Magic Item Sellers, and what the Heck is up with them

This series of tables are supposedly to help make a Magic Item salesman, though unfortunately, not their stock. That's a bit much to ask. In general, I'm all for making magic stuff a bit more weird than perhaps it really should be, and if buying magic items in your world is as simple as popping down to Tesco on a Sunday afternoon, cool, whatever. I'd rather buy/commission my Magic Items from an ancient Earth-God sequestered away in his sunken Temple-Forge. I dunno, adds a bit of a story I guess.

[As an addendum, when there's italic text in the tables, that means its a nested sub-table. As in, roll on the main table, then roll on the sub-table you just rolled. Perhaps I should have learned to format better, but perhaps you should have learned to read better.]



d20 Magic Item Smith Quirks

1 - This Smith can only forge/enchant items that have never been made before.
2 - This Smith is actually a Lich, who only accepts the bones of legendary beasts as payment for their services.
3 - This Smith is actually a Demon or perhaps a Devil who sells the belongings of the departed-for-hell.
4 - This Smith creates only sentient items, which are:
(d4 roll) 1 -  also secretly polymorphed sentient beings. They have been enchanted to forget this,
2 - powered by the bound spirits of the Smith’s ancestors. They may or may not be okay with this,
3 - binds the vestiges of ancient deities into items. They are usually not particularly bothered by this, but can be very willful or petty, and withhold power at the least convenient times,
4 - powered by the energies of the Asphodel fields. This is unknown even to the Smith, but if such an item is used, agents of the field will hunt down its bearer to recover their stolen power.
5 - This Smith enchants items by engraving Runes upon them, but they are blind. They are skilled enough to be able to carve the Runes perfectly without sight, but they don’t know every Rune that can bind magic into objects.
6 - This Smith specialises in potions, but has a reputation for selling potions cut with other, less beneficial substances.
7 - This Smith demands extremely abstract payments for their services.
8 - This Smith always creates two items at a time, which are each the exact opposite of the other. They charge for them to tell you which is which. To purchase both is exponentially more expensive than buying one.
9 - This Smith crafts items that must be refueled or refreshed periodically for their power to be maintained.
10 - This Smith lives/works in an extremely inconvenient location.
11 - Will only work when:
(d4 roll) 1 - when certain stars are in the ascendent,
2 - when a certain race is in (coin flip) [heads - decline, tails - ascendency],
3 - they are on the: (d4 roll) [1 - a wild and untamed reality, 2 - a dark and subdued reality, 3 - the astral sea that binds all reality together, 4 - a plane of purest form and element],
4 - the leylines converge on their place of work
12 - This Smith forges their items of/heavily featuring amber, which as you use the item, seems to twist and mold to more and more resemble you. Maybe it will even one day think for itself.
13 - This Smith is a being of elemental earth, and carves their items from the fossils of ancient beasts. You need to provide the fossil, and the aspects of the magic item come from the aspects of the fossil it was carved from.
14 - This Smith is a Druid, and grows plants in their grove into magic items. You may not have complete control over what they can nurture into being, and though it takes much less time than mundane plants, you’ll still need to wait for it to grow.
15 - This Smith must dedicate each item that it makes at the foot of an idol of a deity that it has never dedicated an item to.
16 - This Smith is secretly an old, retired god, and asks only that while they work on the item, you recover old relics of their religion and bring them to them. The relics of course, are all buried deep in dungeons across a remote region.
17 - This Smith doesn’t create items, he tattoos you, and the tattoos have power.
18 - This Smith is an old, nearly feral druid. If you ask him for something, he will craft a charm from the parts of various beasts. Each component adds an aspect of the item’s power. You may be asked to retrieve something for the charm.
19 - This Smith creates items that have no initial power, but become more powerful the more they are used. Certain acts using the item might make it more powerful. Some might diminish it.
20 - This Smith is incalculably ancient. His magic draws power from the spirits of the world to fuel the item’s power over the course of a ritual that can last many days. The spirits of the world will be less than pleased while this happens.

d20 Abstract Payments

1 - The taste of a:
(d4 roll) 1 - windy day,
2 - funeral march,
3 - victory song,
4 - rain on the lips of a dead man
2 - A (d4 roll) 1 - maiden’s,
2 - mother’s,
3 - king’s ,
4 - criminal’s,
(d4 roll) 1 - joy,
2 - sorrow,
3 - reward,
4 - punishment
3 - The scent of:
(d4 roll) 1 - a child’s confusion,
2 - geometry,
3 - bright light,
4 - a joyous reunion
4 - d8 years of another man’s life
5 - A pacifist’s weapon.
6 - Joy in Iron.
7 - The final work of an artist as yet unborn.
8 - The final breath of an immortal.
9 - The hair of a dragon.
10 - The apple of the Beholder’s eye.
11 - Acceptance of futility.
12 - A beautiful person’s ugliness.
13 - A Secret:
(d4 roll) 1 - Your secret,
2 - A secret of your family’s
3 - A friend’s secret,
4 - An enemy’s secret
14 - A Memory:
(d4 roll) 1 - A happy one,
2 - A sad one,
3 - A crucial one,
4 - One of no apparent significance  
15 - Your greatest skill
16 - Coins from an empire, as yet unborn
17 - A dead heart, still beating
18 - A child’s first words
19 - A reflection of the dark
20 - Your shadow

