From Davy Jones' Locker

Besides the riches dredged up from the wrecks at the bottom of Dead Man's Cove, the treasure grotto of the Phantom Diver contains several maritime magic items:

Spyglass: This brass spyglass allows the user to look back into the past as well as into the distance. 1d4 indicates hours, days, months, or years into the past; d20 indicates how many, at GM's discretion.

Diver's Helmet: This antique diver's helmet smells of the briny depths. It allows the wearer to see the shades of things that have died in the area, all the way back to the dawn of life. Spirits appear almost like neon lights, translucent, faintly glowing and colorful.

Whaler's Harpoon: This antique and somewhat rusted tool has a blade strangely unblunted by time. It's a normal weapon against man-sized or smaller creatures but +1 against large adversaries and +2 against anything bigger than that.

Walrus Tusk Scrimshaw: Yellowed tusk engraved with a swirling pattern that perhaps depicts eddies and currents. When held, it allows command of pinnipeds and communication with selkies. Hungry killer whales and sharks, however, will be drawn to anyone holding it.

Found in a Shoebox

Cataloging of a deceased adventurer’s belongings revealed a shoebox full of assorted old photos.  A few held more than sentimental interest:

The Dark Manor
The most dangerous photo of the lot.  If stared at during night, the photo may open a portal to the pictured manor in a strange demi-realm shrouded in mist and populated by people who appeared to come from a gothic horror yarn. Anyone transported to the realm will be there for 24 hours on earth--though the exact time in the demi-realm is variable: anything from one night to a two weeks.

The Gold Women

A set of automata construct by a Staarkish thaumaturgist two centuries ago.  They disappeared from a private collection in Lutha during the Great War.  This photo has an address in Metropolis written on the back of it.

The Succubus
Naughty postcard from roughly 40 years ago.  It can be used to summon a succubus once per week if the incantation written on back is read and a few drops of the summoners blood (or other body fluid) is spilled into a circle draw on the floor.

Adventuring in Style

Adventurers call it “crawling” for a reason: most of the underground places they go into seeking treasure can be a bit cramped.  Outside of the City though, in more remote places, the wilderness and the subterranean structures under it may allow adventurers other means of travel than their own two feet.

The modified automobile above was built by Hamish Littlejon for himself and his companions. It’s structure was reinforced by the application of magical sigils--but duration of the enhanced protection that these provided was never fully field tested. The engine was likewise thaumaturgically enhanced and was twice as efficient as a mundane automobile's.

Littlejon and his entire party disappeared on a trip to the Spine of the Dragon Mountains in Asciana.  The vehicle was undamaged and still full of provisions when it was found.  Milo Munsen, owner of the “Life of Fantastic Danger” Museum, purchased it and made arrangements to have it shipped to the City, but it never arrived.  All attempts to locate the vehicle since have failed.

Belt of Vigor

Minor magic items are not uncommon in the City and its world.  These are typical of modern manufacture and not as powerful or as dangerous (mostly) as the magical equipment of adventurers.

The Health Belt was actually a girdle which ameliorated fatigue and bolstered the constitution.  It’s no surprise the primary use of this device is as an aid to amorous activity. Some adventurers use it to provide an extra bit of stamina and edge against poisons and shocks to the system.

[+2 bonus to Constitution and all that entails including hit points. These benefits last as long as the belt is worn, but wearing it longer than 3 hours is likely result in physical harm: 30% chance + 10% for every additional hour of a permanent Constitution loss of 1 point.]

More Items from the Planes

Here are more items from the Planes Beyond that sometimes find their way into the City:

Mechanoid Pheremones: A vial of volatile liquid containing signalling chemicals (not actually pheremones) for the polyhedral automata from Machina responsible for the repairing reality and defending it from chaos. The the vial is good for two uses. Chaotic individuals or magic-users casting spells in their presence will at least be thoroughly examined by the automata, and possibly attacked. The mechanoids can follow the trail of the chemicals anywhere in the Material Plane, though they always appear where the vial was first opened unless it is quickly capped.

