Some Magic Items

The DM of a local campaign I play in asked us to invent some magic items, so I did. I’ve had no sleep. We’re currently playing the latest edition of the original game, which I personally have some qualms with but the last thing the world needs is another 5e complaint post, just like it doesn’t need another OSR blog, but I’m in a mood from exhaustion. Anyways, he thought they were all overpowered, and I’m inclined to disagree, but then again I also think if your players have a bag of holding with hundreds of shields that’s your own fault. As a matter of fact, I’m disinclined towards bags of holding, as a general thing. Mostly cause nobody gives a crap about inventories anyways when you’re doing high fantasy. Never once in the past five years has any GM ever made me calculate weight or count ammo. Anyways, enough irritable grognard spew, how ‘bout them items?

Ring of Sacrificial Shield
Characters who possess this iron ring while wielding a shield may use their reaction after being successfully struck by an attack to negate all damage from that attack, but destroying their shield in the process. 

Nemean Pelt
Characters who wear this enchanted Lion’s pelt have resistance to slashing and piercing damage, but also has vulnerability to strangulation.

Eyepatch of Blindsense
A character who is missing an eye that wears this leather eyepatch has blindsense within a ten foot radius around themselves. You must make a will save vs fear around the spell Pyrotechnics though, as you only have one eye left, and fireworks are dangerous. 

Perfume of Xymox
Characters who wear this exotic scent have advantage on saving throws to resist petrification, in addition to having increased (4 in 6) likelihood that Medusae, Gorgons, and Basilisks will treat them as friendly allies. The character must bathe off the scent within 24 hours, or else they will have to take a full rest without benefits as they completely shed their skin. 

Coin of Lupercal
Characters who posses this wolf-headed coin during a full moon may summon a dire she-wolf to nurse them, providing wolf’s milk and 2d8 healing from licked wounds, and a night of guards from her wolf-children. The next day, the characters must chase, drive out, or destroy an evil spirit or ghost or be unable to rest for three days as their dreams are haunted by nightmares of lupine terror. 

Chain Letter of Infinite Curses
Characters who possess this archaic scroll may elect to use their reaction to negate the effects of one spell from an evil aligned spellcaster. Afterwards, it mused be passed on to another character who has not previously owned it within 24 hours or effectively acts as Stone of Weight. Share this item with a friend in the next hour and you’ll have good dice rolls for your next game! Or don’t and fail at a critical moment.

Supremely Boring Chest
This plain 5x4x3 foot box is warded by powerful magics. Once per day the bearer may utter a command word that effectively hides the box in plain sight from everyone, even the user. It cannot he found until the effect wears off. You probably just misplaced it, you’ll find it again soon, it’s fine.

Fisherman’s Friend
This simple bracelet of marlin bears a small iron charm of an anchor. Once per day, the wearer May utter a command word and the anchor becomes a 500 pound steel anchor with several fathoms of thick mooring line attached and made off to the nearest safe fixing point. The item is recharged by a red sunset.

Amulet of Proof Against Insomnia
This small silver necklace has a charm on the end in the shape of a sheep, granting the bearer resistance against sleep spells and preventing the first level of exhaustion from an interrupted long rest. You snore something awful while wearing it, and your party members have a 1 in 10 chance of being kept awake by your log-sawing Zs, thus gaining a level of exhaustion. 

Bath Bomb
Lighting the fuse and throwing this ceramic grenade causes a fully sized luxury porcelain tub filled with hot water and expensive scented soaps and exfoliating brushes to appear and automatically begin bathing its target for a half hour. The victim of this assault may attempt a DC20 strength check to escape the tub, but soap is slippery and it smells nice. Honestly if they’re fighting this they likely need a bath anyways.

Three Traps

Trap Number One: 

“The walls, floors, and ceiling of this room suddenly shift from worked stone to flat metal plates, and a barely perceptible hum fills the room. Only one exit exists, directly across the room. It is guarded by a single near-naked barbarian wielding a nasty club decorated with a human skull.”

Any adventurer wearing armor or using metal weapons who enters into the metal areas will discover that the whole room is a series of electromagnets, with polarities shifting every other turn to the left/right/ceiling/floor (or roll a d4 for the side). 

The barbarian is just a combat threat to make the trap more dangerous, and can be replaced by any orc/ogre/naked and dangerous person not using metal.

