The Book of Useless Sorceries

For GLOGtober '23, per semiurge's challenge:

Come up with a grimoire with some unique spells, a story behind it, perhaps some trap or riddle to figuring it out, etc.

...

The Book of Useless Sorceries, also called The Big Four by theoretical wizicians, is a tiny tome- almost a pamphlet. It fits snugly in the back pocket of the skinniest jeans. It belonged to Denton the Anesthetized, who downloaded it from a private forum on the wizardweb. (The wizardweb is like the darkweb, except with more robes and less effective assassins.)

The text is attributed to Amanita-anamita, self-titled Archivist Supreme. The authorial voice flipflops between extremely dated humor (like an excruciatingly topical 1000-year-old stand-up routine) and crippling paranoia on a sentence-by-sentence basis. The foreword thanks two other wizards for their contributions to the archival process. Neither is named anywhere in the book.

It contains four spells:

• Scry: Receive visions of the interior of a tavern.
  
• Finding: Learn the direction of the nearest Moon.
  
• Golem: Roughly sculpt a lump of clay into the shape of a hand.
  
• Fireball: This spell does nothing.
  

On a related note, here are 6 ways to learn more about spells for enterprising wizards:

1. Cast them with more power. If you cast a big enough fireball, eventually you'll hear it- the explosion echoing in the distance.
   
2. Cast them in the right place. The closer you are to that mountain- yes, that one- the louder it gets.
   
3. Cast them at the right time.
4. Cast them with the right tools.
5. Cast them wrong. For GLOG, you can use mishaps and dooms. Sometimes, the spell not working the way you expect is a good thing. Just as many times, the wizard rolls triples and teleports into a tiny room full of fire for a twelfth of a second; just long enough to burn the soft parts off.
   
6. Get the right person to cast them.
   

These are the clues. Putting them together is the adventure.

...

The Tribunal of Deep Earth is an underground complex full of earth elementals (gnomes, moles, grue, giants, dinosaurs, etc). It is run by Gloria Shaytan, who is all the sand in all the world's deserts at once. She is going through a messy divorce with the Dead Sea, which everyone is talking about. She is trying her best not to take it out on her colleagues. She is failing.

Imprisoned within the Tribunal is an elemental named fireball. She is contained within a titanium cube the size of a bathroom stall. She is undeniably evil, and serving out a very fair 15,600 year sentence for various crimes against the creation itself.