Horn of Glory: A curving bronze horn which, when blown, summons 1d6+1 incorporeal constructs, echoes of the shades of 5th level human warriors residing in the Halls of Valor. They serve the summoner unquestioningly--as look as the service involves battle (otherwise, they disappear). The warriors dissipate at the end of the battle. The horn may be blown once per week.

“The Usual”: Euphemistic name for a noxious drink smuggled to the Material Plane from the city in the Land of Beasts, but probably originating in Dreamland. It reputedly contains Cobra Fang Juice, Hydrogen Bitters, and Old Panther. Consuming it causes all but the strongest to pass out after experiencing a strange fit (failed saving throw at -2). It’s said that some gain one important insight about the past, present, or future after consumption.

X-Ray Specs

A cheap magic item sometimes found in the City, X-Ray Spectacles are apparently mass-produced and sold in the back of lurid pulps and comics.  The item is sold for as little as a single Union dollar--with good reason, as 90% or more are fakes whose only magical power is to appear faintly magical, distort one's vision slightly when wearing them, and cause headaches.  The real X-Ray Spectacles (sold from identical ads as the fake ones) are identical cardboard glasses (not unlike old fashion 3-D glasses in our world ) with swirling, swifting patterns in the thin, plastic lens.

Real X-Ray Spectacles confer the power to see through solid matter, though things seen are not in color and somewhat hazy.  This is uneffected by illumination.  Vision range is 20 feet, and the viewer can see through 1 foot or so of most materials with concentration, though only 1 inch of solid metal, with a round's concentration.  Without concetration, the wearer can see through no more than a quarter of an inch, which mainly makes them good for seeing through clothes.  Even without concetration, they see through illusions of most types.
The unknown manufactures of the spectacles make a shoddy product which extraplanar energies.  Repeated use or extended wear of the spectacles (more than once a day, or for more than 2 mintues) requires a saving throw or else suffering 1 point reduction in Constitution.  Every day the spectacles are in a person's possession (and not kept in a lead-lined or magically warded container) has a cumulative 5% chance of attracting the unwanted attention of malign astral entities.

Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat

It can be found in secondhand stores and pricey boutiques. It’s been worn by socialites, gun molls, and even grandmothers. No one who has succumbed to the dubious fashion temptation of the so-called leopard skin pillbox hat has been left unchanged.

Nothing is known about the leopard that originally wore the fur, but the hat was cut from a larger garment--a magical raiment worn by generations of protectoresses of the Ebon-Land wilds, the Leopard Women. Some of these warrior women were native Black folk, others white-skinned foundlings. Whatever their origins, they were each imbued with a portion of a wild spirit of that ancient land.

It all came to an end at the hands of a jealous huntress--or so the story goes. Fearing she would lose her man to the wild beauty, she did what legend said no man had been able to do. She killed a leopard woman, and claimed her vestments.

This story may only be so much pulp fiction. What is undisputed fact is that there exist possibly as many as three pillbox hats of leopard skin that can corrupt their wearers with a bestial spirit. Slowly, the spirit of the hat works to make the owner more short-tempered and predatory in her interactions with others (failing a saving throw as with lycanthropy). This spirit, invisible to anyone else, will at times be visible to the owner as a mirror image of herself, dressed in a leopard skin outfit.

The wearer will be goaded by this other personality into increasingly antisocial acts to further her goals (if alignment is used, it changes to Chaotic). While no visible physical transformation occurs, the owner develops (over 2-16 days) the uncanny ability to perform the physical feats of the leopard (climbing, jumping, stealth, etc.). Note that the owner does not to have to wear the hat any more frequently than once every 3 days for the change to take place, as long as they remain the owner (meaning it is not out of their possession for more than 7 consecutive days).

The outcome of the transformation is often death or imprisonment for the owner. Somehow, the hat always seems to make its way back to retail afterwards, though it make take months for this to occur.

The ultimate goal of the beast spirit seems to be vengeance against civilization. It may be that it can be placated with the appropriate ritual, but no one has yet discovered it.

