A Short Bestiary of "The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus"

"The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus" by L. Frank Baum is an adventure I read every year these days, and I was struck by how well some of the descriptions of immortals and their foes would translate to an old-school RPG. So here they are. It's public domain, so read it yourself and write your own monster stats if you disagree, Merry Christmas.

As always, images from the original 1920's book when available, and Rankin & Bass when not. 

Not included, though interesting, are the Water Sprites, Sleep Fays, Sound Imps, Wind Demons, and Light Elves.

Ryls

 

HD 1 AC none Thorns 1
Move Normal Int Low Morale Normal
Wants protect plants, destroy ravagers

Little first cousins to the nymphs, who watch over flowers and plants. They are merry and light-hearted, loving laughter. Their king lives in a distant meadow of gay flowers and luscious fruits.

Each attends a particular type of flower and takes its color for its name and simple garb. (The Yellow Ryl tends the buttercups, for example.)

Gifts: Can bring food, and paint the color of their plant.

Fairies

HD 2 AC as chain (flitting) Golden Wand deflect
Move Fast, flight Int High Morale High
Wants protect mankind, destroy tempters

Dressed in white gauze with rainbow-hued wings and golden wands. They are usually invisible and unknown to mortals. They honor a great queen who protects a magical pool which grants beauty to those who bathe in it.

Golden Wand: Each turn, a fairy can reduce the damage from one attack by 2d4. The attacker takes the same amount as the damage flows back to them (but no more than the attack could have caused). Multiple fairies working together can turn back dragon breath. 

Gifts: Can bring cloth and tools. 

Knooks

 

HD 3+1 AC as leather (gnarled) Spear 1d6
Move Normal Int Normal Morale Brave
Wants protect beasts, destroy monstrosities

Old and worn and crooked, anxious and rough, gray beards and scowling brows. They love courage, and are gruff but friendly. Knooks are known by names like "Will" and "Peter". Their great king lives in a distant jungle.

Each band are particular to one woods, but they share a secret language of whistles by which friendship is known. They can teleport creatures between their woods if all parties are willing and friendly.

Stinging Gnats: Once per day a knook can set a swarm of stinging gnats against a foe or recalcitrant beast. The target is blinded and slowed and cannot concentrate. Any area damage destroys the gnats, but damages the target as well. Submersion or strong winds may help.

Gifts: Gather and work (dead) wood and leather from animals that died of old age.

Nymphs

HD 4 AC as chain (wooden flesh) Ash Switch transmute
Move Normal Int Normal Morale High
Wants protect trees, destroy defiers

Tree colored, slender, dressed in oak-leaf green and sandals. They are curious and proud.

Cause Fear: In defense of forests and trees, a nymph can cause 2d4 HD of creatures that can see her to save or flee in fear.

Ash Switch: A creature struck by a nymph's ash switch has its speed reduced by a category. Anything rendered immobile by this effect is transmuted into a clod of dirt.

Gifts: A nymph can seal a dwelling against unwanted incursions.

Awgwas

 

HD 6 AC as chain (huge, tough) Stone d10
Move Slow Int Average Morale Proud
Wants tempt mortals to mischief, become king

They were of gigantic stature and had coarse, scowling countenances which showed plainly their hatred of all mankind. They possessed no consciences whatever and delighted only in evil deeds.

Their homes were in rocky, mountainous places, from whence they sallied forth to accomplish their wicked purposes.

The one of their number that could think of the most horrible deed for them to do was always elected the King Awgwa, and all the race obeyed his orders.

Limited Invisibility: Invisible to mortals, but not immortals.

Tempt Mortals: Whisper in a mortal's ear to give them advantage on their next check or attack to a petty, cruel, or quarrelsome action.

Bat-Winged Demons from Patalonia

HD 3 AC as leather (flapping) Immiserate d6 morale
Move Normal flight Int Average Morale High
Wants flap through the air spreading misery

Three-Eyed Giants of Tatary

HD 8 AC as plate (gigantic, thick walls of flesh) Slam x3 d8
Move Slow Int Average Morale Brave
Wants fight!

Goozzle-Goblins

HD 1 AC none Sword-Talons d6
Move Normal Int Average Morale High
Wants flay flesh from bones

Wherever a goozle-goblin dies, a thistle will grow.

Books Completed November 2022

I worked too much this month, but still managed to read a bit.

 

 

The Song of Roland, translated by Frederick Goland - Another one pulled from my wife's history master's bookcase, though she has no recollection of owning this or reading it. I would swear it was her copy--there's notes about wanting a dog and getting a power wheelchair and calling out all the whatever might pass for romantic moments in the text, but she'd also sooner put a knife through her hand than write in a book so I guess I have to believe her.

Goland's introduction is a text in itself. An efficient primer of French pre-history with a summary of the song, and then a really gripping few pages of how a modern reader can try to understand the nigh-mythic history among the "religious time" the song lays out. I read The Bright Ages earlier this year and that was an important primer to this concept. Then we whiplash to a lesson on poetic meter that I tried to carry forward into my reading but, hey, sometimes medieval French syllabaries don't carry into modern English perfectly.

 

Now, the song itself. I read it in two minds. As a D&D player, I cast my mind back a bit to the 70s, and earlier, where this might be a place you could get heroic two-handed swords (repeatedly) shearing through shields and skulls and hauberks. You can worry about supply lines! You can be operatic! The oliphant! The linens and silks strewn under the bowers for war councils! Really, if you can divorce yourself from the slaughter, the imagery is lovely.

 

But it's also a propaganda text. It's about the creation of a state and the glory of dying for your lord, who will be so very sad for your sacrifice. But now that you've martyred yourself, he's free (and obligated) to abduct the heathen queen you've liberated. Thousands of people die in "glory", but Charlemagne gets to be great!

 

Horses and swords and shields all get cool names though!

 

The Three Imposters and Other Stories, by Arthur Machen - I started reading this in October, in line with Halloween goals. For whatever reason, though I'd read this a couple times before, this collection really shone this year for whatever reason.

Now, I could write a whole post about each section of this book, and I started to, but there are only so many hours. Here's what stands out: The whiplash of each story's plodding Victorian pacing and the sudden, shearing terror that cuts through the moments of revelation.

Here again we have the impossible drug from a weird chemist formula, btw.

I wish I was a little better tracking characters across stories. "Inspector" Dyson is here several times, and I think the joke is that he's worthless but lucky? Not sure, I'm bad at this.

There's a wordy introduction by Joshi here too but eh, this guy.

That poor man with the spectacles. Should have shaved.

Atlantis and Other Lost Cities, by Rob Shone, illustrated by Jim Eldridge - This is just a kids' book I found in a little free library, but look at this cover. This cover is awesome, if I were 11 when I found this I would be obsessed with lost cities all my life.

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/2fEAAOSw0Z1fqKrp/s-l1600.jpg

 

The Goon Library Volume 2, by Eric Powell -  Let's read more The Goon! It's like 80% great and 20% embarrassing!

Books Completed October 2022

 

The October Country by Ray Bradbury - I read this every October. This year, for whatever reason, I was struck by how many of the stories really revolve around bad or damaged relationships, regardless of what weirdness is also going on.

• "The Dwarf" - The two non-titular characters have an abusive relationship. It's not clear if they're friends or dating, but the carnie belittles the woman at every opportunity.
  
• "The Next in Line" - The worst of them all. It's sort of the point of the story, but the husband in this one is just awful.
  
• "The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse" - The marriage is actually pretty okay, and they seem supportive of each other. But then the story is really about a sort of tug-of-war of exploitation between the main character and the hipsters.
  
• "Skeleton" - Guy's doctor hates him, guy's wife is mildly supportive but doesn't really seem to care about her husband starving himself to death and puking in the flowers.
  
• "The Jar" - Another one where it's the terrible relationship driving the plot. There's a veil over it but it's also heavily implied the husband kills his wife for cheating on him which... cool.
  
• "The Lake" - Seems to be going good then the whole marriage turns out to be hollow and perfunctory.
  
• "The Emissary" - Kid's mom is clearly exasperated with him being sick all the time. Half of the good relationship dies on page 3, and that absence drives the rest of the story.
  
• "Touched With Fire" - This one does not hold up well. The concept is relatable, with temperatures rising these days, but holy hell Ray poured every vile stereotype about women he could dredge up into the woman on floor 3.
  
• "The Small Assassin" - Almost! The husband actually seems to be taking his wife's concerns and stress seriously. Not quite enough to save her, though. And the doctor is in this one is, again, a twit.
  
• "The Crowd" - The only real relationship in this one is between two friends, and it's pretty believable actually.
  
• "Jack-in-the-Box" - Just 20 pages of screwed up mother issues.
  
• "The Scythe" - Pretty believable and supportive marriage, particularly when you consider what people will do to feed their kids.
  
• "Uncle Einar" - A straight-up happy marriage, with passages that dwell on how they bring out better things in each other. Nice! (For some reason I always picture Einar as Gilbert from The Sandman, but with wings.)
  
• "The Wind" - Two friends, one with a problem, and the other trying to support him. The latter's wife though berates him constantly for being concerned about his friend, and doesn't believe anything he says about the troubles. Nice trust setup there.
  
• "The Man Upstairs" - This is probably my favorite story in this book, it's extremely Bradburyish. There's the relationship between the main boy and his grandparents, which is loving in that kind of bemused way.
  
• "There Was an Old Woman" - It's the absence of relationships here at all that feels weird.
  
• "The Cistern" - Jesus.
  
• "Homecoming" - Probably my second favorite, and Einar's here again. The story centers around a normal boy's relationship with his monstrous family, and it's... sweet and sad at the same time. About as healthy as you can imagine.
  
• "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone" - And they all lived happily ever after.

I found The Ray Bradbury Theater on streaming and watched a few episodes based on stories in this collection (The Crowd, Skeleton, and The Man Upstairs). The show does not hold up too well, to be honest.

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury - Another one I read every October. It's a young adult book so it's not that much of an investment, but it's a fun little tradition. I don't know how well the history of Halloween presented here would hold up to modern theory and research, but I don't particularly care, it's a romp, and I love the illustrations by Mugnaini.

This has one of my favorite Bradbury lines, set off in a paragraph by itself: "The scythe fell and lay in the grass like a lost smile." However, I did notice on this reading that Ray could never pass up the opportunity to make a smile simile when describing scythes, I think there were four in this book alone, and he does it in "The Scythe" in the collection above, as well.

I looked up the animated movie after reading this, too. I didn't watch it because I remembered doing so a year or two ago and thinking it was pretty bad. I was surprised to read that Bradbury considered it one of the better adaptations of any of his work.

Hokushai, a Graphic Biography by Giuseppe Lantazi & Francesco Matteuzzi - This is a graphic biography of a man I admit I knew very little about at all. It was a birthday gift for my wife from a friend, so it was out on the table. It's also a brief history lesson on the Edo period. Nice art, well-told story, interesting framing. It did bust out the "samurai didn't use guns because they weren't honorable" chestnut though which makes me wonder how accurate the rest of the facts were. I did no additional research to find out.

