A big encyclopedia that details lore and a pretty in-depth magic system. The focus is on making it visual, like a good discovery magazine book type format.
Also contains things such as recipes and short stories. These short stories are self-contained but hint at underlying mysteries of the world and are all secretly connected together into a central plot.
The narrator of the encyclopedia starts out objective, but this slowly starts to slip as things worsen in their life, eventually culminating in something akin to psychosis -- it turns into more of a horror book near the end as things come to fruition.
I'd want to self-publish the book. No publisher in their right mind is going to publish this. I think it would be pretty marketable on worldbuilding/conworlding communities though; I already have a decent following on zompist that I could tap into.
Definitely ties into the backdrop of the dodecaverse, and that might be a central plot point.
Humans lack magic abilities of their own. They used to have them, but something happened (might be one of those central-plot mysteries).
Magic is instead performed via enchanted objects, most likely jewelry worn by the wizard. These have specific effects that target an object, entity or the environment.
Potions are also in use that temporarily alter the wizard in various ways. Potionmaking is highly tricky and temperamental.
Enchantments are made with the following ingredients:
A magical object that serves as a source of magical power. This is generally an extract of a magical creature that's also useful in potionmaking, though for more advanced stuff it might require killing the creature outright. It can also come from high-magic objects or even other Enchantments can be cannibalize.
A Scroll, which contains the Runes which are a type of written/visual language that direct the spell of the enchantment to do various things. Scrolls are written and then burned during the enchantment ceremony.
A Grimoire which contains the runes used. Grimoires are magical objects in their own right but this power is entirely self-contained and can't be tapped into. Grimoires can be written in by magical quills, allowing new runes to be formed or existing ones changed. Their use is also triggered by fire, but this doesn't harm the grimoire.
The actual Enchanting process is relatively easy and can be done anywhere. Wizards will therefore carry "blanks" on their person that they can write arbitrary spells into as needed.
Grimoires can absorb bits of knowledge from other grimoires, allowing wizards to share their spells collaboratively. This often costs a bunch of money. Very complex spells will take up multiple pages, culminating in a single new unique rune which can be used on scrolls.
All actions taken on grimoires and scrolls (which can be *any* form of burnable writing -- paper, bark, etc) make use of something called a Quill, which requires the feather of a magical bird such as a Roc and an ink source from a magical plant or animal such as blood or berry juice. Once crafted it has infinite ink. Quillmaking is relatively easy and can also be done anywhere.
The actual burning process can be any source of fire. Objects or Enchantments are usually used. Phoenix quills are particularly useful as they auto-burn scrolls when written on.
Wizard battles are pretty nuts and definitely something I'd want to explore. There's a lot of spells used, a lot of environmental effects, and things like potions complicate things as well. The goal is knocking out or killing the other wizard, or otherwise making them incapable of using magic.