How to Beat Trap One:

Might: Pass a hefty strength check to resist and move across the magnetic plates. Or strip and challenge the barbarian to unarmed combat, tying a rope to your gear and dragging it across afterwards. Try to lift one of the wall/floor plates so that the trap breaks/crushes itself under its own power.
Cunning: using ball-bearings, Chainmail rings, looted gear, etc, wait until the magnet activated on the ceiling and try to use sabatons or iron-shot boots to dash across to the door before it changes to the floor and bypass the enemy.
Skill: Try to get to know and/or persuade the barbarian into letting you pass. Try to deceive the barbarian to hold something metal just before the magnets switch polarities to another wall (“Catch!”). Try to dig quickly under a plate to disable the magnet by throwing coins/water into the spinny-bits/batteries.
Magic: Use any electrical spell to short circuit the electromagnet trap. Use Create Water to try and flood the room. Use Charm Person/Monster to get the barbarian to let you pass. 

Trap Number Two:

“A series of standing mirrors in this room are spaced at regular intervals, blocking the view of the room and corresponding to the points of an angular mandala. The room is lit by an eerie pink glow. “

In the center of this room sits a stone column marked by three rubies down two sides. One side has an open eye and the other a closed eye carved into the stone. The gems are shooting deadly lasers into the mirrors creating a geometric prison guarding the heart of the trap. The lasers are at the six, five, and two foot heights. The mirrors are bolted into the stone floor, and only are mirrored on one side. The lasers shoot out of the open eye and into the closed eye gems, perpetually charging itself. Arcane deduction should inform players that make it to the center that removing the closed eye gems first is safe, removing the open eye gems first will have explosive results. 

The exit to the room can be on any side, but is blocked from view by the mirrors.

How to Solve Trap Two:

Might: Tear a mirror from the floor and use it as a shield! Direct the lasers at the mirror’s unprotected backs and shatter them with the laser! Or use it as a shield and open doors for you and your party!
Cunning: Use a hand mirror to stop the lowest laser, letting you and your party crawl through the lowest level. Break a mirror and watch the lasers annihilate the other mirrors a chunk at a time as they shoot in fractal patterns.
Skill: Use acrobatic or athleticism to hurtle or gymnast your way through the lasers. Climb atop the bolted mirrors and step-stone your way across the room. 
Magic: Dispel the center of the room. Cast darkness on the center of the room. Use your familiar to fly or crawl to the central pillar and remove the gems. Overcharge the pillar using a fire or light spell. 

Trap Three:

“The long hall stretches in front of you, lit only by your own torches. The floor ahead abruptly ends in a yawning pit, but a metal trunk stretches to what appears to be more floor on the other side, and something low lying on the floor across the way. The trunk below shines with an oily sheen, and from somewhere above, fresh wind makes your torch flicker.”

This is a simple pit trap consisting of a fall to doom and a greased metal pole, complicated by some air ducts that push characters off as they cross. Canny players may ask about the ladder stashed on the opposite side used by the dungeon denizens to cross safely, but retracted when defending from marauding drunken slayers and brigands. 

How to Solve Trap Three:

There are a myriad of ways to pass this trap, but for this one, let your players figure out how they want to make their way across. How will they solve it? Ask them to describe how, not just roll a dice to figure it out. The game is always more fun when everyone participates!

Your Puzzles Need a Bypass

So, traps, puzzles and other conundrums are a vital aspect to any dungeon, as they represent a variance of challenge in the dungeon by whatever mad or alien intelligence designed such a place.  This shows that they prepared not just slavering hordes of monsters for those weak of flesh and unskilled of blade, but also cunning and calculated enigmas to foil the Luddite and fuddle the ignorant.

But... what if I don’t care about your riddle, and my barbarian punches your Sphinx in the face? What if my barbarian is wearing a manticore pelt, and has the scars to prove himself in battle and the taste of Lion’s blood in his nose? 

Or... what if my wizard uses paradimensional calculus to lessen gravity’s hold on the Giant Boulder that is rolling towards us, thus allowing even one of my moderate physique to treat that trap as a child’s balloon? What if I just use Acheron’s Finite Sub-Atomic Reductor to disintegrate the trap on a molecular level?

Solving a puzzle directly is but one way of handling the scenario. A successful skill check by a thief and the party begins to loot the room. Nothing wrong with that, although a descriptor of how the puzzle is solved from the player whets my palate considerably more than just a mere number. But what if you don’t have a thief in your party? There quite literally has to be another way. 

Secondary options for traps and puzzles maximizes choice (which I firmly believe is a good thing), for a party with with or without appropriately skilled members. It’s the same concept that one could talk to those orcs in room 2C, or one could just stab the lost merchant king in room 16B, but likely won’t. The dilemma here is that frequency of players getting stuck on puzzles and traps seems to happen much more often in the games I DM and PC. 