The Goon Library Volume 1 by Eric Powell - I picked up 5 volumes of this on sale years ago, and pulled this one on a whim. I hadn't read any The Goon in a long time and was surprised how well it holds up. There's a lot of early-2000's "lolrandom" going on but if you get past that there's genuine pathos here, and fear sometimes and the art's great, and the core story is still just spot on. Plus you get "Release the giant zombie chimp!" Will probably dust off the other volumes soon.

The Willows and Other Nightmares by Algernon Blackwood - This is the very fancy Beehive Books edition, illustrated by Paul Pope. "The Willows" really is an eerie little tale and a good one to revisit around Halloween. It never sits quite right with me, though, how The Swede conveniently knows all this arcane knowledge.

 

This volume also contains "Accessory Before the Fact", "Smith: An Episode in a Lodging-House", "An Egyptian Hornet", and "The Man Who Found Out." I don't think I'd read those last two before - "The Man Who Found Out" is bleak.

A lot of care went into the production of this edition - it won some design awards when it came out. It very much feels like you are Reading A Book when you're reading this book. The illustrations are evocative, particularly given the vague and otherworldly nature of the subject matter, and are placed through the stories really well to not break the flow or spoil anything.

Books Completed September 2022

 

 

 

Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920 by Robert K. Murray - Another one from my wife's college history bookshelves, though she says she has never heard of this book. Spooky. 

This is a discussion of how terror at an invasion of "the Reds!" and "Bolshevism!" gripped the nation for a couple years then quickly faded away when the populace realized surrendering their rights to keep their rights wasn't working out too well. Let's hope for a repeat performance soon please.

Also of note, this was written in 1955, so the constant theme is "Obviously communism is terrible but don't you think we might have overdone the reaction a bit when we were lads hmm?". The focus on the labor strikes of 1919 as a driving factor off the hysteria was an interesting angle.

 

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman - A watercolor of a book my friend Jen recommended and then went ahead and mailed me. I've already loaned it out to another friend who likes a creepy but not too creepy story for October. It does a lovely job of capturing the feeling of the end of childhood, at least as well as can be remembered by one middle-aged man and experienced by another. The man can describe a cosy kitchen scary well, apparently the more so for populating one with his favorite tripartite. The bag of broken toys as spell components were a bit twee, I gotta say.

 

Hellboy: The Wild Hunt by Mignola/Fegredo - I picked this up at a comic store pretty much at random in Salem years ago as something to read during one of my wife's appointments. It might not be fair to critique much, since it's the middle volume of a trilogy in a long-running story I have not read much of at all, though I've seen the first two movies. So I'll just say it doesn't stand as its own story very well, there's a big "it was all a dream" section which, no don't, and there's a strong "guys I just learned about this in my mythology research and now you have to, too" undercurrent. The art's great and getting lost in the action sequences is fun, and the pig-elf-guy is a well-written pitiable character.

Books Completed August 2022

Two photos this month because I wasn't expecting to tear through one book in the last few days of the month after already having mailed out another I'd finished. Whoops!

The History of the Buccaneers of America: Containing Detailed Accounts of Those Bold and Daring Freebooters by Alexandre Olivier Esquemelin - I found this in a little free library while I was walking along humming an Alestorm song and thinking about rules for a pirate RPG I was writing, so that's fate. It took me most of a year to get through a page or three at a time, as it's pretty dense, fairly archaic first-hand account from the late 1600's. Though there was lots of content that would make great additions to a game (and I started keeping notes for that way too late in my reading), to be honest it kind of put me off making anything about the pirates of that time into a game. They were desperate and brutal men, and all the excitement is bound up with suffering and wanton cruelty. After I finished, I mailed it off to my friend Matt, who happens to be a historian and the author of:

Free Hands #1 by Matt Wilding and friends - Got this through the Kickstarter. It's the first issue in what promises to be a bloody, piratical romp from Sequential Decay comics. I should take some inspiration from this that perhaps there is a way that we can tell stories of the pirates of yore in a meaningful way. My only gripe is the colors in my copy seem dark or murky. Might be an artifact of the production.

The Urth of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe - I finished the Book of the New Sun tetralogy last month, and immediately ordered this when I found out he had written a fifth book as a "coda". In a way, I wish I hadn't. There's praise aplenty heaped on this book, and from a technical perspective it's really interesting. Wolfe managed to create a work he clearly hadn't planned as part of the original and have it fit seamlessly into the continuity. However, it reminded me a bit of Sandman Overture: The author seemed compelled to come back to a completed work which contained loose ends and ambiguous events as part of its appeal and wrap them all up, taking most of that opportunity away from the readers. Also, this book introduces a whole bunch of time travel to make it happen which... I'm not a time travel fan.

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery - Another little free library find I happened past and grabbed on a whim because I realized I'd never read it despite seeing the old PBS miniseries several times in my youth. Though it's not much of an achievement for a kid's book, I read this in two sittings in two days and found it delightful. Some of it's surely pure nostalgia for a time and place that basically never existed, but the characterization is so precise and delicate, and the descriptions of the land so loving, it just skims along. It somehow manages to capture the whole of a childhood and the melancholy of growing out of that in just a few hundred pages. I know there are sequels, but I think I might just let this one stand alone in my memory for a while.

Books Completed July 2022

 Again with the month delay.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley - I'd read this before, but it had been years and years. The writing itself is quite dynamic, Huxley could weave three or four plot threads together, dashing between them paragraph by paragraph, carrying the reader along deftly. I could picture Bernard Marx skulking the depths of Reddit, his character was possibly the most prescient part of the book. The old "Shakespeare is the pinnacle of English literature" chestnut gets taken out and shaken around more than is to my taste.

Sword & Citadel by Gene Wolfe - These are the second two books in the Book of the New Sun tetralogy of which I read the first two, oh, a couple years ago. I really think they're meant to be read back to back though, there are so many references to characters and events of those first books. Apparently Wolfe wrote them that way, too.

Reading about this book, there are many discussions about how a clever or attentive reader will pick up on Severian's status as an unreliable narrator, and also how the archaic vocabulary will send them scrambling for a dictionary. Well joke's on them because I'm not that kind of reader at all and when I hit a logical inconsistency or a word I don't know I just chalk it up to not paying the right kind of attention and plow ahead.

Anyway I kept thinking the strangeness of the encounters and the episodic, tightly contained nature of the chapters made this feel like it would make a great anime.

I think I originally heard about this series from an artist whose RSS I used to follow did some fan art. Here it all is on Art Station - I still think it's pretty great.

Apparently there is a "coda" fifth book, which I ordered.

Into The Odd by Chris McDowall - Hooray for Kickstarters you forgot about that turn into little presents from your past self. A clean little fantasy RPG that I've run a couple of times as a one-shot. The production values on this edition are quite nice - paper is heavy, binding feels solid, color and bleed are crisp. It does seem to be missing a chapter about the city of Bastion for all the references it makes to its being "the only city that matters". Also the main example dungeon didn't seem to have a consistent theme, but maybe it would become apparent in play. The Arcanas are cool. I'd still run this if the opportunity came up.

Oglaf Books One, Two, and Three by Trudy Cooper and Doug Bayne - My wife got me these for my birthday. I follow the comic on RSS so am up-to-date, but it had been a long time since I read the back catalog. Still, just, hilarious on the whole. Sithrakism is the closest I have seen to a believable religion: "God hates you and will torture you forever when you die, so stay alive as long as you can!". We use the punchline from this one in day-to-day conversations still. Reading them back to back I did notice that like 40% of the punchlines are basically "you don't think they're gonna have sex, but then they do", though.

Books Completed June 2022

I keep writing these almost a month late. Not a great pattern!

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift - Everything that's social commentary here has already been written. I'll just say that the tone holds up even if the specific targets have faded. But if you've ever read a published RPG module or supplement, it's hard to imagine how this hasn't influenced it. The Atlas of The Planet of Hats!

It's worth calling out the misogyny is troweled on so heavy none of the discussions I've read are sure if it's the author's own prejudices bleeding through or part of the satire. I didn't find similar discussions around the assumptions that every society encountered would be broken into labors and "betters", but, again, that's Swift?

Let's take some gameables from each book.

• Give your players a coloring book conflict. Make them the biggest players on the stage. Let them think their actions are unaccountable.
• Make your players weak and unaccountable, physically. Let them try to play factions against each other. Introduce a medium between the two scales.
• Flying island. Math worship. There's not a lot here that isn't just a shitty 1E module, other than that the clothes made by math are bad and that immortality destroys in kind.
• Infectious philosophy. Your "race" is a degenerate servant here.

The Mammoth Book of Terror edited by Stephen Jones - I was going to throw this into a purge box, but noticed one of the authors was Manly Wade Wellman, an author I have been interested in recently. Flipping the pages, I realized this is a book that had a whole bunch of stories I vaguely remembered reading through the years but had given up hope of discovering the source. No idea where I got this thick old volume to start with, but let's try to consider each story. I'm going to pull the list from this Goodreads review because, well, this is enough to type already. 

(Hate the cover of this edition btw.)

• "The Yougoslaves" by Robert Bloch: Wouldn't have been so creepily racist if the author hadn't acknowledged it was a self-insert in the intro. 
• "The Last Illusion" by Clive Barker: The novelette that apparently inspired the Lord Of Illusions movie, but branches off from it wildly after the first paragraph other than the characters' names.
• "The House of the Temple" by Brian Lumley: I love the idea behind this and want to steal cosmic horror parasites as a lower-level encounter.
• "Murgunstrumm" by Hugh Cave: Pulpy as fuck.
• "The Late Shift" by Dennis Etchison: Cyberpunk as fuck.
• "Firstborn" by David Campton: Ehhh, no.
• "Amber Print" by Basil Copper: Makes a little more sense now that I've seen The Cabinet, but not my favoite.
• "Crystal" by Charles L. Grant: I couldn't follow what this was trying to do, but a lot of Londoners died.
• "The Horse Lord" by Lisa Tuttle: THIS IS LEGITIMATELY ONE OF THE SCARIEST STORIES I HAVE READ. I was so glad to rediscover it here. If I ever edited a collection of horror, wow, I would feature this. I need to find more by Tuttle, I adore this story.
• "Bunny Didn't Tell Us" by David J. Schow: Good for the mud imagery, not much else.
• "Out of Copyright" by Ramsey Campbell: Weird revenge fantasy from a fiction author against the concept of EDITORS.
• "Pig's Dinner" by Graham Masterton: Gore. I was already off pork before I read this but, it'd help.
• "The Jumpity-Jim" by R. Chetwynd Hayes: Steal this for a simple D&D module: Demonic entity can be summoned by non-magical but very specific circumstances.
• "Junk" by Stephen Laws: What. At least the guy liked his dog.
• "The Satyr's Head" by David Riley: Basic cursed item story, but wet London. 
• "Buckets" by F. Paul Wilson: I thought I imagined this story, but someone wrote it. 
• "The Black Drama" by Manly Wade Wellman: Worth saving the volume from the trash. This is a weird bit, but it stood out to me as the first time I remember any character in a 30s/40s story wearing anything but a suit or dress. The guy puts on jeans and "canvas sneakers" while he's changing in the boathouse! A fun story in any way even if you can see what's happening a mile away. Good job, Manly Wade Wellman (what a name).
• "The River of Night's Dreaming" by Karl Edward Wagner: Invokes a fever dream well, but not sure what's going on here. Wet.

