Under the Right Conditions

So, I got this crazy idea to do something where the text in an ancient tome seemed to "come alive" or "activate" by some odd means, and thought I'd try and use one of those silver Sharpies. It sounded like such a neat idea in my head, but in the end...

Say it with me:
Silver Sharpies Suck.

(this is what I get for stealing ideas from cutscenes in Thief: Deadly Shadows)

Originally, this was going to be two separate pieces, both using multiple colors to indicate something was "up" with the text. On the opposite page from the one I used silver on, the other was going to mix red and black in a wavy pattern. In the end, it was just too cluttered, and since scanning this book is a bit of a pain (and I wanted to get a reflective effect with the silver, something scanning won't do) I decided to use the first page as a build up.

In fact, to give a little "backstory" on what you're seeing unfold in the tome, I'd been reading about the Hylian Syllabaries [link] and thought about resurrecting an old pictogram system I'd developed some time ago which was based loosely on Blissymbolics and Patrick Woodroffe's Pentateuch of the Cosmogony [link] which I found out while researching Prog rock groups (Greenslade played for Colosseum) and ended up being led to the Unicorn Jelly webcomic. Did I mention that Omniglot is a really cool site [link] ?

Anyway, what this book is describing is the conditions under which a certain gate must be opened. Conditions outlined include (as you may or may not be able to guess by attempting to read it) weather conditions, the use of meteoric metals as opposed to mined ones, harvesting rituals, and what colors to wear to dinner. Obviously, conditions were just about right.