Curse of the Wolf

Besides the usual sorts of lycanthropes, the City sometimes sees a rarer sort created by an elixir from the Outer Planes. Known as the Potion of Werewolfism, the magical elixir is thought to be brought to the Prime Material Plane by agents unknown from the Land of Beasts. It appears as a shockingly effervescent liquid of shifting color within a somewhat oversized test tube stoppered with a cork.

Imbibing the liquid has the immediate effect of transforming the drinker into an anthropomorphic wolf resembling the inhabitants of the Land of Beasts. Despite the startling change, people encountering the person for the first time in werewolf form will not react as if anything is unusual: such is the extraplanar magic of the potion.  This initial transformation lasts 1d100 minutes, but there is a 50% chance that the potion has given the imbiber the hiccups and each hiccup will bring a shift between forms. After the initial transformation, the imbiber will return to normal, but the wolf form will re-emerge ever night at sundown.

Persons suffering from this werewolfism aren't ravening beast like common lycanthropes but are compulsive carousers and cads. No attractive member of the opposite sex is safe from their crude come-ons. While in werewolf form a individual can be hurt, but quickly shrugs off any damage sustained (regenerating like trolls). They do not have any particular susceptibility to silver.

Victims of this “werewolf curse” often make themselves destitute with their spending and unwelcome in any night-spot in town with their skirt-chasing as they fulfill their wolfish appetites.

Treasures from the Underground

Adventurers delve into the underground environments of the City and the Strange New World looking for treasure. This comes in the form of relatively mundane riches and more exotic items imbued with magical power. The Ancients are generally believed to have been the builders of the underground structures, but the treasure within them comes from various sources.

Many of the mundane objects of archaeological interest found in the underground do represent the material culture of the Ancients. It’s unclear why the Ancients built the underground structures in the first place. Some are certainly tombs and are filled with the usual valuable burial goods: objects of art (many of precious metal), coins, and jewelry. Some personal weapons or armor bearing enchantments are found. The mummies themselves, embalmed by magical means, are sometimes sought by unscrupulous thaumaturgists. They can be used to “fuel” spells--though they are sometimes cursed to prevent such desecration. A few aren’t dead, but instead undead and rise to wreck vengeance on would-be defilers.

The Ancients apparently didn’t produce many magical devices--at least not that still have power (it’s long been known that thaumaturgical infusion has a half-life in nonliving things). Scrolls are the most common. Potions and ointments are almost never found; the Ancients appear to have had no real understanding of the alchemical sciences.

The Natives seemed to have mostly avoided the places of the Ancients, perhaps out of superstitious dread. Few of their artifacts, magical or otherwise, are found in the underground. There are exceptions, of course, and in the West there are structures they may have been built by Native cultures influenced by the Ancients.

Ealderdish explorers and tomb-robbers of earlier eras left their mark on the underground. Coins from historical periods and magical armor and weapons are found--often next to the moldering remains of their previous owners. Most magic armor or clothing found will be related to the Ealderdish. Some have lost their potency over time; others have been spoiled by exposure to raw magical elements (or whatever killed their previous owners) and are now “cursed” or malfunctioning.

Finally, there are anomalous items. These are either products of nonhuman species or otherwordly intelligences. Many underground structures are built around “soft spots” in the material plane, more susceptible to irruption. Indeed, one theory regarding the structures is that they are large scale mandalas or sigils for the purpose of concentrating and controlling extraplanar energy. These anomalous items are often the most dangerous--their purpose can often only be guessed at.

Where's Your Head?

One of the strangest artifacts of the Ancients is the so-called Spectral-Head Harness. The device is a heavy, wide-shouldered pectoral of some reinforced leather-like material attached to a thick, rune-inscribed collar of black ceramic. The device is strapped to a wearer by a harness that seems composed of what seem like industrial hoses that follow lines of the wearer's ribcage. Once the device is strapped into place, it activates.