The Great Outdoor Fight by Chris Onstad - Achewood is brain tape for me, but it's fun to revisit the classics. I'd forgotten this volume includes (terrible) old recipes.

The Walking Dead Vol.10-22 by Robert Kirkman and friends - Flowed over from last month. Mostly an excuse to lie on the floor while my back healed up (much better now, thanks), but still interesting to compare to the memories of the show. By the end of this run I hated all the characters so good job.

Books Completed May 2022

Between yard work, work work, Rogue Legacy 2 coming out of early access, and messing up my back, I didn't get a ton of reading done this month. The fact that I'm posting this late in June doesn't bode too well for the June post either, but we'll see.

On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers - I don't remember where I saw this referenced, but I picked it up secondhand as inspiration for the pirate game I'm perennially writing. Perhaps that my copy arrived soaked in cologne prejudiced me, but I couldn't quite enjoy this book. There are a few good hooks slipped in early on that come together satisfyingly around the middle, but the end feels rushed. The action sequences are nice and dynamic, with lots of nameless pirates and sailors getting tossed around. It's a very casually -ist book, though. Like, only the black characters are given accents, or have their skin color described. One of the villains is your basic fat == evil. There are only three women with speaking roles in the whole book: One's the heroine, who four different men are chasing to own for various reasons; one is described mostly in terms of her breasts; one is a ghost. 

Dyson's Book of Swords by Dyson Logos - This barely counts as a read, but it's a fun little picture book of 50+ fantasy swords with evocative, short descriptions. They're cute and I can imagine using this as a flipbook treasure table.

Eat the Weeds by Ben Charles Harris - This has been in my subconscious for a long time as a classic of the foraging hobby, which interests me more from a local knowledge and awareness perspective than survivalist. Turns out this is out of print though, so can't be that much of a classic. Finally reading through a second-hand copy though, I can safely say the author was a lunatic.

It took me a while to pin down the writing style, which reminded me so much of modern right-wing articles for some reason. I think it's the tone someone who is convinced of their own correctness and intelligence they've never listened to feedback or actually tried to improve, so it just comes out as stilted and pompous. The usefulness of the material itself was hindered by this not being a field guide in the least, and assuming you already know what kind of plant you're looking to possibly eat. Or, as he suggests, bringing samples to local experts who will certainly be happy to take time out of their day to identify yet another mallow for you or such. Then the uses are almost all one of three:

• Substitute it for another Vegetable. There was a weird assumption about a baseline set of vegetables that you could sub in foraged stuff for. As in, the foraged plants were never discussed as first-class produce on their own, just something you could have instead of Spinach or Asparagus. Also, he capitalizes all the plant names like that and it weirds me out.
• Make a tea. Probably as a substitute for Coffee or Black Tea (again with the uppercase), which contains the harmful Caffeine (also a good smattering of proper nouns for no reason). Cold teas are to be avoided (this is also a health book from the 50's), and warm teas are to be drunk like eight times a day, and slowly swished in the mouth to mix them with spit before swallowing (what).

Add it to a soup. Inspired.

Also he consistently referred to Native Americans both in the past tense and in the possessive which, yikes.

The Walking Dead Vol.1-9 by Robert Kirkman and friends - I've had the early volumes of this on a shelf since they came out, but stopped keeping up with it around volume 13 or something. But I was  walking the dog and happened to find volumes 15-21 in a little free library. Then I noticed I had loaned out volumes 1 & 2 sometime in the past. Anyway, so I picked up the first two again and the two in the gap to fill in the collection because at this point why not.

This proved to be a good move because I really screwed up my back in May and had to lie on the floor for a long time and do not particularly challenging things. Like rereading comics. I've also seen the first few seasons of the show, so probably the most interesting thing about revisiting the comics was seeing where I could remember deviations between them, or watching how some events got reused in different places. I don't love the franchise, but it's entertaining enough. There's more torture put in front of the veil than I think is necessary, but I guess that was one of its selling points. The treatment of the group "dealing with" the cannibals is effective without showing the specifics, for example.

Books Completed in April 2022

Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett - The funniest story at the intersection of nationalism and gender politics for my dollar. Been years since I read this first, but it felt relevant to the times so picked it up again. I do like to come back to a Discworld book after a few years - there's always some little bit I don't remember that gives me a chuckle, and bits and footnotes I'm glad to see again (“A woman always has half an onion left over, no matter what the size of the onion, the dish or the woman”). My mom read this too a few years ago and was impressed by how well he wrote women characters. Jackrum remains a beast.

Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson - This one took me since December to get through in fits and starts, but by golly I did it. I am not schooled in the social sciences at all, and this book definitely assumes some level of familiarity I didn't have. However, I still found it interesting to sort of let it wash over me, and I think I agree with the shape of the thesis and I can see it. Getting my hands around the concepts of nationalism seems important right now (see above) - I don't recognize much of it in myself, or really any adherence to a group, but it's clearly shaping my country and the world right now.

One thing that frustrated me here was early on Anderson comments about how most readers are monoglots, and then dwells on this at length when discussing the impact of a polyglot bureaucratic class among the colonies. Then, despite that, he doesn't provide translations of multiple quotes, in multiple languages. Sorry I don't speak French and Latin, Ben. Also the structure of the footnotes was baffling. Some were mere references, some were whole separate little essays, some wandered off into abject tangents. It would have been clearer to read if you didn't have to constantly shift attention between the main text and a four-paragraph aside.

Captain America, the Classic Years vol. 2 by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby - I've read this volume a few times in the past couple decades, but pulled it off the comics shelf for no discernable reason. Maybe I wanted to see how it felt in the current political climate? Not sure I have that level of self-awareness.

Anyway, as long as I remember it was written for kids and just accept that the military camp is walking distance from both a foggy moor and a mobster-riddled city, it's fun in a flying fists kind of way. At the same time, knowing it was aimed at kids makes the propaganda aspects stick out all the more. The art, though pioneering, also sometimes borders on outsider art. Like, what are these faces:

Go get 'em, Cap.

A normal dog, or Jack Kirby predicts The Thing?

I'm sure others have written at length and with skill as to the pervasive racism in these comics, as well. It's worth calling out. You have a guy punching Nazis, which we can all get behind, but also saying stuff like "here come some Chinamen and they're not waving laundry tickets!". There's a whole story about a white artist driven to murder because he loses his hand and gets a "horrible black claw" grafted on to replace it. Yikes.

Boundless vol. 1 by Boston Comics Collective - Happened on this at our neighborhood yard sale. A fun little collection of comics on a nice variety of scientific topics. The entries about the Morris Worm and the nonlinear nature of research and discovery were my favorites.

The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart - Another one of those books you're probably not supposed to read cover-to-cover but oh well. An interesting overview of how various plants are used in brewing and distilling, and as flavors and tinctures. I learned a lot about agave in particular. The treatment of "Old World"/"New World" in terms of "explorers" "discovering" ingredients was uncomfortable at times. Learning about the global voyage Aquavit goes on may have inspired a D&D adventure, escorting some semi-secret cargo along a semi-secret route and bringing it back home.  

Pictures and Stories from Forgotten Children's Books by Arnold Arnold - Woodcuts are always fun, but on the whole perhaps there's a reason most of these stories were forgotten. The longest recounted here is a version of Jack the Giant Killer, where the supposed trickster hero slaughters a dozen giants with the most basic of "tricks". Other than that it's mostly alphabets, cautionary tales, and gender essentialism. Arnold Arnold seems like an interesting guy though - he did pick that name rather than being born with it, and is apparently the person who created the Parker Brothers spiral logo. So that's neat.

Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse - The sequel to Trail of Lightning, which I read a couple years ago when it came out. The first chapter gets things going immediately, introducing a new character and thrusting a death flag through the neck of one of the characters from the previous story. On the whole I liked it, but it's the second second-in-a-series book I've read this year and maybe that made all the worldbuilding hits fall a little too heavily at times. The escape from the auction sequence was my favorite.

 

Books Completed in March 2022

 

Rackham Vale by Brian Saliba & Craig Schaffer - This is a fun little RPG sandbox based on the art of Arthur Rackham. Now I love me a fiction built on reinterpreting a small body of work over and over again so this tickled an itch I once tried to scratch myself by running a whole D&D campaign based on Blood Mountain. The layout and editing are impressive (but not perfect) for a small project and the quality is nice for print-on-demand. I only wish there was a map included for the Alchemist's Tower - it's described as a "general adventure site" the DM can drop anything into, but many actors and factions have specific bits mentioned as being tied back to it, and it also describes some specific contents. The map of faction relationships is a useful tool I'm hoping to see more sandboxes take advantage of.

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey - "Are you a coward or are you a Librarian?" asks the cover of this novelette. It's a sometime-in-the-future believable US of America situation where an approved job for single, upstanding women is to travel the land distributing Approved Materials. Of course there's more going on and I... think I read a romance novel? It was fun, and Gailey's debut.

The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier by Jakob Walter - Pulled this one off my wife's shelf of college history books. Anytime anyone starts talking about war in a glorious fashion you should be allowed to slap them with a copy of this book. The suffering described in here in such straightforward, work-a-day terms is horrifying. I cried a bit for a man one-hundred-fifty-years dead when he described finding some peas in a kettle, then having them ruined when a fellow soldier's added fat turns out to be soap. There's a weird passage where they're cured of "the fever" by a travelling stranger who writes a spell on scrolls for them to eat. This edition has a collection of six letters sent from the frontlines that never made it home: Soldiers begging their families to gather up some money so they can buy shirts or some bread, mostly. Reading this made me appreciate the third amendment in a new way. 

How to Take Over the World by Ryan North - The spiritual successor to How to Invent Everything, this is another broad popular science book that explores some of the boundaries of what science is capable of right now. The lens it uses is teaching you to become a supervillain, something North can claim expertise in as an established comics writer. My favorite takeaway was that there's a possibility in the far future that our then red giant sun could be close enough to Titan to turn it into an Earth-like environment, which could allow for a second run of evolution within our own solar system. The comic illustrations by Carly Monardo really help carry the points home.

Finna by Nino Cipri - A wild novelette about the (interdimensional) horrors of capitalism. "Oh yeah we used to have a team that would go into the planar rifts to retrieve lost shoppers, but we downsized them in the 90's. Now it's up to the least-senior team members. You get some gift cards!" And of course the two that have to go on this journey recently broke up a stormy relationship. On the way the author has a solid exploration of dealing with depression and anxiety and gender identity. Plus swordfights and retail zombies and carnivorous chairs.

