Every player knows the routine: Roll initiative, slay your foes, loot their bodies. You appreciate it when the GM goes along with this, not mentioning things like clothing or armor that doesn’t fit and only focusing on the important details: weapons, coins, and the occasional magic item.
Mbira, courtsey Joanna Bourne on Flickr
After all, foes are easier to dispatch if you’re able to dehumanize them first.
But who do (or did) these people know back home–and where indeed was home? What drove them to see the enemy of the players as “the good guy” in a fight? And what did they do when they weren’t off trying to put a stop to adventurers? Following are eight items found in the “loot” stage that help point to answers to these questions. In each case, the fullness of the answer could be an entire session or arc.
How These Items Work
If you’re like me, you’ll appreciate the elegance of these items being on a table, but you’ll never roll dice. Instead, you’ll just pick the item you like & include it on a foe. That’s fine.
If you’re a dice person, roll 2d4 to choose the item, and another 2d4 to determine whether it is mundane, masterwork, or magic. If the numbers on both dice are equal (1 and 1, 2 and 2, etc…) the item is at least of “masterwork” quality, possessing all attributes of both the “mundane” and “masterwork” versions. If both the dice show 4, the item is magic, possessing the qualities from all three categories.
2: Bookworm Bookends
Mundane
These twin weights depict the front and back of an anthropomorphized worm wearing glasses and reading a book.
Masterwork
The wizard who created the bookends lost many books due to alchemical accidents, and needed a place to store important information which was safe from acid and fire. She created hollow spaces in the bookends, and each can hold two full books and six scrolls. The pure metal of the bookends resists virtually any elemental effect. Only after she made them did she consider moving her library out of her lab.
Magic
Because of the frequency of book-shattering disaster, the wizard created these devices to create summary copies of the works contained between them. Placing books between these bookends creates short summaries of the contents of those books in the hollows of the bookends. The bookworm can “read” at a rate of about 400 pages per hour.
3: Sketch of a Faithful Lover
Mundane
This in-progress sketch is of a somewhat plain-looking woman, but is clearly done by a loving hand. Anyone vaguely familiar with illustration will immediately note that this drawing has been worked and reworked dozens of times–probably over a period of years.
Masterwork
The drawing is of such detail that the woman is recognizable- and indeed, a character in the party recognizes her from childhood.
Magic
The woman drawn in the picture is the lover of the person who bears it–or “was,” if the players have slain him. Because of her anxiety over the profession of her lover, which always took him away and placed him in danger, the woman had an enchantment placed on the drawing. So long as he bore it and continued working on it, magical energies would draw him back to her at least once per month. What the couple did not know is that, upon his death, these energies would begin working on the next person to gaze upon the picture.
4: Carefully Wrapped Charcoals
Mundane
A set of drawing charcoals, each wrapped in thin paper.
Masterwork
The travels of the artist carrying these often featured moist environs, so she began to keep them in a well-oiled wooden box, itself enclosed in a tightly-wrapped leather satchel.
Magic
The woman who carried these was part of a resistance movement whose sigil is burned into the wooden box. The leaders of this movement used these charcoals to mark locations of sympathizers and safehouses. A symbol representing up to three words of information can be created with these; their meaning will be immediately obvious to one sympathetic with the resistance. This will appear to be a smudge to anyone else.
5: Playing Cards of a Distant Kingdom
Mundane
A set of playing cards with four suits: coins, cups, staves, and swords. The “face cards” represent well-known nobles of a distant kingdom.
Masterwork
There are some irregularities among the nobles depicted on the cards that represent recent upheaval in the distant kingdom. Some faces that one would expect are missing, others have “increased in rank,” and there is a mysterious new “king.”
Magic
The cards were developed by a Machiavellian schemer to bring ill fortune to the noble families depicted therein. If this deck is carried within the city where one of these nobles resides, he has a 1 in 16 chance per week (all 4s on 2d4) of experiencing a truly unfortunate event. If they are brought into that noble’s house, this chance increases to once per day, and the accident stands a strong chance of being fatal.
6: Meticulous Sculptor’s Carving Knives
Mundane
A small leather roll contains four fine blades ranging from the size of a thumbnail to a sunflower seed, each mounted on a silver handle about 10cm long. The kit also contains two triangular files.
Masterwork
Created for a famous sculptor, the blades are forged of a metal so rare as to almost be mythic. They carve metals as easily as bone or wood.
Magic
The sculptor was known for her detailed filigree work, and commissioned these knives to let her carve inside small areas which would otherwise be inaccessible to her hands. Anything cut by the larger blade will rematerialize in an hour; metal will reattach itself to metal just as skin will stitch itself shut.
7: Mbira (Thumb Piano)
Mundane
This palm-sized tortoise shell instrument is held in two hands. Music is made when the player’s thumbs stroke metal tines arranged in a row across the flat part of the shell. A sound hole on the curved part of the shell allows the player to adjust the quality of sound by the position of his finger. The music produced by this piano is a pleasant twang best accompanied by other bira (pianos), drums, and vocal chanting.
Masterwork
This particular mbira was made by a clever thief who was tired of losing lock picks to the city guard every time he was searched. Each of the 13 tines of the fully functioning piano doubles as a lock pick. In a culture where the mbira is not uncommon, the only way someone would search closely enough to find this is if they suspected the musician; even then, they would likely search inside the shell and not look at the tines themselves. In cultures where this instrument is foreign, someone who knows how to play this instrument can still put on a compelling performance to convince the guards that there’s nothing to see here.
Magic
The thief who made this traveled often with a sorcerer fond of casting a magic silence in the area of their targets. While the thief appreciated the veil, he grew tired of not being able to hear sounds himself. He and the sorcerer devised an enchantment that creates a zone of silence around the shell–but one may hold the shell to his ear to hear the sounds that are otherwise muffled in the zone.
8: Cartographer’s Charts
Mundane
This item is an unfinished yet highly detailed map of a largely unexplored area. It bears the insignia of an elite cartographer’s guild.
Masterwork
These maps benefit from “satellite imagery;” in fantasy terms, the mapmaker had the benefit of flight in creating these maps (whether by balloon, carpet, or dragon depending on the flavor of your fantasy).
Magic
The map fills itself in as one is exploring unmapped territory. The guild represented by the insignia is a secretive worldwide group of explorers who wishes to map every place on the earth. Only a few of these magic maps are in their possession, and they are given to trusted explorers.
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