Jarus Shanck, adventurer and assassin, who gave his name to the City barony of Shancks, is the only recorded bearer of the artifact. What we know of its operation comes from accounts by Shanck’s associates. When Shanck was secured in the device, it began to emit a low hum. The sound lasted a few minutes. During this time, the flesh and hair on Shanck’s skull seemed to sublimate as a cloud of roiling mist formed around his head. Soon, only his skull was left, seemingly floating in the mist. Given that Shanck had never been considered a handsome man (He was extensively scarred, it was said, from too many narrow victories as a boy fighting giant rats in the gaming pits), this wasn’t an especially great loss. Interestingly though, the flesh of his skull was not actually gone. Close observation suggested it had merely been transformed--become hazy and indistinct--and mostly hidden by the mists it seemed to diffuse into.

Jarus Shanck always explained that his head had gone "elsewhere." Whatever that meant, the device seemed to grant the powers of True Seeing, Arcane Sight, and at least at sometimes, Precognition. Some claim it was futuresight that led Shanck to kill the sea creature, Thraug--but no one knows for certain. Shanck also ceased to need sleep, though his body still needed rest through inactivity. Attacks against his head would pass harmlessly through the mist and suffocation or drowning had no effect. It has been theorized that attacks that could effect the astral could have harmed his head, but this remains unproven.

Besides the obvious cosmetic effects, the harness had other disadvantages. The longer Shanck’s head spent wherever it went, the more he became distracted from things on the material plane. Increasingly concerned about this problem, Shanck finally sought to have the harness removed--and discovered another downside.

After Shanck’s death, the harness is said to have unlatched on its own. None of his lieutenants claimed it, and it disappeared from history. If the rumors about Shanck’s hidden treasure trove behind the cliffs along the Eldritch are true, it maybe that that is where the harness can be found--awaiting another head.

Dead Wizard's Weird Possessions

The executor of Malregard’s estate has put more of the wicked old sorcerer’s belonging up form auction:

A murder’s last breath in ether: A brown glass bottle containing the dying breath of notorious mass murderer Eldred Toombs (executed in 5879). Inhaling the mixture infuses the user with a murderous impulse and the abilities of the maniac template for 1d4x15 minutes. The bottle contains approximately 10 inhalations.

Demonologia Sexualis: A leather-bound copy of the infamous tome detailing the perversions and sex magic rituals of the beings of the lower planes. Possession of a single illustration is probably enough to get one arrest in most jurisdictions. Many demons and devils are willing to barter a service for a copy. There are no doubt dubious advantages to actually reading the tome, as well.

Tape recording of an unknown language: A reel to reel tape labelled “Sample 13, 5882.” The language is unintelligible (even with magic), but the malevolent memetic entity inhabiting the strange, sing-song tongue can infect the brains of listeners. It will attempt to possess the most intelligent individual within hearing range. On a failed saving throw, it takes command of the person's body for a period 1d20 hours. Then, a series of seizures will signal the brain’s rejection of the alien presence. Any time period greater than 5 hours is likely long enough for the entity to launch itself into the astral plane. The entity can be trapped in the host by magical means and induced to reveal what secrets it possesses before the host dies (1d4 days).

The Wizard's Estate Sale

Lucius T. Malregard, infamous Southron sorceror, has passed on. (His body was found ripped limb from limb and in an advanced state of decay, but that’s another story.) His estate is being sold at auction by his relatives. The following items are on the block:

1. Jelly Monkeys candies in a wax-paper bag: These 5 colorful, gelatinous, monkey-shaped candies have been made into homunculi powered by blood. A pinprick drop of blood in the “mouth” of a Jelly Monkey will animate it for a day and place it under the command of the person whose blood fed it. The monkeys are able to report what they see and hear, though their intellects and vocabularies are limited. If the candy is eaten, a person will experience everything the monkey did that day. The more blood fed to the monkeys (or that they illicitly consume), the larger they will grow--and the more willful they will become (though the changes take time and will not immediately be apparent).

2. Human Skull: An adult human skull with a separated calvarium. If a candle is placed inside, and the skull is in darkness, flickering black and white images (like a kinetoscope) are projected from its eye sockets. These images are essentially clairvoyance (as the spell)--if a specific location is requested (aloud) of the skull. Otherwise, they are random and may be from anywhere in the world. Every night at the stroke of midnight, the skull laughs loudly and says: “Oh, for Heavens sake, Ormsley!”