Charlotte's Web by E. B. White - Grabbed this out of a little free library while walking the dog. E. B. White liked to make lists apparently. He made a list of the things Wilbur the pig ate, things at the farm's dump, types of cars parked at the county fair, things a rat might eat at said fair... there were others. It's caused me to make a list of lists. What a weird and melancholy book though. Reading it now, the part at the fair where they announce a special prize for Wilbur the pig and everyone's just like "Guess he's magic, huh?" and everyone claps and the dad gets $25 stands out as how I sort of imagining the adult world would work when I was a little kid.

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir - It takes a special kind of cheek to use "Well, jail for mother" as dialog in your novel but Muir pulls it off. I admit I did have to check online a bit to see what was going on here. This novel is intentionally confusing but that can be hard to make sure of if you haven't read the first one in a few years. Describing events contrary to what happened in the first of the series, and doing it all in second person, is a gamble to convey Harrow's fractured mental and emotional state to the reader, but sticking through it I do think it all (mostly) comes together in the third act and pays off. There was a lot of setup in here for the next couple books and now I feel like I'm beholden to them. (Also, "none pizza, left beef" and Homestar references sprinkled in.) 

Blueberry Hill Cookbook by Elsie Masterson - I didn't read this cover-to-cover, but I did read the preface, each section introduction, and skimmed all the recipes. What was mostly interesting here was this physical copy was my grandmother's, so it's got little annotations throughout, mostly "good!" or "very good!". Also it's full of pressed four-leaf clovers - I'm not sure if those were hers or my mom's. The book itself has an assertive tone, with a repeated sentiment of "if you can't get these ingredients exactly, don't bother." For 1959 the curry recipe is downright assertive with two whole tablespoons of curry powder (preferably imported).

Books Completed in February 2022

 Am I doing this every month now?

unnovations from zeppotron.com - This is a print version of a catalog of fake items from their website back in the 2000s sometime. Popped into my head and, though I wasn't able to find a decent archive, I was able to pick up this print copy on the cheap. This is a perfect example of the kind of humor I often find hilarious and leaves my wife stone-faced cold. Absolute nonsense presented as staid fact. Products include "The pocket hand-expansion bee that helps you appease Chad Michaels, woodland god", "Could this be the world's most dramatically effective baker-infuriating hat?", "Flying onion-and-sock squadron keeps mewling kids out of your hair for a second", and "The mouthless stumbling boy creature that shakes illegal intruders to the very core". Dumb.

The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges - I have a feeling this was not meant to be read cover-to-cover, but I've been reading RPG bestiaries that way for so long it felt natural. And there is a lot in here that could be harvested for a game. Humans made of shifting patterns of heat, and the conceptual ancestor to the salamander, the pyrausta. There's more than a dash of orientalism in here--alongside including Biblical and Talmudic creatures it makes for a surreal read, but I guess that's Borges.

The Secret History by Procopius - The Bright Ages, which I read last month, basically dedicates a chapter to this ancient screed. I had started in on it a bit last year but came back after reading that, so I have to admit to some prejudice in my read. The hate-boner for Theodora is on display. I was struck by how many of Justinian's described flaws reminded me of our 45th president--some incompetencies are consistent across the centuries it would seem. The mention of the monstrous whale Porphyrius was a surprise that I am stealing for a game.

Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi - This was a hell of a way to kick off Black History Month. Not sure what to say here, or if it's my place to say anything at all or just hush and read the thing. I guess I'll say the parts that are speculative are chillingly believable.

Food (The Nib #11) - A quarterly comics compilation from thenib.com which I get from subscribing. My favorite entries in this installment were about the history of yams, and about feeding migratory vultures in Thailand. The longer form entries didn't click for me for some reason as much as the ones in previous issues had, though.

The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin - Among other things, this is a paen to New York City. A lot of that was lost on me--I've only been once, and the things that were described as making it wonderful here didn't connect for me. That said, all the other things this story is connected like a brick, and I'm looking forward to the next two books. Writing horror and writing horror movie imagery are different beasts, and the latter usually falls flat when attempted, but she makes it dance (writhe)? The chapters where one of the characters is facing down both otherworldly horrors and a real-world doxing simultaneously really stuck out to me.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells - This novelette confronts a surprising number of questions about free will and the borders of humanity for a story whose protagonist is named "Murderbot". You'd expect more action sequences, but the ones here are crisp and meaningful. The speculative nature of a future dominated by lowest bidders is perhaps too easy to believe right now.

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson - Spoilers for a 130-year-old book coming up. One thing that popular culture has turned around in this story over the decades is having Hyde be hulking and Jekyll being a meek little man. In the original, Jekyll is a robust man, and Hyde is smaller and wizened, which the doctor speculates might be due to his evil nature not having been exercised much in his life so far. The story leans on a trope I don't think you see much these days, but still has legs--a scientist compounds some incredible formula, but one of the ingredients in the original batch is impure in a way they cannot rediscover. Speaking of tropes, you don't get many people dying of shock over the course of several weeks these days.

The Illithiad by Bruce R. Cordell - I discovered this while cleaning the basement, having thought it lost or sold years ago. It's a fun little splatbook from AD&D 2e all about mind flayers. I wonder how some of it would actually be used at the table, but it does have possibly the creepiest psychic power ever published for D&D: "Crisis of Breath", which shuts down the target's automatic breathing, forcing them to focus on it, to the point of foregoing sleep. The formatting is very weird, with the font just changing to a narrow sans-serif for a few sentences seemingly at random, then switching back. Not sure if it was a conscious decision or they just rushed it to the printer.

Lego Dungeon: Oblivion's Kite

The impetus for this was a few handfuls of Lego spilling from a broken bag, then deciding to see if I could use them all in a single structure. Not to scale, more of a sensory homunculus, but for adventure instead of touch.

Graphic design is my passion.

Astral barge. Would crumple in reality.

It is primarily a cargo ship but supplements its means by transporting prisoners, gathering interesting materials from far-flung corners of the multiverse, and light opportunistic piracy.

The Animus Drive

Contains two pocket dimensions, one with an angel (Xuxara) and one with a devil (Araxux). They can see each other but can't cross the boundary. Their shared hate is captured by the enclosure and provides power and thrust through a realm of thought.

There is a maintenance shaft that leads into each dimension from outside. Being here bathes anyone in a wash of leaking conflicting energy. It's radiation poisoning that is also judging you.

These beings now desire only destruction. If one is freed, it will immediately seek to ravage Oblivion's Kite and its crew. The one still locked away will go apoplectic though, causing the ship to accelerate wildly for a while. If both are freed, they will immediately engage each other in a duel of annihilation long-delayed.

Solipsistic Baffle

The primal conflict in the Animus Drive is deflected by a long arm carved with backwards-facing runes and spells and rituals of nothingness. This entire structures is devoted to negating the presence of the drive, other than channeling a modicum of its power towards the ship's shields and life support.

Exposed to the astral winds. There is no atmosphere or gravity here. Lined with handholds and spars for when repairs are absolutely needed.

Can drop paradoxes in its wake. Basically drops a wall of force at the direction of the helm each turn.

Hull

The bulk of the Kite, but mostly dedicated to tight corridors and storage. There is a large hatched airlock on each side with a dozen or so leather atmosphere suits at the ready should the crew need to venture outside the hull for repairs.

The hull's exterior is studded with crimson nodes that draw on the vast reserves of the animus battery to emit a force field. These fields overlap like scales, protecting the Kite from astral winds and attackers. If manned by a crew member, the nodes can also release a magic missile spell every round, though doing so redirects the power such that they do not project a shield that round.

Humped up above the quarters are the storerooms. Years' worth of foodstuff, water, salt, cloth, wire. Some rooms haven't been visited in years. These may contain stranger things, or the haunt of a lost crewmate or stowaway.

Slung below the quarters is the battery. Thousands and thousands of glazed red clay jars each containing a tiny fragment of Xuxara & Araxux's animosity. All wired up and into the hull of the Kite with a mesh of fine silver wire, supplying power throughout. A huge silver cord runs in from the Solipsistic Baffle and branches, branches, branches to feed the battery pots.

If an amicus pot is disconnected, it maintains its charge. If it breaks, it explodes like a small bomb. Opening the lid and huffing the hate inside charges you up like a berserker for a bit.

Checkpoint

Isolates the more sensitive portions of the Kite from the day-to-day of the crew, guests, and, tacitly, the Obliterati. Guarded by Warden Mongdubak and their spiders. 

There is a maintenance crawlspace accessible from the exterior of the baffle, which leads to a small chamber beyond the checkpoint. Most of the crew know about this space, and feel slightly smug about Mongdubak's posturing for it, though it is seldom used because of the dangers its exterior access incur.

Iron Brig

Oblivion's Kite makes some of its way by ferrying troublesome prisoners, hostages, and scions between realms. These unfortunates spend their transit in the Iron Brig.

This is an iron cube, 30 feet on a side outside, 20 feet inside, and laced with silver wire that channels animus energy to be variably magnetic. The magnetism is controlled either by a ring worn by the warden, or from the helm. Prisoners are fitted with heavy iron bracers, anklets, and gorget. The magnetism can be disabled for the compliant, or ratcheted up to hold even the strongest locked against the floor and wall.

The Iron Brig can also be detached from the Kite by a hidden control on the helm. 

The Vivarium

A green hill with a sweeping view. It's mostly extremely skilled horticulture, but there's a smidgen of dimensional magic at play here.

The centerpiece of the vivarium is the colossal scion tree that holds grafts from a thousand worlds. If you need a rare or supposedly extinct fruit or leaf, there is a good chance a small number can be found here. However it's also extremely likely to trigger latent and unknown allergies in anyone who approaches it.

Astral Wing

A delicate blue structure that sticks out from the bulk of the hull's protective force scales.

The Forageurs trail the fingers of a gauntlet-like artifice through astral winds, sweeping them into glass vials for analysis and preservation. These winds carry memories and emotions--the Forageurs are mostly academics, but help fund the Kite's operations selling some choice experiences to discerning clients.

The massive sensor array trailing off from above helps orient the helm. If it is damaged or tampered with, piloting the Kite becomes more difficult. The Forageurs tend to tweak the data it sends to try and lead the ship to unexplored realms.

Helm

Control array takes the uninitiated some challenging Intelligence checks to figure out and control, though the captain and first mate are extremely familiar with it, and any crew member could try in a pinch. The Kite navigates relative to astral color pools, and has a huge store of maps and charts it can pull up in a crystalline display.

If the Kite is in distress the hull's manifold magic missile nodes can't address, the helm can be brought to bear. A cannon looses a stream of pure vitriol, basically blasting out a disintegrate spell every other round.

Cathedral of Oblivion

The vacuous throne is occupied by Their Absence as they travel the realms spreading the nihilistic gospel of the Obliterati. Unknown by the crew, the throne can activate a stasis field and detach itself from the main of the Kite, allowing Their Absence an escape should the ship find itself seriously endangered.