At first glance, this thought that we should have multiple ways around a trap or puzzle seems counter intuitive. “But Crypt Thing,” I hear you say, “Shouldn’t my puzzles stop the PCs? Isn’t that the point of placing them in a dungeon by its creator?” Well, yes, but no. The in-character reason is yes, but the out-of-character reason is to challenge the PCs and make them think either outside the box or on the fly. Your goal should be to provide a reasonable challenge that the players can feel accomplished for having overcome as their characters. 

Now, why not stop them? Because stopping the flow of the story, the game, and the adventure kills the mood. I’m not suggesting that characters shouldn’t fail, as failure stops none of those, and in the story’s case adds narrative growth. They’re welcome to try again (later, Rest and a wandering monster check) or another path (because your dungeon should absolutely have other paths). But I am suggesting that nothing is worse than only being able to progress once a puzzle has been beaten and that puzzle has your players stumped, especially if there is only one way to solve it. Riddles are a frequent offender for this category. 

I would say that, a narrative and canny way to create a puzzle or series of puzzles is to merely make a problem and not invent a solution, rather let the players come up with the solution themselves, and have that solution work. 

Another, slightly more game-y way to handle things is to break down how characters interact with the world. Let’s say in this case, our players interact with the world with might, with cunning, with skill, and with magic. For said trap or puzzle, I would have four different ways to negate or solve it, one for each method of interaction. And of course, I would hope that my players would do more than just roll a die when asked and then ask what happens in return. The goal here is to get them to think, remember? Let them describe said victory, both as a reward but also as an exercise in describing their character during their spotlight. 

Which is another reason to vary the method by which puzzles or traps can be solved, as well as a reason to include them in your dungeon: it moves the spotlight around the room, and helps weave the whole party into the narrative as being capable Adventurers. 

Steal This Idea: Run The Olympics

We’ve all had nights where we the plot has cooled and you’re looking for something to stretch time or give XP until the party is ready to fight the Next Boss or Dungeon. 

Or maybe you’re flying by the seat of your pants and you don’t know where to go next. They’re coming over in two or three hours and you gotta brainstorm up something quick!

So steal this Idea: Run The Olympics.

At its core the premise is simple, some skill or ability challenges that more physical characters (like fighters and barbarians) should excel at, with the odd bout presented as combat (like wrestling). I’m sure thieves and rogues will also appreciate archery, as well as discuss toss or another sport that could be more dexterity based. 

You could also run like, a magical variant, with chess or such. Or stranger still, magical sports with rules the equivalent of cricket mixed with curling that involves algebra. 

It’s also an apt opportunity to add some intrigue to your game. The party has to kidnap a famed reclusive mobster, but they’re only available in the crowded coliseum, during the height of the track event. One of the players is participating, and another nation accuses them of cheating. Who planted the paraphernalia or magical item in their locker? Better yet, does the party keep the item? 

Winning a medal is always nice, and characters can wear it for like, a +2 bonus to social clout with fans of that sport, or maybe intimidation (if it’s wrestling or javelin toss, maybe shot put, boxing). 

What happens when a manticore or chimera lands during the pole-vault? What happens when said malicious creature doesn’t want to feast upon the crowd, but just watch the games for entertainment? What happens when a contingent from the Undead Army of The Doom Wastes shows up, and demands the right to participate as sovereign citizens of their fallen Empire Beneath the Sands? Why are doppelgängers replacing top athletes? Is lycanthropy cheating? 

You could take this a step further and do the gladiator thing, twist of Spartacus. A whole dungeon could be made for the entertainment of some wealthy extra-planar entity, the demons watching two teams of adventurers race rat-like through symmetrical dungeon labyrinths with challenges and adventures. Those who win, live and keep the treasures they’ve earned. Those who lose... well, the monsters in the maze have to come from somewhere, right?

Languages Part Two

My friend Oliver at Graven Utterance was kind enough to give me a call back on their blog as well as shed some Linguistic Wisdom on me. If you haven’t yet, I really do recommend visiting their website and reading it, as both their depth and breadth of knowledge exceeds mine. I was especially happy with their much more positive outlooks on Common as a trade-language and lasting stamp of multicultural unity and strength. 

The following is a list of languages I started writing even before my last post, and is by no means complete. I’ve broken my own rules here (note that I have elf languages, yuck), but also some fun ones, including one contagious one. You can probably tell I googled “magic languages” at least once while working on these. I may revisit some later, as I’m operating on very little sleep currently.

