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Secret Santicorn: Portal Items

My last entry for Purple OSR Discord's Secret Santicorn is footie Domopunk.

I wrote this on my phone during holidays with the family. I'll probably edit this at a later date. Apologies for more than the usual editing errors. 

Prompt: Mundane objects that are portals to different worlds. 


Portable Brass Forge: This brass forge has an inscription on its top in the genie script: Use for a day risks sympathetic manifold tesseraction. This forge heats steel and iron as though they were brass,  allowing forging and metal work at cooler temperatures and for less fuel. Items forge this way count as being forged 1d6x5% faster.   On a six,  the smith can instead get a magical +1 item, if they give up 1 point of constitution and one point of wisdom for months.  It still requires someone to work the bellows, and still requires an anvil for smithing.  Anyone within 35 ft. of the forge for 8 hours has a 1-in-3 chance of getting teleported as a group to a similar forge in the City of Brass. 


Hourglass with Purple Sand: Inscribed on each base in ancient Cartic is the phrase “hold tight and watch as the last gains run out”.  This hourglass looks like a thirty minute timer, but runs for thirty seconds. When it empties, those looking at it or touching those looking at it are dimensionally transported to the desert of the purple sands, on the sand dune two miles from its sandstone pyramid. 


Bearskin Rug/Blanket:  Those falling asleep touching this rug wake up on the floor of the Bear King's throb room in the Slumbering Ursine Dunes. If their GM is kind, any of their normal gear that was close to them also arrives. 


Mechanical Brass Music Box: This music box has a winding key on its side. When opened, a delicate and intricate clockwork orrery unfolds, showing planets orbiting around and sometimes rotating against interlocking gears.  It also plays a beautiful and technically challenging but oddly emotionless musical piece while open which fills the extreme emotions of anyone not making a save.  When fully wound up, it plays for 1d20 minutes. When it winds down, but not when merely closed, anyone who can hear it is transported to  the Plane of Law.


Elven Canoe: This elegantly carved canoe might have a swans head bow, or elven script around the gunnels. Regardless, it's made of a bright durable wood. When going around a wooded bend of a river out of sight of anything other than woods and river,  it has a 1-in-6 chance of transporting itself and its occupants to a similar river bend in the Faewild.


Magic Beans:  If these magic beans are planted and watered within an hour of noon, they grow straight up for a turn getting wider and thicker at a ridiculous rate.  They can be climbed after two minutes quite easily, taking one up to the Cloud Kingdom after an hour of climbing. They fall apart after three days. 


Red Velvet-lined Black Oak Coffin: Closing it will transport you to the corresponding spot in the Shadowlands.  The corresponding coffin there will bring you back. Either coffin loses its magic when the other one is destroyed. 


Large Beetle in Amber: When held in a hand and walking between two touching bushes, the holder and anyone touching them is transported to a lush jungle land of anthropomorphic invertebrates.  Their common tongue seems to map with the party's common.  Normal creatures from the party's world are much rarer, scaled up by a factor of ten, and as completely unaware of the party as the party is of insects. 


White China Teapot with Purple Pattern sround the Image of a Purple Lotus: Drinking a cup of tea from this special tea pot causes those who finish most of a cup to fall asleep, waking up on a fishing boat returning to Yoon Suin.


Marked Glass Sphere:  A glass sphere almost a foot in diameter,  resting on a shelf, with black lines that look almost like a strange map.  It's testing on a tripod, and has small holes in the top and the bottom.  Inserting a lit candle tall enough to put the flame in the exact geometric center will teleport everyone within 25 ft. to  the library of a classy inn located in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos in Mystara.


Azure and Amber Hookah:  A hookah in a small windowless room, affixed to the small table affixed to the floor. If it is removed, the magical properties of it disappear in a puff of smoke. Any magic user taking a whiff of that smoke regains a spent spell of level 1d6 or lower.  

Using the Hookah in the normal way for an hour recovers 1d6 hit points from the experience, at the cost of 1d3 intelligence or constitution, recovering 1 point per day of rest. This also fills the room with a cloud of sisha smoke.  When it clears, the party is in a similar, but different room in a coffee house in some city in Al-Qadim.


None of these effects work if you're under the effects of a dimensional anchor,  also called a manifold topology stabilizer. 









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