From the observation deck Their Absence preaches against a backdrop of majestic astral desolation, sealed in a dome of force.

The Obliterati are tolerated on the ship because they have captured and now maintain the spiritual energies in the Amicus Drive. Their whisper network also generally leads the Kite to the Iron Brig's next occupant.

Cargo Bay

The most mundane method of providing for the Kite, though any cargo deemed fit to be shipped across the astral plane likely makes "mundane" seem extremely relative. Also the site of the largest bay doors.

Factions

The Crew

A hundred or so of all species. 

Control: Hull, cargo, helm, baffle, crawlspace

Ideals: Efficiency, drunkenness.

Captain Keloid: A leather golem made of the hides of a dozen previous first mates and stuffed with shards of broken animus pots. Wears a bandoleer of animus pots. Cares only for the survival of Oblivion's Kite. And knitting.

First Mate Red: Human, seeks luxury in all things. The crew finds them rather aloof and prim, but cannot deny their sense for finding rich marks and unerring fairness in dividing up spoils or profits.

Bosun Grigoriun: Arithmomanic gnome. The only one who knows the contents of every room, crate, and sack in the hold, and the charge of every amicus pot. 

The Obliterati

A dozen or so, all of a nameless race that settled the astral plane millennia ago. They are gangly bipeds with semi-translucent azure skin, solid black eyes, nails, and teeth. They can redirect their nerve impulses to control their sense of pain and generate electrical shocks.

Control: Cathedral, drive, brig

Ideals: Nihilism, grandeur.

Their Absence: The nameless leader. Favors a huge translucent cloak in which float oily rainbow images of astral winds.

Warden Mongdubak: Canny ranger whose spider allies hide in numerous small alcoves of the checkpoint to help poison or restrain any who would attempt to pass the checkpoint unapproved.

The Forageurs

As diverse as the crew. Dedicated to exploring and collecting samples from across the multiverse, gathering knowledge for knowledge's sake.

Control: Scoop, vivarium, checkpoint

Ideals: Exploration, preservation

Tender Small: Ancient halfling horticulturist who has dedicated their life to the scion tree. Knows where each graft came from, its health and specific needs. Always eager for new branches and fruits.

oon'Bwee b'b'Beh: The enigmatic master of the astral wing's gauntlet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ6qw1nh0tA 

12 Greenwater Premade Characters

I have been noodling on an adventure-in-a-box with simple premade 5e characters for a while. It would be based on my first dungeon map from, oh, thirtyish years ago.

Here they are as they stand, based on some combination of official 5e sidekicks, the Unearthed Arcana approach, and whatever I felt like. Four warriors, four experts, and four casters, each ready to face a challenge in the temple at the edge of their town. The hope is that everyone in an online group would be able to pick a column out of this spreadsheet in a minute or two, then the DM hides the others, and we're off.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1inS0S0eb8PCRIUcjfzguGGgbihuexiRSMkO5VKGQnv4/

These use the alternate rules from the DMG where there are no individual skills, just ability checks. It's pretty clear except for expertise. Here expert characters get to double their proficiency modifier for one ability's checks.

Casters, of course, require a little more consideration. They can choose between ritual casting and armored casting. Here are their spells and magic rules boiled down to a single page each. The grandparent is the oddest of the bunch, for sure.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OcNjERLh75Q_YB0gYP7dLC9eiKxJkE2y 

Some spells and effects in this adventure are different from published rules. Mainly, healing via second wind, potions, or magic restores 2d4+2 HP. That's just to keep things simple in the mind of new players. 

Considering how to manage leveling up in the course of the adventure, if at all.

Books Completed in January 2022

 I have never done this before. Let's see how it goes.

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse - Epic fantasy in a world inspired by Native American legends and lands. There was a lot of world-building in the first half that landed kind of hard, but this is the first in a series and now that the setting is established I'm going to check out the rest. It's heavily about political intrigue, which I'm not used to reading, and has a huge cast, which I always kind of get lost in, but that's all on me and reading more stories like this is a good exercise. It'd be fun to play an RPG campaign in this setting for sure.

The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum - I've read this a few times before, but wanted to get a fresh read in to compare with Wicked. The scene I'd forgotten entirely is the land of porcelain people. There's a part where the Cowardly Lion leaps over a wall, but knocks over a church in the process. I don't know, it felt like someone was describing a black and white inscrutable political cartoon but I couldn't figure out what it would be about.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - An otherworldly excursion and mystery, with beautiful, evocative writing. It's needed if you're describing statues for pages and pages. The ending kind of went awry for me on a few points, but I thought the way the main character's internal conflicts were reconciled was a different take than I'd ever seen before.

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark - Presenting the KKK as literal monsters is fantastic. I've read a couple other stories by Clark before but this has been my favorite. So many scenes and characters that popped clearly in my mind, and three women protagonists written well by a male author, which is refreshing. Would love to see the mythos presented here explored further, it's a rich vein. 

Wicked by Gregory Maguire - My friend Jen mailed me this. I had never thought to read it before because the snippets of the musical I'd heard were ear-rendingly awful, but this was some of the best fan fiction I've read. Jen and I talk about world-building sometimes, and we both though this handled the task deftly, never forcing characters to speak about things in a stilted way for the sake of the reader. And we all know what's coming at the end, basically, but that short chapter is a real fine death scene.

The Drac by Felice Holman and Nanine Valen - A small collection of short stories inspired by French folklore. The authors appear to be scholars of the subject. Gameable.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow - This was an interesting one to read in the same month as Piranesi. Not much I can say without spoilers, but this was an intricate story, and I usually have trouble following those, but I sailed right along with this. Another masterclass in world-building here.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo - More fantasy intrigue. A delicately crafted little setting, much implied by what's not said, and a clever titular character who is met only through many layers of memory and mementos. A tidy novelette that uses its form well. 

Our Oldest Companions by Pat Shipman - A popular history of the domestication of dogs. The author must be interesting at certain dinner parties. I could not at first figure why she was making some of the points she was making, but it all sort of came together in the last chapter. She's clearly passionate about the subject. I also learned a truly horrifying method of hunting polar bears!

The Bright Ages by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele - A broad study of medieval history with a focus on dispelling popular conceptions of nations in the past as static and insular. The afterward states the authors were at least partially focused on tearing down myths used to support nationalism and white supremacy - I would have liked that stated up front, it made the text clearer in retrospect. What I learned from this book is that I have not read enough history books.

d666 Quirky 5e Magic Items

Expanding on this post of magic item features and quirks by using each as inspiration to tweak six randomly chosen 5e magic items.

Note some of the scrolls are replaced with other physical objects - they should still work like single-use magic items who learned casters can study and pry secrets from.

11 - Command Jewel. The item has a corresponding piece of jewelry of similar make which must be worn for it to function.

1. Potion of Healing. Inert until touched by someone wearing a bloody iron crown. Favored by marauders and tyrants to help ensure loyalty, and prevent succor from being seized by their enemies or victims.
2. Wand of Web. Has an attendant wand which must be used to shape the strands as the spell is being cast, like a conductor's wand. Takes a hand, but could be wielded by someone else.
3. Spell Scroll, 2nd Level (Magic Weapon). Can only be cast from the scroll by being wrapped around a mace head, but this effect does not require concentration.
4. Figurine of Wondrous Power, Bronze Griffon. Can be activated by anyone, but the summoned gryphon only obeys the one wearing the matching electrum ring shaped like an odd bridle.
5. Cloak of the Bat. Can only be used to fly while wearing a pair of matching (non-magical) bone rings with egregious, extended prongs to support the wings.
6. Goggles of Night. Attached to a small cage worn atop the head, these only function while a night-going animal is imprisoned within.

12 - Crawling. At a command word, the item will sprout dozens of tiny legs and begin moving at speed 5 towards the speaker. It can climb walls easily.

1. Dagger of Venom. Shaped like an outlandish insect. Can creep to deliver its venom to a sleeping or helpless target (Speed 10, climb 10, Stealth +5).
2. Potion of Climbing. Actually a tiny gray ooze in a thick glass bottle with containment runes around the lip. Drinking it is """safe""", but breaking the bottle releases the ooze.
3. Spell Scroll, 1st Level (Longstrider). Constantly inch-worming about. Must be carefully contained and will actively try to pull away while being cast.
4. +1 Shield. Thick insectoid carapace. Loves being thrown. It will skitter back to its owner on a hundred tiny legs at a frisky pace afterward.
5. Wand of Polymorph. Any shape imposed by this petrified stick insect has numerous extra antenna, twitching vestigial legs, and/or pedipalps.
6. Headband of Intellect. Preserved giant centipede wound into a tiara. The wearer's head is crawling with ideas. Pick them out and send them crawling to someone else, like message but moves 5' a round.

13 - Dormant. This item isn't sentient, but roll on the sentient magic items "special purpose" table. Its powers won't awaken until some action towards that purpose is taken.

1. Potion of Youth. This floral liquor won't even register as magic until it's quaffed by a dying gnome, at which point it's also a potion of extra healing.
2. Staff of the Python. Won't convert to a snake until you've subjugated someone above your station.
3. Spell Scroll, 1st Level (Fog Cloud). Made of fluffy knitted wool, a bit like a small blanket. Will reform and be reusable if someone falls asleep within its vapors.
4. Staff of Swarming Insects. Has extra charges, but its giant insects don't obey you and its insect cloud doesn't move with you. Impressing a hivemother might help.
5. Ring of Jumping. Made of soapstone. Does nothing until you leap into the middle of a charged political situation.
6. +1 Maul. Gnarled and ceramic. It is originally nonmagical but gains a +1 enhancement (up to +3) every time it deals the killing blow to an elven wizard.

14 - Dousing. Use an action to know the direction to the nearest source of drinkable water within 1,000 feet.

1. Spell Scroll, Cantrip (Fire Bolt). When cast from this scroll, all water sources in 100' of the target briefly seethe and steam.
2. Potion of Storm Giant Strength. Cloud in a bottle that must be inhaled rather than drunk. Its effects also center all clouds within miles on you for the next day.
3. +1 Crossbow Bolts (20). These iron bolts veer towards water. Advantage on attacks against water elementals.
4. Potion of Healing. A thick and pungent sap. It inflicts the drinker with a terrible thirst.
5. Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Riveted steel with large shovel-like protrusions or claws. Can also be used to dig wells mightily.
6. Rod of Rulership. Imposes disadvantage on saves against its effects against any being which had drunk, in the past day, from a water source you control.

15 - Eye. A single milky eye glares prominently out of the item. It flicks about, focusing on subjects seemingly at random.

1. Potion of Healing. A rubbery, juicy yellow eye that pops in the mouth.
2. Horn of Valhalla (bronze). Studded with milky agates. The berserker spirits it summons are blinded with cataracts, and cagey as a dozen battlefield-led lives.
3. Cloak Of Arachnida. The clasp bears eight iridescent black-green stones. They tremble and flex slightly at all times.
4. Spell Scroll, 4th Level (Locate Creature). Conjures a hovering eye which glares in the direction of the spell's subject.
5. +2 Arrows (20). Fletched with gently shuddering eyelashes.
6. Sentinel Shield. Its otherwise abstract emblazonment focuses into an eye when a threat is detected.