3. One Past Midnight Man: Selected Recordings: A box of 3 10-inch phonograph records emblazoned with an image of an old-fashioned minstrelsy performer: the One Past Midnight Man. If any of the records are played, strange and backwards sounding voices can be heard overlayed on the primary recording. Upon completion of an record, a 10-inch tall man dressed like the figure on the cover will appear, only he is not in embarrassing blackface, but rather his skin is an unnatural inky black--as if made out of night, itself. He can teach any spell of the necromantic school (and likely others)--for a price.

4. Obscura gossamer: Wound around a bone spindle, is a black and silken, rough outline of a human. In fact, it is a human shadow that if attached to a new host (this process is unknown) obscures the wearer in such a way that they are hidden from magical and nonmagical attempts to find them (short of a wish). People can interact with them normally (if they draw attention to themselves) but won’t remember doing so within minutes. Attaching the shadow is likely permanent.

Thraug's Head

Not so long ago, a patron at one of the saloons or beer gardens on the southeast riverfront of the City barony of Shancks might have encountered the not-quite-deceased head of a monster, preserved in a jar. If they sat close to the distorted and slack-mouthed visage in the murky liquid, they might have heard its muffled, gurgling whispers.

The head of Thraug was a fixture along the narrow peninsula that bore his name, Thraug’s Neck. Popular superstition held that the head was good luck--certainly its original owner would have agreed it was better to have it than not. Unfortunately, for the eponymous merman (or merrow, some say), his luck ran out the day he quarrelled with Jarus Shanck, one-time assassin turned landowner.

Opinions differ as to what precipitated the violent encounter, but historians and folklore agree that Jarus Shanck never did require much excuse for murder. His preservation of his opponent's head in jar of alcohol is also viewed as in keeping with his macabre sense of whimsy.

Shanck gave the head to a henchman who made it the centerpiece of a tavern he opened. And so began Thraug’s vigil: watching unblinking through smoke-smudged glass as those around him pickled themselves from inside out. Some strange magic kept the merman’s head alive and he was said to speak prophecy--usually the ultimate fate of the person listening. He could be enticed to answer specific questions at times, though his answers were circumlocutious. Other times his utterances were merely pained observations on the fickleness of fate and the ephemeralness of this world, which listeners never failed to find insightful and moving.

More than one aged barkeep will tell you (with a nostalgic gleam in his eye) that a few words from ol’ Thraug were always good for another round.

Random Magical Junk

Never let it be said that hobogoblins are welchers.  Here's something magical from the bindle of the croaker (medicine man) hisself:

1. A wooden toy gun. When aimed at a target, and the bearer says “bang,” it fires. The invisible projectile does 1d3 points of damage and has range like a small sling.

2. A souvenir doll of a grinning man. Anyone who sleeps within 20 feet of the uncovered doll must make a saving throw or awaken feebleminded.
3. An expensive wristwatch that appears stopped--yet somehow never manages to have the right time.

4. A set of 2d6 erotic picture postcards. Most are mundane, but one of them can fascinate the viewer.
5. An old kerosene lantern that, when lit, casts darkness.
6. A wrinkled First Class Boarding Pass for the RMS Titan. If a person holding the pass concetrates hard on the image of someone they wish to kill, the pass will grow cold and damp in his or her hands, and the intended victim responds as if they are drowning in cold water.
7. A cast iron skillet +1 against husbands (+2 if they are cheating husbands).
8. A necrophiliac Tijuana Bible.  It draws all undead from a 10 mile radius to it.  Unintelligent undead are unable to resist its call; intelligent ones are not forced to respond, but may come out of curiousity or desire.  Undead tied to a specific place are tormented by the comics' seductive pull.
9. A half-smoked cigar. If lit, it is particularly noxious. Everyone but the smoker within 20 feet must save or become nauseated.