Fantastic Languages:

Oneiric: Which is the language used in dreams. Anyone asleep speaks oneiric, so long as they are asleep and dreaming. It is also the language of the Fey.

Spore: Language that Myconids naturally speak. People can learn Spore via contracting it as “psychic lichenification” of the skin. If someone takes over 20 damage from fire, or receives “Cure Disease”, they forget how to speak Spore until it is recontracted.

Gorgonite: The common language of monsters, a kind of Lingua-Franca that grew to include terms useful for defending against intrepid explorers and adventurers. Most non-extraplanar monsters (and a few crafty adventurers) speak some Gorgonite.

Thieves’ Cant: An odd mix of slang, codified phrases, and a smattering of Dungeon Hobo only recognized by those who frequently find themselves either on the wrong side of the law or the right place at the right time. 

High-Lyric: language of the oldest elves, largely considered a dead language except in elven spell-casting, or major religious holidays. Shares some phonetic similarities with Oneiric, but elves don’t sleep, so how would they know?

New-Lyric: Modern, in-vogue constructed language of the younger elves. Has a frustrating focus on politeness, cleanliness, beauty, and euphemisms and metaphors to keep it that way. 

Thrush: Language of the Birds, occasionally known but never spoken aloud by witches and sorcerers, for to do so is a sin against the Queen of Aeries and the Hawklord, thus making you an enemy of all birds forever.

Zaumlang: Written language used to transcribe the six-tongue sounds wizards must make in order to cast their spells. It is a necessity to read or write state-sanctioned magic.  

Far-flung: Language of Eldritch things and alien abominations from beyond the stars. May be several languages, or psychically enhanced.

Lethe: Language of the tormented dead. Ghosts and other miserably damned forget their old languages and only speak Lethe.

Ephemeral Dictum: The language used to speak with spirits, especially familiars. Has no written form.

Regional Languages:

Aurelian: Language predominantly spoken within the kingdom of Aurelia. As Aurelia was founded relatively recently, the language is still referred to as “Yswil” sometimes. Guaranteed to be one language amongst players in my homebrew world. 

Gotherese: Language used within the broken Empire of Gotheria, especially among those loyal to or old-soldiers of their exiled Empress. A common belief is that she will live so long as it is spoken. 

Vellish: Language used by the people of Vell, a pidgin language consisting of Old Vell, Dorgen (Which was consumed by Vellish), and Vaeresian. Has a costal dialect that abandons the Old Vellish grammar in favor of Dorgenian.

Rusal: Language of the northern Rusalkin, common among cold-water sailors and explorers. Rumored to have been magically stolen somehow from other beings.

Vaeresian: Language common among the Vaerese Penninsula, written in top to bottom, left to right.  

Yurthic: Language common among taiga dairy farmers and steppe nations, has no unified written form, but a strong oral tradition. The introduction of the printing press has seen several communities adopt other alphabets or invent their own.

Reggrimi: Language family of the Reggrim Forest dwellers consisting of a familial language, a language for use in public, and one for hunting.

Pavism: The Religion of Roads

“It came to pass” was the first phrase uttered by Darius Unmuted. He said this at a cart with a broken wheel as the remnants of his town moved from their ruined hovels towards their neighbors.

He stopped, and fixed the wagon.

That night he slept under the stars for the first time, and attained true wisdom. The next morning he sold his belongings, and bought a shovel, and began to work.

Six hundred years later, and Pavism is now a major religion, one with adherents throughout working professions, that is especially popular with the mercantile class.

In no small part to Darius Unmuted’s teachings and the nature of the faith itself, Pavism is common throughout the world and is generally welcomed by authority groups and governments. And who wouldn’t: an entire faith and lifestyle dedicated to roads and travelers?

Although the tenets of their faith remain the same, within Pavism there are two major sects: Laborists and Wanderists. The predominate difference being how they interpret Darius’s teachings, and the individual actions they undertake to live out the nature of the religion.

Laborists are the oldest sect, and live the tenet of “Existence is Work” directly, giving the faith it’s name. Where they go, roads are built, paths are carved, and the way is paved. At least physically if not spiritually. It is here that the heart of the faith can still be found, and wisdom gleaned from the creeping camps’ priests as they speak in koans of sweat and moil.

Wanderists take a much different approach, instead prioritizing the tenet “Connection is about the Path, not The Destination.” Like their Laborist brethren, they too are perpetual nomads, but at a much more accelerated rate. Not all Wanderists are militant, but many do become guardians of those who travel with them, monks on a perpetual pilgrimage to The Horizon, or knights forever errant. Others become roving hostels and inns, setting up camp and leaving spare beds for those in need every few days.