16 - Fading. The magic of this item was not sealed properly, and it will only last for another 2d12 months.

1. Spell Scroll, 1st Level (Compelled Duel). Will only last for 6 more months. It is written with a specific romantic target in mind and won't work past their wedding day.
2. Wand of Secrets. Shimmering blue gas in a glass tube. It has 7 charges but cannot recharge or be recharged - the gas slowly fades until the last charge is used, when it goes dark.
3. Gauntlets of Ogre Power. They're made from real ogre skin. They'll die with the ogre that supplied it. Who'll only live another couple months without their hands.
4. Potion of Resistance (Psychic). Pallid amniotic fluid with an embryonic brain floating in it. It'll only be good for 9 months, and then the mind within will awaken.
5. +1 Blowgun Needles (50). Gain their magic from being harvested from a great living vine. They'll dry out and curl to worthlessness in a year.
6. Giant Slayer (Battleaxe). Hewn of solid ice, it will melt by next summer solstice.

21 - Fire Starter. Use an action to produce a tiny flame suitable for lighting a torch or candle.

1. Spell Scroll, 8th Level (Mind Blank). If rolled up and smoked like a cigar will allow the smoker to burn away a single memory.
2. Ring of Jumping. You leave a trail of sparks over wherever you jump using this bloodstone ring. They will ignite anything very flammable like leaves or paper.
3. Ioun Stone of Leadership. Trails faint sparks when active. With an action, light the torch or lantern of anyone who has sworn fealty to you, out to a mile radius.
4. Potion of Superior Healing. One drop burns like a pint of oil in a lantern, but each drop spent decreases the potion's healing done by 1.
5. +2 Rod of the Pact Keeper. Can also use an action to create a huge but harmless flame visible from up to a mile away in which can be seen a visage of your patron.
6. Wand of Web. The webs it creates automatically catch fire at the end of the caster's next turn. Small natural spider webs in a 10' radius singe away as the bearer travels.

22 - Folding. Use an action to fold this item to a tenth of its normal size and weight, or to unfold it.

1. Spell Scroll, Cantrip (Shillelagh). Can be rolled up impossibly small, would fit inside a hollow walking stick easily, and can be cast from the scroll while in such storage.
2. Eversmoking Bottle. Folds inside-out into a puff of smoke that can be gently guided along or kept in a bag.
3. Ring of Jumping. Copper and steel wire ring that folds up into a tiny animatronic cricket that can chirp just like the real thing.
4. +3 Wand of the War Mage. Can also be folded another way such that its small end extends into the border ethereal. In this shape its bonus drops to +1 but it can target ghosts and other beings on the border ethereal you can see.
5. Goggles of Night. Fold into a discrete pair of spectacles.
6. Potion of Healing. Dried fruit that has to be gently stewed to reconstitute and activate its healing effects.

23 - Holy Symbol. The item is, or heavily incorporates imagery of, a holy symbol, and can be used as such an implement.

1. Stone of Good Luck. Probably the symbol of a god of luck or fortune. People will have a hard time refusing a wager where this is offered as your stake.
2. Potion of Climbing. If smashed against a hard surface, this potion will scrawl itself into a holy image that lasts 10 minutes.
3. Ioun Stone, Leadership. Also an orbiting holy symbol. Doesn't take up a hand.
4. Spell Scroll, 2nd Level (Alter Self). If cast from the scroll, the form granted by this spell lean one towards the appearance of the dedicated deity's popular image.
5. Spell Scroll, 2nd Level (Enthrall). If the targets of the spell are of the symbol's faith, they automatically fail their saving throw.
6. Potion of Invulnerability. If the imbiber dies in the service of the deity while under this potions effects, its liquid will leak from their body. It can be gathered and used again.

24 - Hovering. When released in midair, the item will hover in place, gently wobbling, for a minute before sinking slowly to the floor.

1. Spell Scroll, 1st Level (Chromatic Orb). A glass bead which cycles through a rainbow of colors. This lesser ioun stone must be orbiting to be cast from.
2. Dimensional Shackles. These oily metal shackles wat to be about 3 feet off the ground, and so also resist mundane flight. Anything wearing them must make a DC 14 strength check each round of flight or have its flying speed halved.
3. Ring of Mind Shielding. Release to float like an ioun stone, with the same vulnerabilities. This tin ring cannot become invisible while doing so, but you gain resistance to psychic damage.
4. Potion of Healing. Can shatter the vial to create a 10' radius hazy pink mist that will heal 1 HP to each creature in it for 2d4 rounds.
5. Potion of Healing. Can be poured out into a floating red orb. Anyone passing through it (not just touching it) will trigger the potion's full effect.
6. Potion of Diminution. Potion bottle sporadically grows insect wings and tries to lazily bumble off. Anyone under its effects grows little wings and gains a slow, droning fly speed.

25 - Illustration. Appears to have been drawn rather than crafted.

1. Potion of Healing. An abstract figure drawn on vellum. Staring at it causes some of your wounds to fade and appear on it instead. The image remains once the magic is used.
2. Scimitar of Speed. The blade vanishes when swung, replaced by slicing speed line arcs. Much of the scimitar's efficacy comes from the wielder barely needing to move their hand to slash rapidly.
3. +2 Shield. Lines and shadows appear in the air around the bearer suggesting a 5'x5' crenelated stone tower.
4. Eyes of Charming. Gives you big ol' anime eyes.
5. Wand of Enemy Detection. The direction to the detected enemy is indicated by a large, red floating arrow. The ashes left when this wand runs out of charges are useful in crafting inks for detection scrolls.
6. Censer of Controlling Air Elementals. Swirled with a stylized roseate and cerulean sunset. The lambent elemental it summons appears the same.

26 - Insect-Repelling. Nonmagical, normal-sized insects will not approach the bearer.

1. Ring of Water Elemental Command. Small, non-magical fish, crabs, and such will not approach you while underwater.
2. Potion of Climbing. Catch a climbing insect and drown it in this potion. When you drink it, the effect is extended by 1dX minutes, where X is the number of legs it had.
3. Helm of Telepathy. Shaped like a wrought-iron spider, the legs burrow into your neck and temples when worn. It is traumatic to remove. Its detect thoughts and suggestion effects can affect spiders. Other vermin are too afraid to approach.
4. Spell Scroll, Cantrip (Sacred Flame). Can be burned like a torch, and repels small, non-magical insects while alight. Vermin have disadvantage on saving throws against the spell cast from this scroll.
5. Belt of Hill Giant Strength. Small, non-magical insects will not approach this belt woven from dozens of antennae. Double how far you can move or throw a grappled vermin.
6. Brooch of Shielding. Any small, nonmagical insects that approach you wear this copper spiral are zzzapped.

31 - Instrument. Despite its appearance, this item can be played like a specific instrument. Strumming, blowing, or beating in the general shape is sufficient.

1. Cloak of Elvenkind. Floats and flows around a dancing wearer, accompanying them and granting advantage on their performance check.
2. Spell Scroll, 4th Level (Freedom of Movement). Can be rolled up and played like a flute, allowing a large company easy movement through difficult terrain for a day. Doing so consumes the scroll.
3. Figurine of Wondrous Power, Ivory Goats. While none of the goats have any charges, their horns can be linked up into a shawm. It can be played, once per such linking, to force a creature to caper (as irresistible dance).
4. Potion of Growth. Can be poured into or smeared over a musical instrument to increase the volume of its music a hundred-fold.
5. Spell Scroll, 1st Level (Thunderous Smite). Plaster this onto a gong or a shield and the target of the smite has disadvantage on its saving throw.
6. Potion of Flying. Pluck strings of floating resin from this flask for a one-time, unforgettable performance.

32 - Journal. The item can hold a page's worth a day of writing, and can flip back and forth between previous entries. Use your finger or a twig to write.

1. Brooch of Shielding. Automatically records the source of any damage the bearer takes. The pin is the pen.
2. Boots of Striding and Springing. Remember every surface they've walked over, and can tactilely replay the journey in real time.
3. Ioun Stone, Strength. Blue runes trail the name of each creature you've bested in a wresting or grappling match.
4. Scroll of Protection. Blank when discovered. Write the name of something that's recently wronged you to activate it.
5. Slippers of Spider Climbing. Hold your feet out in front of you, and a web weaving the day's events will slowly form. From the perspective of the feet. Flick to older days with a bloody finger.
6. Spell Scroll, Cantrip (Minor Illusion). Write a description of something you've seen or heard today on this scroll, and observers have disadvantage on saving throws to disbelieve it.

33 - Lascivious. The item enhances feelings of desire or lust in its bearer.

1. Potion of Healing. Fizzes and jostles in its bottle. If drunk while the imbiber is already at full HP, they become substantially more virile for the next month.
2. +3 Trident. Each prong is activated for a day by having a sexy encounter with as many participants.
3. Dancing Sword. As an action, changes to a 10' pole or back. Another action can be used to anchor the pole vertically on any horizontal surface, where it can bear up to 500 pounds or a DC 12 Strength check. (It's a pole dancing sword, shut up.)
4. Potion of Climbing. Stored in a long test tube. If you're using this to get to an object of lust, double your speed.
5. Ring of the Ram. 4 charges, but every time you use the last, your ram horns grow a bit more. Also lady sheep love you.
6. Medallion of Thoughts. Oh. Oh ho ho ho. Hee hee.

34 - Lens. Some portion of or gap in the item magnifies small details when peered through, granting advantage on any ability check made to appraise or inspect an item that is small or highly detailed.

1. Wand of Paralysis. Peering through the forked lens in this wand grants advantage on medicine checks on creatures paralyzed by it.
2. Restorative Ointment. Once all the ointment has been used, peering through the convex bottom of the empty jar grants advantage on medicine checks made to diagnose disease or poison.
3. Staff of the Woodlands. Holds a large drop of water suspended in its boughs. Looking through it grants advantage on checks to identify insects, molds, and other such small things.
4. Oil of Sharpness. In addition to its regular use, may be smeared on glasses or a lens to let the viewer see really small things.
5. Rod of Alertness. A small crystal orb is mounted among the flanges. You have to lean in and look through it for any of the rod's spell effects to work.
6. Crystal Ball of Telepathy. Can zoom in on tiny details of those scryed, but the user gets more and more motion sick while doing so.

35 - Liquid. Use an action to turn the item into a liquid of the same volume or back. The liquid is mercury-like and will not separate easily.