d6 Magic Item Rejuvenation Methods

1 - It must be regularly fed blood:
(d10 roll) 1 - Yours,
2 - An enemy’s,
3 - A friend’s,
4 - Royalty’s,
5 - Angelic,
6 - Demonic,
7 - Draconic,
8 - Familial,
9 - A long dead species,
10 - A Powerful Spellcaster’s: (d4 roll) [1 - Arcane, 2 - Divine, 3 - Druidic, 4 - Bardic]
2 - It must be regularly consecrated in:
(d12 roll) 1 - freshly blessed holy water,
2 - a lake that has never seen the light of day,
3 - in angel’s tears,
4 - in a demon lord’s forge,
5 - somewhere that has never been charted on a map,
6 - over the bones of a martyred saint,
7 - in freshly ground diamond dust,
8 - in a dream,
9 - at the tip of a unicorn’s horn,
10 - in the blood of a convicted criminal,
11 - in the belly of a dragon,
12 - at a mountain peak untouched by cloud
3 - It must be returned to its maker for its power to be rejuvenated:
(d4 roll) 1 - the cost will be great,
2 - the process will be long,
3 - the maker has moved to an inconvenient location,
4 - the maker will not do it willingly
4 - It must be used to accomplish:
(d6 roll) 1 - an act of great good,
2 - an act of great evil,
3 - an act of justice,
4 - an act of mercy,
5 - the death of the mighty,
6 - a great discovery
5 -  It must be fueled by the caster’s own magic. Doing so makes it:
(d4 roll) 1 - harder to remember and prepare spells,
2 - that spells have a small chance to fail on casting,
3 - that you have less power to fuel spell casting,
4 - easier for other spellcasters to counter their spells. This effect is only for: (d4 roll) [1 - a relatively short period following recharging the item, 2 - for a short while after using the item’s power, 3 - as long as you wield the item, 4 - permanent, but only has a small impact each time]
6 - It must completely drain the magic of:
(d4 roll)1 - other spellcasters, probably through violence,
2 - magical locations, by being present overnight,
3 - other magic items, by touch,
4 - ancient enchantments, at least a century old,
5 - the power sources of golems and other manufactured beings,
6 - powerful extra-planar beings, unaware of what will happen

d10 Inconvenient Locations

1 - A few levels down in the local dungeon.
2 - A few hundred years ago.
3 - Deep inside a labyrinthine pocket dimension.
4 - Secluded in the sealed tower of a monster haunted:
(d4 roll) 1 - ruined city,
2 - decrepit castle,
3 - temple complex,
4 - lonely island
5 - In a retreat deep below the surface of the earth, with no known entrance.
6 - In a flying dwelling that has never seen the underside of clouds.
7 - In the hardest to reach nook of this massive:
(d10 roll) 1 - mountain,
2 - ravine/chasm,
3 - jungle,
4 - desert,
5 - Ocean,
6 - Cave System,
7 - Glacier,
8 - Cliffside,
9 - Giant Tree,
10 - Roll twice, placing the first somewhere in the second.
8 - In dreams:
(d12 roll) 1 - on the shores of memories-through-twisted-mirrors,
2 - in the archives of experience-and-knowledge-lost-long-ago,
3 - in the wildlands of imagination-left-to-grow-unwatched-and-unpruned,
4 - in the forest-of-the-haze-of-the-mind-after-long-ages,
5 - atop the precipices of the mountains-of-aspirations-always-dreamed-of-but-thought-impossible,
6 - in the depths of the ocean-of-desperation-and-despond-that-weighs-heavily-on-the-down-trodden,
7 - in the vast halls-of-the-familiarity-and-close-mindedness-of-the-comfortable-and-rich,
8 - in the ravines-of-fears-once-held-but-now-cast-away,
9 - in the forest clearings-of-those-moments-when-all-is-still-and-silence-can-settle-and-comfort,
10 - in the cities-of-the-worries-and-pressures-of-the-inferno-of-modernity,
11 - the lands of the-illusion-that-is-known-to-be-real-though-it-is-not,
12 - the harbour-of-the-half-asleep on the borderlands of the-not-quite-dreaming
9 - Beyond the silver of the mirror
10 - In a tower that exists only:
(d4 roll)  1 - At night,
2 - When you have your eyes closed,
3 - At a certain time of year,
4 - At the culmination of a: (d4 roll) [1 - lost and esoteric ritual, 2 - long and demanding ritual, 3 - fabulously expensive ritual, 4 - devastatingly self-sacrificial ritual]

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