Nothing beats the personal touch. As mentioned earlier, machines provide a vital edge to mages who want to get things done. Machines created by the mage himself, however, embody a bit of that creator’s Enlightenment, manifesting it as a potentially powerful device.

Strictly speaking, a gadget is a minor machine that performs a specific function once and then burns out. An invention may be any device that’s been hand-crafted by the inventor himself; a one-of-a-kind machine, it’s probably the experimental prototype for a planned line of similar devices, with all the bugs and quirks that such prototypes display. Unlike the capital-D Devices described later in The Toybox, these creations don’t necessarily have innate technomagick built into them. As focus instruments, they provide mechanical vectors for the creator’s Enlightened Science.

Because such devices share a personal connection to their inventor, these tools count as personal and unique instruments (see pp.587-588) when they’re being used by the mage who created them. They count as simply unique instruments in the hands of allied characters, and they probably don’t work at all for characters who don’t share the inventor’s view of reality. In game terms, a mage using his own inventions and gadgets reduces his difficulty by -2, his trusted associates reduce it by -1, and strangers find themselves unable to make heads or tails of the device.

Technocrats who enjoy a special relationship with Q Division might wind up with experimental gadgets and inventions – see the Secret Weapons Background in Chapter Six. Etherite allies and other mystic characters could be trusted (or tasked) with a special gadget from a technomancer whose imagination exceeds his courage. Hopefully, that inventor takes the time to explain how the machine’s supposed to work; otherwise, the guinea pig might find herself with a lump of worthless junk in her hands just when she needs it most…