotebugsBookflowers are plagued by notebugs, small creatures that resemble moths or butterflies. They can steal writing straight off a petal by rubbing their fuzzy-tipped proboscis on them, which transfers the words onto their wings! Doing so raises the notebug's intelligence, something that can be advantageous for them in the wild. However, you might still convince one to return any pilfered writing by adopting them into your care. A notebug is innately aware of the meaning behind words or drawings that it carries, and may be affected by them. For example, notebugs who take words from romantic poetry may be overcome by giddy feelings, like the ones pictured below
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