Kuroth's Quill

Kuroth's Quill is a powerful artifact, in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game.

Publication history

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition (1977-1988)

Kuroth's Quill was first described in the original 1979 Dungeon Master's Guide.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition (1989-1999)

Kuroth's Quill was further developed in 1993's Book of Artifacts.

Description

Kuroth's Quill is an artifact, a quill pen made from a white feather taken from the wing of a full-grown male griffon, with a writing nib made of gold. The Quill's user can magically read any writing in any language. In an alternate version presented in the Book of Artifacts, the user can alter reality simply by using the Quill to write whatever he wishes to happen on a piece of parchment.

Kuroth is said to have stolen the Quill from the tower of the lich Baalice, who created it. After Kuroth, the Quill passed from hand to hand, including a caravan driver and a merchant named Sharmana, who accidentally used it to turn his daughter into a shambling undead horror.

Quill

A quill pen is a writing implement made from a moulted flight feather (preferably a primary wing-feather) of a large bird. Quills were used for writing with ink before the invention of the dip pen, the metal-nibbed pen, the fountain pen, and, eventually, the ballpoint pen. The hand-cut goose quill is rarely used as a calligraphy tool, because many papers are now derived from wood pulp and wear down the quill very quickly. However, it is still the tool of choice for a few professionals and provides an unmatched sharp stroke as well as greater flexibility than a steel pen.

In a carefully prepared quill the slit does not widen through wetting and drying with ink. It will retain its shape adequately and only requires infrequent sharpening and can be used time and time again until there is little left of it. The hollow shaft of the feather (the calamus) acts as an ink reservoir and ink flows to the tip by capillary action.

The strongest quills come from the primary flight feathers discarded by birds during their annual moult. Generally the left wing (it is supposed) is favored by the right-handed majority of writers because the feather curves away from the sight line, over the back of the hand. The quill barrel is cut to six or seven inches in length, so no such consideration of curvature or 'sight-line' is necessary. Additionally, writing with the left-hand in the long era of the quill was discouraged, and quills were never sold as left and right-handed, only by their size and species.

Quill (satellite)

Quill was an experimental United States National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) program of the 1960s, which orbited the first synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to produce images of the Earth's surface from space. Radar-imaging spacecraft of this design were not intended to be deployed operationally, since it was known that this system’s resolution, inferior to that of concurrent experimental airborne systems, would not serve that purpose. Instead, the program's predominant goal was to show whether the propagation of radar waves through a large volume of the atmosphere and ionosphere would dangerously degrade the performance of the synthetic aperture feature.

A detailed description of the program has been made available on-line by NRO.

Although only one satellite was needed, a backup model and an engineering model were also produced. Because the first one, OPS 3762, accomplished all of the project’s test objectives, only that one was launched. According to an official NRO history, “In the first 20 years of reconnaissance satellite program activity in the United States, Quill was … the only satellite of any nature to proceed from start to finish with a perfect record in launch, orbital operations, readout, and recovery.”

Quill (album)

Quill is the only album by the band of the same name, released in 1970 on the Cotillion Records label. Although largely ignored upon release, the album has regained "cult" status with the advent of modern technology, such as downloading. The album is notable for its use of both minimalist (Yellow Butterfly, Too Late) and extravagant (They Live The Life, BBY, Shrieking Finally) sounds, on the same album. It is commonly criticized for its heavy use of unconventional chord changes and odd sound dynamics, which sometimes range from standard blues changes to completely original chord patterns and its mostly pessimistic, often dark lyrics. For many reasons, the album was not a critical, nor commercial success.

Like many other albums of this time, the album was produced solely by the members of the band themselves.

Track listing

All songs composed by Jon and Dan Cole, unless otherwise noted.