Bottle Tower of Grimnyth the Great

This item is mentioned in many grimoires on magic as a supreme example of the art of wizardry, but its present whereabouts are unknown and there are many scholars who doubt its existence. Although it is not listed in the central registry of magical artifacts in Altdorf, it does appear in at least three folk-tales and one rather bawdy ballad.

The item takes the form of a beautiful, gracefully tapering bottle made of curiously tough blue crystal that seems impervious to breakage. The top of the bottle is sealed and around the neck are six brass finger-rings, which fit snugly and do not fall off unless gently pulled. A person taking one of these rings and putting it on will suddenly find themselves transported, along with everything they are carrying, to a round room in a tower with glowing blue walls. It may take some time for the person so transported to realise that they are now within the bottle.

While inside the bottle, the inhabitants are impervious to harm - the bottle can be shaken, dropped in the deepest ocean, thrown in a fire, etc., and those inside will feel nothing. Unfortunately, they also have no way of knowing what is going on outside the bottle.

The inside of the bottle consists of five floors, linked by a central spiral staircase. As long as the person in the bottle keeps the ring on, they will remain inside, but if they take the ring off, they will reappear beside the bottle. The ring will return outside with them, either in the hand of the person who was wearing it or, if for some reason that is impossible, then it will be on the neck of the bottle.

The five floors of the bottle are as follows:

Entry Floor: This is a wide round room, with four bunk beds against one wall, a table, and a few chairs. As with all the floors, a spiral stairwell runs through the centre of the room. It is, in effect, a guardroom. This is where people putting on a ring will appear.

Basement: This is the floor below the entry floor. It is given over to storage space, containing chests, trunks, old boxes, stuffed crocodiles, rocking horses, and so on, all of it with signs of having been here for years. There could be all manner of interesting articles hidden away for anyone who has the patience to search through years of accumulated junk. It is said that the contents of the room are subtly different each time it is entered.

First Floor: The floor above the entry floor was the wizard Grimnyth's living quarters. It is luxuriously furnished, with carpets and tapestries from Araby, comfortable sofas, a four-poster bed, and so on. One section of the room is partitioned off and contains a privy. The privy seems to open, by some strange magic portal, a hundred feet above the Northern Chaos Wastes. This may have been an obscure joke on Grimnyth's part, but bottle-dwellers are advised to keep the privy lid closed when not using it.

Second Floor: This floor is a library. The walls are covered from floor to ceiling in bookshelves, containing some of the rarest and most interesting magical books in the Old World, as well as a selection on history, studies of other races, fiction, poetry, and plays. The upper shelves are reached by a ladder that runs on rails around the wall.

Third Floor: This was Grimnyth's alchemical laboratory and contains a splendid collection of ingredients, equipment, and volumes on alchemy. In the centre of the room, on a pedestal, is a crystal orb. If this can be persuaded to work, it allows the viewer to see what is happening outside the bottle, but the knowledge of its use was lost when Grimnyth disappeared. It is possible that Grimnyth had another ring and that, one day, he (or whoever has it now) will reappear to take back possession of the bottle.

Source
[[Category:B]] [[Category:T]] [[Category:G]]
 * Warhammer Fantasy RPG 1st ED -- Realms of Sorcery
 * pg. 161
 * pg. 162