Magic Places

[David Bofinger]

I thought we could start a thread of strange places, analogous to "Show Me the Magic".

Warty

Warty is a house-sized building of an unknown but hard material. A window at the front will accept a broken object as long as it is accompanied by some kind of paperwork - a child's scrawl in crayon is more than sufficient. Some objects will not be accepted, no one knows why.

The object will then usually be fixed. Wizards say probably by casting Repair, Restore Device and Scour, though a few devices have been fixed even after those failed.

Anyone wishing to pick the item up must have the correct paperwork. Nobody has ever figured out what that looks like. Fortunately it's been found that if you wear a royal blue cap and jacket, and tell Warty, "I am picking up unclaimed items for the charity auction," it will give you whatever it has had for at least fourteen days.

The window is open only for about eight hours during the day, five days a week, and not on certain days presumed to be holy to the gods that made Warty. The window also closes if enough items have been put in. Generally it might repair half a dozen items a day, though it depends on size and complexity and either incomprehensible criteria or randomness.

Warty can defend itself. One of its methods of defence is to turn intruders to stone and spit them out. Locals refer to this petrifaction as "fixing".

There used to be a strange road leading to Warty but it was eaten by stone beetles.

The name derives from letters "Warr--ty" which early drawings show were above the window but all have now been prised off and sold by treasure hunters. A few of the letters in museums may be genuine.