Making Breakable Containers  

 

Merchants

Making Breakable Containers
by Hiloan

This isn't something that I
get a lot of call for, but 
considering that I was 
forced to do this research,
I may as well share it with
all of you just in case you
suffer the same demands 
that I did.
 
Some people think that it 
is a good thing to throw 
pottery at other people. 
I, of course, find it 
shameful and wasteful. I, 
therefore, developed a 
bottle just for such 
lunacy. My fervent hope is
that these bottles will 
replace vials, mugs, steins
and other lovely drinkware 
in experiments by lunatic  
alchemists. Surely you 
know one yourself.

I have designed three 
sketches that should 
suffice. One is a simple 
bottle with indentations 
for fingers to grip. The 
sketch is almost 
superfluous, as anyone can 
simply grasp the bottle 
near the end of its  
creation, but use it anyway
to be safe. The second 
sketch is for a spherical 
bottle. It seems that a 
round object is easier to 
toss for a greater distance
than a simple bottle, no 
matter how easy it is to 
grip. Of course I thought 
to combine the two ideas 
and have devised a sketch 
for a spherical bottle with 
grips for fingers. The 
lunatic alchemist seemed 
most pleased with this 
design.

The only other 
consideration was that the 
bottles did not break 
easily enough for 
pottery-flinging fools. 
The spherical ones, in 
particular, proved rather  
sturdy. I tried to infuse 
air into the clay, hoping 
to leave the product more 
fragile, but all attempts 
to do so produced very 
unreliable results. Then I
discovered this spring 
water, brought to me by an 
adventuring friend of mine.
It bubbles constantly! If
you work with this water 
instead of the usual stuff, 
you will find that you can 
work even amounts of air 
into the clay for a rather 
uniform result. I found 
this to work well, but not 
well enough. The mixture 
needed something gritty 
that would fail to blend 
well with the clay 
(horrible idea, I know). A
kirin horn, ground 
properly, will do this  
nicely. It makes the clay 
more likely to break up on 
impact.

Once you have created the 
bottle, fire as usual. 
Then hide the good pottery 
and call over your 
alchemist friend. Give him
enough of these bottles to 
keep him busy for a few 
weeks so that you can get
back to work