1. Spell Scroll, 5th Level (Cloudkill). A gray egg oozing a perilous stench. Breaking it casts the spell. If it's studied and copied into a spellbook, the book becomes forever vile, but can also be used to cast stinking cloud once a day without spending a spell slot.
2. Elemental Gem (air). Becomes an emerald (water elemental gem) when wet, and turns back into a sapphire (air elemental gem) when dry.
3. Wind Fan. While this fan is liquid, it casts blur instead of gust of wind.
4. Potion of Healing. Use an action to turn this syrup into a striated putty or back. The putty can be molded into a small appendage such as a finger or ear and pressed to a scar to replace one missing.
5. Ioun Stone, Agility. While liquid, this stone leaves red streaks in the air around your head and its AC and DC of Dexterity checks against it increase by 2.
6. Figurine of Wondrous Power, Golden Lions. These only work when submerged in salt water, and transform into sea lions.

36 - Melancholy. Enhances the bearer's urges to brood, stare out the window, pose dramatically in the rain, and write bad poetry.

1. Sovereign Glue. Each bonded item becomes psionically heavier as well, harder to move telekinetically and dolorous.
2. +1 Shield. Dented, pitted, and scratched. Sobs when struck.
3. Dust of Dryness. Everything it affects is reduced to eye crusties.
4. Figurine of Wondrous Power, Onyx Dog. Summons instead a morose hound. Better tracker, worse combatant. Bays pitiably.
5. Spell Scroll, 4th Level (Divination). Even if beneficial, the answer is given in a long, Byronic poem.
6. Potion of Healing. Wounds healed by this potion will ache for a lifetime.

41 - Mirror. All or some part of this item is reflective enough to be used as a mirror.

1. Figurine of Wondrous Power, Serpentine Owl. While transformed, this owl reflects moonlight with a beautiful pearly glow, and can't hide in the night.
2. Eyes of Charming. If you see your own reflection while wearing these shiny lenses, you must pass a DC 13 Wisdom save or be stunned by your own beauty for an hour, until you lose sight of your reflection, or you take any damage.
3. Circlet of Blasting. An ostentatious flashing tiara. Instead of casting scorching ray, it automatically reflects the first casting of that spell that targets you each day.
4. Ring of Jumping. While airborne from the effects of this diamond-studded electrum ring, your sparkling body counts as a mirror.
5. +1 Sling Stones (20). Little disco balls.
6. Iron Flask. Lacquered to a sheen. Won't reflect an image of anything similar to what's captured in it.

42 - Mouldering. Always cold and slightly damp. Smells of niter and dirt. Any cloth or leather components are tattered; metal is varnished.

1. Dagger of Venom. Rusty iron. Victims of its poison also suffer lockjaw, and cannot speak while affected.
2. Spell Scroll, Cantrip (Mage Hand). Scroll barely holding together, conjured hand is half strength.
3. Dust of Disappearance. Magic mold spores. Attempts to track or locate the affected creatures by scent have advantage due to the musty, earthy odor they exude.
4. +1 Scale Mail Armor. Piteously rusted. Doesn't look like it should provide any protection at all, but does somehow. Immune to magical rusting effects.
5. Figurine of Wondrous Power, Bronze Griffon. The statue is pocked and verdigrised. The griffon that appears is in dire need of veterinary care, with half HP and a level of exhaustion. It can be treated but will be sickly when summoned again.
6. Potion of Resistance (Thunder). Feels and smells like aural static. The first time someone affected by this potion takes thunder damage, the rotting resistance applies to everyone in 10 feet and then collapses.

43 - Nip. One type of beast finds the object irresistible, and will seek to nuzzle, gnaw, or roll on it while not threatened.

1. Universal Solvent. Frogs can sense this sludge from miles away. Smaller ones will start to croak and swarm. Larger ones will become increasingly aggressive.
2. Dagger of Venom. Really more like a pincer. The victim of its poison will be preferentially attacked by crabs until the poison is passed.
3. Restorative Ointment. Anyone treated by this silky ointment is irresistible to cats for a week.
4. Shield of Missile Attraction. You can talk to missiles that have struck you for up to a minute afterward. They love you.
5. Manual of Gainful Exercise. The exercises in this tome are decidedly serpentine in nature; you realize this while studying. On completion of studying, you gain a reptilian musk that gives you advantage on Charisma checks versus bestial reptiles, and disadvantage on such checks against birds and their like. Mindful serpentine creatures are slightly inclined towards your stench, but not enough to affect a skill check.
6. Spell Scroll, 5th Level (Reincarnate). Anyone revived by this gnawed scroll also contracts lycanthropy in their new form, becoming a wererat.

44 - Photonic. The item requires light to work and will not function in darkness.

1. Horn of Valhalla, Iron. Can only be blown at daybreak, but summons the maximum number of warriors, who arrive out of the dawn.
2. Spell Scroll, 3rd Level (Gaseous Form). A small plaque of stained glass. The target transforms into shimmering light instead of mist. This variant can pass through liquid, but not darkness.
3. Spell Scroll, 4th Level (Staggering Smite). This scroll is cast by letting bright light pass through incisions in the vellum to lie upon the weapon that will deliver the smite. It requires a free hand and a light source, but no verbal component.
4. Spell Scroll, 4th Level (Aura of Purity). A collection of dozens of glass prisms that hover at the perimeter of the aura. Darkness suppresses but does not dispel their effect.
5. Spell Scroll, Cantrip (Blade Ward). The glowing sigil created by this variant protects against cold, force, and necrotic damage. It requires bright ambient light to fuel it, however.
6. Ioun Stone, Regeneration. If orbiting outdoors for a full reasonably sunny day, also nourishes its owner with absorbed light, feeding them for the day.

45 - Projector. Use an action to have the item create a specific, pre-established illusion effect in a 5-foot cube.

1. Portable Hole. While folded up, use an action to project a 3D snapshot of the hole's current contents.
2. Spell Scroll, 1st Level (Silent Image). This scroll is folded into a small shadowbox. Peering inside shows a miniature stone-walled room, with simple furnishings: a wooden table, a wicker chair, a plank door, a wool rug, an unlit lantern, and a small footlocker. Use an action to make an image of any piece of the room's furnishings appear for a minute. Casting the scroll consumes it and creates an illusion of the entire room.
3. Spell Scroll, 5th Level (Reincarnate). A creature reincarnated by this scroll gains the ability to project an illusion of their old body around their new one at will.
4. Spell Scroll, Cantrip (Sacred Flame). You can choose to have the spell's radiance deal no damage, merely illuminate the targeted creature briefly.
5. Tome of Leadership and Influence. The reader of this tome also gains the ability to cast silent image once a day, but only to robe themselves in finery.
6. Medallion of Thoughts. Can create the illusion of a hovering, dripping brain at will.

46 - Psychic Anchor. Cannot be moved via mage hand, telekinesis, or similar magic, and appears solid and fully colored in the ethereal plane.

1. Spell Scroll, 1st Level (Entangle). The plants conjured by this scroll are wispy and ethereal. Their restraint requires a Charisma saving throw to resist, and has no effect on constructs.
2. +2 Net. Woven from phase spider silk. Creatures with resistance to psychic damage have disadvantage on checks to escape from this net.
3. Figurine of Wondrous Power, Ivory Goats. These statues are carved from unknown ivory. The eyeless, bluish goats they conjure , in addition to the normal effects, are resistant to psychic damage and have blindsight 60'. They are at ease on the ethereal plane.
4. Potion of Climbing. Movement up and down on the ethereal plane doesn't cost extra while under the influence of this potion. Looks like liquid lead and is as heavy as such to psychic effects.
5. Potion of Healing. For as many rounds as HP regained by this thick, indigo potion, you gain advantage on any strength checks made to grapple while on the ethereal plane.
6. Rod of Absorption. Even when depleted, this warm lead rod can always absorb the telekinesis spell.

51 - Purring. Empathically communicates its want to be cradled and stroked. Emits a comforting sound when it is.

1. Marvelous Pigments. Anything painted from these pots will, despite any intent of the artist, contain a sweet little kitten. It's completely real and alive.
2. Lantern of Revealing. Wants to be hooded, and held close to the bearer's chest. Will jostle and wriggle when called to its task - actions to disarm the bearer of the wiggling lantern have advantage.
3. Potion of Invulnerability. Swirls and clambers in its bottle. Wants to be drunk. Feels amazing going down.
4. Staff of the Magi. Topped with a figure of a slumbering bear. When you sleep with the staff nearby, you know it's hungry for spells. Absorbing a spell grants temporary HP equal to the charges gained. This staff can't cast any overtly damaging spells, but can cast sleep (2 charges).
5. Spell Scroll, Cantrip (Druidcraft). This is just a very clever squirrel who can cast druidcraft once a week and understands a few words of Druidic.
6. Gloves of Missile Snaring. Once donned, create a pleasant, fuzzy sensation in the wearer when rubbed together. This quickly becomes a mild compulsion and the wearer tends to wring their hands when stressed.

52 - Shedding. Constantly dropping bits of fur, rust, scales, dust, or bark. Leaves a messy campsite.

1. Belt of Stone Giant Strength. If you left it alone for a week, it'd produce about a stoneweight of fine gravel. While worn, you at least have functionally infinite sling ammunition.
2. Lantern of Revealing. Works by throwing into sharp contrast the ephemera of the creatures in its light: footprints, breath, skin flecks, shed tears.
3. Rope of Climbing. Leaves an incredibly obvious trail of hemp fibers when used.
4. Medallion of Thoughts. You shed stray thoughts. The medallion works as normal, but you have disadvantage on saves against detect thoughts. Psychic creatures probably find you somewhat pathetic.
5. Instrument of the Bards, Canaith Mandolin. Drops stray notes everywhere. At the end of a rest, you can gather them up and cast a cure wounds (1st level) spell, but any musically inclined creature will have an easy time tracking you.
6. Sphere of Annihilation. Sheds tiny motes of nothingness. Doesn't increase its radius significantly, but looks menacing. Anyone who controls the sphere with an action can use a bonus action to make a ranged spell attack (range 10 x Int mod, d10 force damage).

53 - Smuggler's. A hidden interdimensional space the size of a belt pouch is accessible via a command word.

1. Crystal Ball of Mind Reading. The mundane-looking wooden hoop this ball rests on can be reached into to access a small extra-dimensional space.
2. Instrument of the Bards, Cli Lyre. Any of the walls produced by this instrument's magic have a single fist-sized opening visible and passable only by the caster.
3. Elixir of Health. You can dissolve a small item in this potion. If someone drinks it, the next time they're afflicted by any disease or poison they were suffering when the potion cured them, they'll immediately cough up the item.
4. Goggles of Night. Each eyepiece reaches into a separate extradimensional space, each about the size of a fist. They have separate command words, and can't be looked through while open. They will, however, open while worn, regardless of who speaks the word.
5. +1 Shield. There's a cabinet door on the inside of this wooden shield that opens to a small, shallow, shelved cabinet. It would hold a dozen potions or small jars easily, or a buckler if you wanted to rip the shelves out and keep a shield in a shield.
6. Belt of Cloud Giant Strength. This belt expands or contracts to fit its wearer by keeping 50' of leather in an extradimensional space in the buckle. It can be pulled out for various purposes as needed, and retracts like a tape measure, but not while being worn.

54 - Starry. Glints and glimmers. Its shadows and contours seem too deep, with hints of twinkling light within.