10. A wooden case containg a flea circus staffed by atomies, who can either be a help or a nuisance to the owner depending on how they’re treated.
11. An ever-full can of baked beans.  It refills in 1d4 hours after being emptied.
12. A roll of electrical insulating tape that gives anything it's wrapped around electricity resistance (absorbs the first 10 points of electrical damage per attack).

Crackpot Demonology

The Pandemonicon is a treatise on demonology widely known in the City. All extant copies of the work are amateur printings; the original copies were reproduced from a typed and hand-notated manuscript via jellygraph (hectograph)--in fact, the original gel, imbued with a malign (and murderous) life of its own, has been encountered in the City. The work’s author is given as “Secundus Rune,” but that appears to be a pen name of Alpert Sturne, an unemployed bug powder junkie.

Sturne’s work would be easy to dismiss, if it weren’t for the lengths certain powers go to obtain a copy. Wealthy infernalists have been known to pay handsomely for copies; Hell Syndicate bosses have killed for them. The Unknown have urged their destruction.

The Pandemonicon contains demons not mentioned in older works. Scholars are divided as to whether these new forms are merely different interpretations of older beings or if they represent evolution in the abyssal chaos. A couple of the demons described by Sturne are given as example, exactly in the way he describes them in the text:

Lepidopterist: These are of the Collectors. Defined things are a novelty to them. Pin souls to cards and arrange them by taxonomies of suffering. The pretty colors! You shall know them by their glowing red eyes in featureless faces and their wings like rainbows in oil slicks that beat and stutter like pictures in a flip book. Careful of their pins.

Misericordians: Sometimes they make you think they are succubuses and sometimes angels but they are neither. They look like that pin-up nurse I saw in that gas station calendar, but they don’t have her smile. No faces. Only scars. Only scar tissue. There are small scars too if you get close but you don’t want to get that close. They assisant a certain surgeon who it is not good to look upon. They know secrets of the flesh, how it can be twist and remade, but you have to be careful and avoid their mersy [sic] to learn them.

All the entries are number, though they are presented seemingly at random. The lowest is “1” and the highest “616.” The text has some illustrations which seem to have been cut or traced from older texts, sometimes with crude revisions by the author.

Collect Call from the Outer Dark

The City is awash with weird rumors, but one of the weirdest is about thaumaturgic artifact said to be in the possession of (or perhaps possessing) the City Telephone Company. In some inner corporate sanctum (so it goes) a secret order of technician-priests performs rituals in the service of a mummified severed head.

The rumors vary as to whether the head is housed in the City Telephone Company Skyscraper (a ziggurat-like structure that’s highest tower is topped by a Tesla coil-like spire--could it be more that decoration?) or a few blocks away in the research laboratories of its parent company, Reade Telephone (confirmed to be working on advances like etheric image transmission and trans-mortem communication). Wherever its housed, the head is said to be studded with electrodes attached to the glass sphere surrounding it. Beyond the dome, the “altar” upon when the head sits is surrounded by magic wards and electrical equipment like rune inscribed van de Graaff generators. Despite the sealed vacuum that surrounds the head, the room is always filled with its sonorous babbling.

What’s the heads purpose? That’s the question, isn't it? Some think its pronouncements are coded prophecies dutifully collected and decoded by the scientists. Others believe it's some sort of extradimensional computation device; it’s vocalizations are sonic representations of binary code, ultimately describing the entire multiverse and giving thaumaturgic mastery of reality itself. Still others are sure the head's a demon from the depths of the Pit and the sounds that hold its acolytes in such thrall are a slow working spell to breakdown the walls of the material world and overturn Creation.

Some adventures have gone looking for the head. Most have found nothing but stiff security at the telephone company offices. If anyone’s ever found the head, it doesn't seem they've lived to tell about it.

Wonders from the Planes

Besides the gray dust, other outer planar artifacts sometimes turn up in the more thaumaturgically-oriented private markets of the City, or end up in some structure of the Ancients to be found be adventurers. Here are a few of them:

Skeletal key: A minor artifact of the demonic gaolers from the plane called the Black Iron Prison. It’s a six inch long key that does indeed appear to be made out of bone. It can open any non-magical earthly lock, and a specific cell block within the plane of confinement, though it will be impossible to find out which one without magical or extraplanar aide.