Pavism’s core tenets are simple, but with open room to interpretation, which has led to the divide between its sects.

• Existence is to Work.
• We Work to find Connection
• Connection can be but a Moment, or a Lifetime
• Connection is about The Path, not the Destination
• Where you go, Work towards Connection

Pavists insist that practice of daily manual labor, travel, mindfulness, and connection with different peoples and cultures can and will eventually free all peoples of suffering, but Work will always remain, as we are designed for such.

* * *

So, this post was inspired by a few things in particular. Number one being a dream I had, and the second most pertinent being that in most fantasy worlds, the “traveler” religion is invariably a cut-paste-rename of Odin the wanderer, and I didn’t want that. Hence instead we have blue-collar zen-construction workers-errant who are obsessed with roads.I'm also just generally keen on the idea of my fantasy world having religions that are fantastic themselves to what we know: de-centralized religions, or religions without gods, or ones who's gods currently walk the earth for whatever reason. It's not perfect, nor is it fully fleshed out, but it'll work for now.

Work has had me slammed the past week or so, but I'll be back to writing regularly this week.

Chthonic Entity: The Sea

The Sea replaces any aquatic nature gods in your world, because it is the ur-concept, the living embodiment of itself, because it is itself. 

It would be foolish to think of it as anything else, but men do. 

Some think of her as a treasure-keeper, a goddess of horizons because she alone can touch the distant sky, and she alone binds the earthen parts of the world, her flexible strength mightier than that of stone. Always with the promise of something new, something unseen, something unknown. Something precious, something dear. Promises, promises. But nothing is free.

Some think of her as a sister to the moon, their cycles of rising and falling, ebb and flow not synchronistic, but so very close, how could they be anything but related? Would that the Queen of Night step forth from her home, certainly her silver-lined hem would be made of sea-foam, whitecaps spun with starlight to gossamer fringes that sing of summer nights on the open sea, the heavens above revealed in all their glory while her glass-still reflection drinks deep of the sky like a mirror. And how she comes alive when the sun rises and sets, her own attire changing to match the tropical wine glows and gilded rays that burn like god-gold from the heavens. Certainly her beauty is incomparable to anyone else’s, and some chase that, fear spotting their eyes with tears as joy and peace takes their soul in a manner no human dress could.

Maybe the most apt comparison is to a bride, which is why sailors use female pronouns to describe her, and say that they are “married to The Sea”. Certainly, it would give credence to their belief, however wrong or right, that women are bad luck underway. Those forever tied to the sea would say that she is a jealous lover, and that any attention shown elsewhere in her presence would draw her ire. That thing they do fear, and speak of in hushed tones. 

They’ve seen her split a mast with a thunderbolt, and splinter a hull with a curl of her saltwater hands as effortlessly as a maid wringing a rag free of the dirt that plagues it. They’ve seen her mood change with a breeze, some little slight provoking her wrath, and prayed forgiveness and mercy from her horrors, only to return to her after the briefest stays ashore. They’ve seen the faces in slate-grey waters of freezing liquid iron, pale and ghastly staring back at them. Because what The Sea takes, she keeps. 

Those that sink below are not given the respite of paradise, nor are they doled out their just-desserts in the underworld, nor sent to moil in some purgatorial limbo. Theirs is a fate far worse than death, for they join the ranks of that morbid locker they call The Deep. For what purpose could she call them there? Why keep them at all? Sailors ask not, and wonder not, lest they go mad. 

Only fools would try to steal from such a thing as powerful, or as fickle. 

But some they say have. Or perhaps, more accurately, she has allowed. A young man weeps at the docks as his lover departs, his tears pure and meeting the sea. He will always return to him, even beyond the Veil. A young woman picks up a shell on the shore, an early dowry for her sailor son. A warrior rinses blood from his hands by the tiller, and the goddess below him drinks it like wine. He will never be defeated on board a ship, so long as he pays tribute. An old captain knows the waters around the rocks with preternatural grace, and years from now when his heart stops he will fall into the arms of his beloved one last time. They dressed in mens’ clothes to work the rigging, and fell in love with one another again under strange stars. Their love will leave a wake of blood and bodies overboard as they chase the gold promised on the map, never knowing who blessed them with it. 

There is no formal church to The Sea. No ritual worship. There are only sailors, and land-lovers. Those who have seen her beauty, danced on the waves, or tasted her sea-spray kiss and yearned for more. This is because The Sea is The Sea, and it is itself.

It has always been, and always will be.