1. Spell Scroll, 1st Level (Bane). Cast from this scroll, the spell causes a dire constellation to appear briefly above the targets.
2. Spell Scroll, Cantrip (Druidcraft). This is a mote of starlight that hovers around the owner and can be doused to cast the druidcraft spell. It sheds dim light in a 1' diameter.
3. Helm of Comprehending Languages. While under the effects of this helm's spell, your eyes resemble black, starry pools, and your voice gains a cold timbre.
4. Potion of Climbing. This inky potion twinkles with shimmering specks. It lets you grab onto stars and climb through a clear night sky, but only while you hold your breath.
5. Chime of Opening. Made of a pale, opalescent metal which emits glimmering motes when struck. Its effects are not blocked by sound, but do require uninterrupted dim light to reach and affect their target.
6. Scimitar of Speed. Leaves really cool swaths of sparkling stars and dark sky behind its swings, like it's slicing the night into the world.

55 - Suspendable. Use an action to speak a command word which turns off all the item's abilities. This lasts for a minute, during which time the item does not radiate magic.

1. Figurine of Wondrous Power, Silver Raven. Suspending the figurine's magic also happens to turn it into an ordinary looking dead raven.
2. Spell Scroll, 3rd Level (Lightning Bolt). This scroll is a work of art in lapis lazuli pigments and gold leaf depicting a raging storm worth ten times its normal price. While suspended, the golden lightning fades and the scene calms.
3. Ring of Animal Influence. While this woven grass ring's magic is suspended, you have disadvantage on Charisma checks with animals. Its absence sucks your animal magnetism away.
4. Gem of Seeing. You can end the effect this gem's magic as a reaction. Which might be important, depending on what you accidentally just looked at.
5. Potion of Storm Giant Strength. Suspend this gelid potion's magic while it's active and you'll turn into an ice statue. You're effectively petrified, but require a DC 19 Strength (Athletics) check to move.
6. +1 Hide Armor. While the magic granting this armor's protection is suspended, so too is the magic preventing it from rotting. You'll water eyes an leave an unmissable scent trail for the duration.

56 - Tattoo. Use an action to transform the item into a life-sized tattoo representing it, or back into a real item.

1. Spell Scroll, 2nd Level (Alter Self). You can cast this scroll as a bonus action while it's in its tattoo form, but it's bound to one of the three options.
2. Cloak of Arachnida. While in a spider tattoo form, it will creep around your body trying to avoid detection. It'll try to hide from detect magic under your eyelid.
3. Figurine of Wondrous Power, Serpentine Owl. Rather than a tattoo, it becomes a great green strigine eye embedded in the forehead.
4. Horn of Valhalla, Bronze. Once per week, when this becomes an item after being a tattoo, a fatted goat comes with it. It's sleepy and blinking for a round then goes wild.
5. Bag of Tricks. Won't function until it's been etched on you. When you draw a ball out, it looks like a slack, boneless version of your head. The "animals" it summons are amalgams of your body parts.
6. Spell Scroll, Cantrip (Light). Vellum. Wraps itself around a tiny, held creature that can't resist. It glows like a torch until it dies. If you eat the scribed creature you'll puke up a fresh version of the scroll in a day or two.

61 - Thieves' Tools. Various odd protrusions are quickly realized to be functional thieves' tools.

1. Ioun Stone, Awareness. A tiny constellation of whirring blue threads and lenses. They can't be used as thieves' tools while in orbit. They give you advantage on saves against any traps triggered while using them as such, though.
2. Spell Scroll, Cantrip (True Strike). This ratty scroll is wrapped around an ordinary set of thieves' tools. If you pick a lock with them, you can cast the scroll (once) as a bonus action against the last person who locked the lock.
3. Boots of Levitation. While you're floating, you can spend an action to tease the laces out of these boots to act as squiggly thieves' tools. Putting them back in takes an action, too. Moving with unlaced boots reduces your speed by 10.
4. Spell Scroll, 8th Level (Mind Blank). Etched on the inside of a roll of fine thieves' tools. While the scroll is unused, anyone passing a trap or lock bypassed by the tools must pass a DC 15 Charisma saving throw to notice they've been sprung.
5. Staff of Fire. This flanged staff can also spend 1 charge to attempt to melt a lock. Make a spell attack roll against the DC thieves' tools would be required to pick it. On a success, the lock is bypassed, but very obviously ruined and cannot be relocked.
6. Rod of Absorption. The shaft of this rod is hollow and holds a set of thieves' tools. You can expend up to 5 levels of the rod's energy to get the same bonus to a check with those tools.

62 - Toothed. Rimmed with teeth of various species. Grates and grinds. If left alone with rations they always seem somewhat gnawed later.

1. Amulet of the Planes. A circle of teeth, whose center suggests a vague peristaltic pulse. If this portal would send you to a random plane, it instead sends you to The Gullet.
2. Oil of Slipperiness. Rattles when shaken. If a creature under the effects of freedom of movement from this oil escapes a grapple, the grappler takes d6 piercing damage. Same to anything that falls in the oil spilled by it.
3. Alchemy Jug. A eyeless skull with 10. Orifices. Uncomfortably round. Every quart of fluid it creates has a tooth in it.
4. Potion of Climbing. Rather than a potion, a tiny, grinning money skull full of spiders. That you eat.
5. Frost Brand. Carved from the jaw of a frost dragon, the extra damage it deals is piercing rather than frost. Also extremely evident it's a dragon jaw.
6. Boots of Levitation. Just a pair of flayed beholder larvae you're wearing like sandals.

63 - Trophy. Was crafted as a reward for a great competition. Bears the winner's name and the event's dates.

1. Spell Scroll, 3rd Level (Major Image). A law so momentous was passed that it embedded a memory of itself onto the court scribe's scroll. The spell can be cast from this scroll once per day without expending it to create a vision of that specific event. However it is cast, Intelligence checks to examine it have disadvantage, so long as the spell is recreating that court at that moment.
2. Helm of Brilliance. This looks new, but seems to have come from a land only referenced in children's' stories. The light it casts is tinged with green and gold, and the dedication is to a well-known folk hero. The opals cast sending instead of daylight, and their messages arrive as a nursery rhyme.
3. Crystal Ball of True Seeing. The final prize in a centuries-long trial between diviners to write the most perfect future. Similar to the philosopher's stone, it finally came into the possession only of the one who no longer needed it. It was etched with their name all along.
4. Spell Scroll, 7th Level (Conjure Celestial). A stone tablet etched with runes filled with gold. It dates back millennia, if anyone can even understand the archaic figures and ancient calendars referenced. The contest was for "the heart of the sun". This was granted to one of the judges.
5. Ioun Stone, Intellect. Only a decade or so old, this was awarded to a researcher who invented a new form of siege weapon. It wishes the bearer "future brilliance".
6. Spell Scroll, 1st Level (Bane). This certificate was a dummy prize, awarded to the last-place of a long-vanished village's seasonal games centuries past. Their shame and humiliation still soaks the parchment.

64 - Tuning. Use an action to strike the item and produce a single, specific note that can be heard clearly for 100 feet. The note continues for a minute or until another action is used to silence it.

1. Ring of Fire Elemental Command. This ring has a mote of sloshing magma set into a groove. While the ring's low note sounds, the magma orbits the ring at a slow pace, and small, nonmagical fires within 100' stream towards the wearer.
2. Mirror of Life Trapping. Each of the mirror's 12 cells corresponds to a note on a dissonant scale. The cell can be activated by playing that note. The creatures within the cells can also trigger the note, having it sound in any other cell, allowing a crude form of communication within the mirror.
3. Carpet of Flying. Fringed with tiny tinkling bells instead of tassels. It can't fly silently, but while its note is ringing the bells align, and the carpet glide on a wave of sound, increasing its speed by 10.
4. Wand of Lightning Bolts. The forked branch of a lightning-struck oak. Within the radius of its rumbling note, hair stands on end, dogs whine, and doorknobs and cutlery spark to the touch.
5. Potion of Hill Giant Strength. Ting the empty bottle of this potion with your fingernail to make any hill giant who can hear its piercing chime very, very angry.
6. Well of Many Worlds. Sensitive to the planar tuning forks older versions of the plane shift spell used. You can make a Charisma (Performance) check with the appropriate instrument to force the gate to open to the tuned plane.

65 - Twinned. Has a duplicate. Its bearer can use an action to learn the direction (but not the distance) to the twin.

1. Potion of Greater Healing. The twinning works on both the bearer of the potion and anyone who has been healed by in the past week. Also a powerful aphrodisiacal if both parties have imbibed.
2. Spell Scroll, 2nd Level (Flaming Sphere). One scroll summons a miniature sun. Its twin summons a miniature moon. The lunar version deals cold damage, and only sheds dim light in a 10-foot radius, but otherwise behaves the same.
3. +1 Arrows (20). Any of these arrows that retain their magic can be spun to point the way to the nearest of its set, even if the target's magic has been expended.
4. Potion of Healing. Drinking either causes the other to start to vibrate, regardless of the distance. If not consumed within a round after the vibrations start, it will explode for 2d4+2 piercing damage to all within 5 feet (DC 13 Dexterity saving throw for half).
5. Dwarven Thrower. Long ago owned by a pair of quarrelsome dwarven siblings. They are slightly intelligent magic items sworn to defeat giants, who will drive their bearers to greater and greater feats of one-upmanship to that end.
6. Spell Scroll, 7th Level (Divine Word). Each of these scrolls holds part of a divine chord. Effective by themselves, but if cast together (one caster triggers to the other) the hit point caps for all effects are doubled, and creatures that would be forced out of the plane have disadvantage on their saving throws.

66 - Verdant. Small living leaves sprout from the item, patches are woven of moss, or any wood is damp and sap-filled.

1. Animated Shield. A wooden shield. When activated it sprouts roots and branches to animate itself. It is fixed in place and will protect you or return to your hand only while you remain adjacent to it.
2. Figurine of Wondrous Power, Marble Elephant. Carved from ivory wood rather than a tusk. The elephant it becomes is a hollow wooden construct instead of a beast, with a hatch in its belly. Up to six medium creatures can fit inside, and the mouth slit lets one see outside with three-quarters cover. The elephant is vulnerable to fire damage.
3. Deck of Illusions. Printed on slips of bark. Any illusion summoned by one of the cards appears in a vegetable form, woven of vines instead of flesh, sprouting leaves instead of hair, bark instead of scales, and so on.
4. Spell Scroll, 1st Level (Hellish Rebuke). This spell is encoded in the the needle patterns of a prickly, potted cactus.
5. Robe of the Archmagi. Smells like generations of tobacco and soup. Loose bits of parchment poking out the sleeves and collar at all times. At the end of a long rest pull a random wizard scroll out. D6: 1-3, cantrip; 4-5, level 1; 6, level 2.
6. Spell Scroll, 2nd Level (Blur). A sash of rustling, varicolored autumn oak leaves with a bronze squirrel clasp.