Madness record: Condensed from the substance of their realm by the polychromatic clowns of the Plane of Chaos, these appear to be mundane 78rpm phonograph records. If the record is played, all those who are able to hear the strange and indescribable sounds on it will be affected as per the confusion spell.

Fabrication fog: A swarm of minuscule, polyhedral automatons from the Tesseract of Machina, the Plane of Order. These beings are packed into a small square box of some light, but extremely durable alien metal with cautionary text in several different scripts (but no earthly ones) engraved on it.  When the box is open the automata appear as a glittering swarm of fly-sized bronze shapes. They will be bound to the one who opens the box and serve him for one year (their power runs out then without recharge), until he is dead, or he gives them to someone else. They act like the fabricate spell, making whatever the owner desires within the restrictions of the spell (other than the need for the craft skill--the automata can manufacture anything non-magical item with a model or reference image). There are rumored to be versions of these which perform healing functions.

In A Handful of Dust

In the markets of Interzone or certain exclusive shops in the City, one might find gray dust. It’s an extraplanar substance, acquired in the Realm of Despair, the outer plane called the Wasteland or the Gray Gloom. The beings called the Faceless Mourners are rumored to trade it to the other worlds in exchange for tears of abandoned children or the captured last breath of suicides.

The gray dust has psychoactive properties, introducing the influence of its plane of origin into the mind of one who ingests or inhales it.

A failed saving throw results in one of the following effects (roll d6):

1 Fear - as per spell.
2 Anhedonia - the victim has a distinct lack of interest. They will take no action other that they aren’t forced, and are at a -1 to rolls when they do. Others react to them at a -2.
3 Despair - an intense low mood. Victim acts as if dazed, and has a -2 to initiative..
4 Anergia - Victim is exhausted.
5 Pain - pervasive aches and pains, effects as per Inflict Pain power.
6 Anxiety - effects like the shaken condition.

All effects last for 24 hours.

Mail Order Magic-Item: The Hypno-Coin!

The hyno-coin allows anyone who possesses it and has read the accompanying book of secrets and instructions (learning the 25 lessons contained there in) to hypnotize others. This acts as the spell Hypnotism, other than it can only be used on one person at a time (without the single creature saving throw penalty) of no more than 3 hit dice. Beings of any number of hit dice many still be fascinated by the coin if appropriately used.

In the hands of a thaumaturgist or other truly skilled mesmerist the coin aids in the casting of Hypnotism and other subtle compulsion spells by giving targets a -1 to their saving throws to such spells generally, but doubling the saving throw penalty when hypnotism is used on a single creature to -4.

The hypno-coin is usually gray and white and 1.5 inches in diameter.

Using Your Head

The Havatu tribe in the jungles of Asciana are infamous as headhunters. Usually, the heads they take (and shrink) are battle trophies, but at least once, a Havatu shaman seems to have coaxed powerful spirits into a group of shrunken heads and created magical artifacts. These were stolen by adventurers decades ago, and may now be encountered anywhere. There are five heads, each with a different power. The heads are intelligent, understand any language spoken to them, and reply in the native tongue of the person they are speaking with (though their breathless voices and sewn lips sometimes make them difficult to understand). A reaction role determines how helpful they are. The heads may answer as many specific questions about their area of expertise as they are inclined to. The heads' knowledge doesn’t extend to other planes or planets.

• Bomju: Sees all things they transpire by day not hidden by magic.
• Gomdala: Sees all things that transpire by night not hidden by magic.
• Trukmak: Hears all things that occur underground, but tends to be most interested in the movements of borrowing animals, and must be redirected.
• Moromo: Knows the location of all lost things, but it may take her d100 hours to remember.
• Naapau: Knows an antidote for all poisons and toxins, but must taste the poison to identify it.
• Ap-Oora: Knows things of magic, and can reveal the basic properties of magical creautres and objects, but will usally demand  to be close enough to "smell" the thing analyzed (though this really isn't neccessary).