Paintings are fun, but I think their one enchantment is a bit silly. Useful, but silly for a painting. So, in the goal of constructive criticism, I'd like to offer some additional enchantments:

Captivation
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This ability will allow you to enchant a landscape painting with a spell that will capture an observer into the painting itself, caged until they free themselves. The magic will activate when a victim LOOKs at the painting, and they will be instantly sucked inside. Destroying the painting while someone is inside will kill the unfortunate fellow. This enchantment is quite costly in power.

So, basically you get your landscape painting and enchant it, then exhibit it. Anyone who LOOKs at the painting will get magically transported to a room that looks like

Inside the painting.
(room desc of painted landscape goes here). You can see no visible exits, perhaps you should search for an ESCAPE.

Actions are restricted to tells, says, emotes, aetherwaves and the ESCAPE command. By trying to escape there is a random chance of finding a flaw in the artwork to get back to reality. Much like scrubbing.

While someone is trapped in a painting, the quick description might be:
A painting of The Necropolis Chamber is proudly displayed on a nearby wall, and you make out the figure of Elryn artfully captured in the scene.

Soul Link
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A portrait may be enchanted so that it will be magically connected to its subject. Touching the painting will reveal the location of the person depicted.

Very straightforward, just means that once it is enchanted you can TOUCH PAINTING to see:

You reach out and touch a painting of Elryn.
The colours blur and shift, and settle into the depiction of Elryn at The Moonhart Mother Tree.

or

You reach out and touch a painting of Elryn.
The colours blur and shift, but settle back into place.
(in case they aren't in the game, or hidden, or something)

Captivation should also work when the picture is touched. Because most people don't look at pictures they're going to be using (I know I don't).

Yeah, it could be used offensively, too.

Say, Daevos is raiding Southgard, and he sees a painting, and thinks "Hmm, I wonder where this goes to?" He tells Silvanus to touch it, he does so, and dissapears. Daevos then commences to destroy said painting.

I love it!

rofl.

But I love the captivation idea, but looking wouldn't catch near as much people, as touching it would. People are tempted to see where the painting will take them. Curiousity killed the Lusternians.

Yeah, touching could activate it as well.

I'm not sure about still-life paintings... I'm tempted to suggest an enchantment like Soul-link, but instead of players or mobiles working with the nearest object - but that could be very hard to code responsibly.

An alternative for a portrait enchantment:

MagicEyes
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By enchanting a portrait you will give the subject the magical ability to see through their artwork into a room in which it is displayed. The subject of the portrait may TOUCH the painting to activate/deactivate the magic.

This would mean that if you paint a portrait of Daevos, and enchant and display it, he can then TOUCH it to activate it as a room watch. So he would then see anyone entering/leaving the room, and if he has the lipread defence up, he'll also hear anything that was spoken. For example:

Through the eyes of your portrait at The Necropolis Library, you see Elryn enter.

Through the eyes of your portrait at The Necropolis Library, you see Elryn say, "Alright, let's get this forested!"

This would only work for the person who is painted in the portrait.

Edit: Also, it might be cool if an activated painting gave a room message when you leave (not enter, or it would be pretty pointless).

"Unnervingly, the eyes of Daevos' portrait appear to follow you as you leave."

That might be unwanted though.

I like... new ideas are always good.

Rock on. Estarra, employ this man!

Some of those things are going to need re-painting at the location (or just like...touching up) every so often, though.

But great ideas!

Oh, and you should be able to sign paintings

Did someone already mention having more than one in a room for a gallery?

More than one in a room would look awful in the room desc, IMO. What about an arts ability that allows you to exhibit galleries? Like an upgraded exhibit skill. The gallery would be a container that sits in a room and groups exhibited paintings.

For example, you might see:

A very boring room. Change this.
An intriguing gallery of three paintings has been artfully arranged along the wall here.
You see exits every which way.

PROBE GALLERY
You note in this exhibition:
- A painting of Elryn Greythane by Jasper (27384).
- A painting of A forgotten grove by Jasper (23462).
- A painting of the Crown of Gloriana by Jasper (23746).

LOOK 27384
(blah blah painting)

So you can still interact with individual paintings directly, but the gallery is substituted in the room description and IH.

It works well in imperian....

Meh, Lusternia can do better.

Excellent idea! And yes, touching it should do the trick, more than looking at it. More reason to avoid randomly touching paintings to see where they go. Maybe something in discernemnt can counter the trap?