Potions and liquids

A potion on the table is the one prop that moves on its own. Everything here is about what happens inside a sealed bottle while somebody decides whether to drink it — which nobody should, because none of this is a drink.

Say that out loud when the bottle reaches the table, and make it true: use cosmetic-grade mica rather than craft pigment meant for resin, seal the bottles, and keep them away from the glasses people are actually drinking from. If you want a potion somebody drinks, make that one separately out of food, in a clean bottle, and never let the two families of bottle share a table.

One technical note that applies to all of them: a potion is only as good as its light. Stand the bottle in front of a candle, a phone torch or a small LED and everything below doubles in strength; stand it on a dark table under a ceiling light and half of it disappears.

Colour and glow

Mica powder

The best single ingredient here. A quarter-teaspoon of cosmetic mica in water gives a cloud that catches the light and hangs; in glycerine or oil it moves much more slowly, so a shake sets off a swirl that keeps turning for a minute afterwards. Two colours together separate into veins rather than mixing, which is exactly what people expect a magical liquid to do and nothing natural does.

Backlight it. Mica in front of a candle is a different substance from mica on a table — the particles go from grey dust to points of light — so if the potion matters, put the light behind it and dim the room a little.

Ceramic pigment or dye

Where food colouring gives a flat tint that reads as coloured water, a suspended pigment gives depth: the colour appears to come from inside the liquid rather than from the glass. Use less than you think — a strong pigment goes opaque, and an opaque bottle is a bottle of paint.

Tonic water under UV

The quinine in tonic water fluoresces a startling electric blue under a blacklight, and it is the cheapest genuine glow available.

Let it go flat before you add anything, or a spoonful of mica turns the bottle into a foam volcano. Highlighter ink from a refill does the same job in yellow-green and is not food at all, so it goes in a sealed bottle that never opens.

Mineral oil and micro-lights

A string of battery micro-LEDs coiled inside a bottle of mineral oil gives a light that seems to be suspended in the liquid, because the oil does not conduct and the wire disappears against the glass. It is the most convincing glowing potion on this page and the only one that works in a lit room, at the cost of a bottle you cannot pour.

Movement and change

Butterfly-pea tea

Brewed butterfly-pea flower is deep navy blue, and a squeeze of lemon turns it violet and then pink in front of everyone, because the pigment answers to acidity. It is the only effect here that changes on command, which makes it the potion for a scene where something has to be proved — poison detected, a blessing taken, a lie exposed by an alchemist who knows what to add.

Layers by density

Pour heavy liquids first and light ones last, each down the back of a spoon held against the glass, and they stack in bands that hold for hours: syrup, juice, water, oil. Four visible layers say the thing was compounded by somebody who knew what they were doing, and the moment a player shakes it — destroying an hour of work in a second — is a good moment too.

Suspended glitter

Glitter in glycerine falls the way snow falls in a snow globe, slowly enough that the bottle is still settling a minute after it was moved. Unlike the layered version it survives being shaken over and over, which makes it the right choice for a prop that will be handled by six people in one evening.

Oil, water and dye

Coloured water under clear oil never mixes, so the bottle holds a permanent argument between two liquids, with bubbles that reform every time it is touched.

Sealing the bottle

Cork the bottle and run sealing wax over the cork and an inch of the neck. It makes the prop reusable, safe to pass round, and impossible to spill on a character sheet — and it adds the small ceremony of breaking the seal, which is the moment the potion becomes usable in the fiction.