I didn't make this in the solo journey board for two main reasons:
- I wanted to have others react to it. This will allow for consequences from having Sylpha's actions being figured out by the Relic crew from the Azog thread, to reactions and encouragement/discouragement from sharing more of these creations online due to trolls or whatever.
- Obviously, developments in Sylpha's real life work are meant to be kept in a separate solo journey thread. This is for presenting to the game community, rather than to her boss.
Thank you for your understanding.
Standing in the kitchen, Erica watched a saucepan boil with a mixture containing isomalt and tonic water. With a thermometer stuck into the saucepan, she was left to her thoughts as she stirred the bubbling mixture.
Today she was going to do what she had set out to do the moment she started playing Terrasphere: Make things based on the sights she's seen. Her own boss made things inspired by nail art of all things, so Erica should have a much easier time doing it since she had screenshots of the fantastical object from the game.
As the isomalt finished boiling, Erica took the saucepan off the heat added the blue food coloring, stirring it into the mixture to produce a shade of blue. Once it had been thoroughly mixed into the isomalt, she dumped it out onto a special rubber-like mat to cool. As she was at home, nobody was around to see her do this, but even if they did, they would not know what she was creating, anyway. Even if they played Terrasphere, only a select number of people who got the luck to see this might make the association between the color and the specific item in the game.
Readying a hand operated air pump, Erica equipped a pair of gloves and waited for the isomalt to cool down. Going back to a computer the half Japanese half Scottish woman checked the screen to refer to the image file taken from the game, cross referencing it to the isomalt mixture she had created. It looked close enough to the item she was intending to replicate and was likely going to look closer once she pumped some air into said mixture. With an understanding of what she was making and what she was about to do, she went back into the kitchen and washed her candy thermometer as the last few moments passed for the cooling of her isomalt mixture.
Once that was done, she used the mat to fold her mixture to change it into a texture more similar to putty than molten candy. Erica would fold it several times in order to gather the mixture into a mass she could pick up with one hand. Once that was done, she picked it up and rolled it into an oblong shape, which she then pressed over the rubber tube connected to the air pump. From there, she would pick up her air pump in one hand, end of the tube in the other and raise it into the air as she began to squeeze the pump to blow air into the mixture. As the blue mixture expanded slowly, Erica rolled the mixture and allowed gravity to help control the expansion in the direction she desired.
Slowly, a sphere would begin to form. A blue sphere was something much more recognizable in the game, but it was still something only few people would recognize. Other than Erica, only three other people would understand what it was. At least, until Erica decided to release the screenshot online.
The Orb of Idna: the relic that played a pivotal role in the defeat of Azog the Prince of Fire.
It didn't look like much: If one took away all the magic to it, it was just a glowing blue orb. Unless the glow was part of the magic, too, then it was just a blue orb.
When the expansion was done, she pulled the orb off the tube with a twisting motion and left it to cool on the rubber mat. In the meantime, she would be washing up everything else before readying the camera and black light.
I tried making it in real life.
<Attachment: Idna's Orb.jpg>
(A combined image was attached: The top side being screenshot of a glowing blue orb held in someone's hands with their blue sleeves as an identifying factor. The bottom is a real-life picture not-so-glowy crystalline orb of similar size made of isomalt with a hand for size comparison set against the background of a kitchen.)
But just one picture wasn't going to be enough for the Japanese-Scottish woman. In the same thread she made, she created a follow-up post.
Glows in dark, too.
<Attachment: Idna's Orb2.jpg>
(The lights in the previous image was replaced with a black light, causing the orb to glow blue in a more neon-like shade. The color was clearly a slight few shades off.)
