Marlowe’s Menagerie: Available Curiosities

Thaddeus slides a leather-bound catalog across the workbench, its brass corners gleaming in the lamplight. As you open it, a subtle scent of machine oil and parchment wafts up. Inside, meticulous handwriting details items currently available for selection with your tokens.

Mechanical Marvels

Resonance Locket

Appearance: A silver locket with intricate gear patterns etched on its surface. When opened, it reveals a miniature brass mechanism surrounding a small blue crystal.

Properties: When two or more of these lockets are attuned (requiring them to be held together during a full moon), they create a telepathic bond between wearers. Each locket can sustain one telepathic message per day, transmitted instantaneously regardless of distance.

Warning: Messages occasionally pick up “echoes” from other dimensions. Speakers should avoid unnecessarily cryptic phrasing, as the locket has an unfortunate tendency to interpret ambiguous statements in the most troubling way possible.

Chrono-Compass

Appearance: A brass pocket compass with multiple nested dials and a crystal face that occasionally ripples like water. The needle glows faintly blue in darkness.

Properties: Rather than pointing north, the needle indicates the direction of the nearest temporal anomaly—places where time flows differently, objects displaced from their proper time, or beings existing outside normal temporal constraints.

Warning: Prolonged physical contact may cause the user to experience brief glimpses of possible futures or echoes of the past. These visions are not necessarily accurate predictions but rather fragments of probability.

Mechanical Familiar (Assorted Models)

Appearance: Small constructs resembling animals or insects, crafted from brass, copper, and silver components. Each has crystalline eyes that glow with a soft light matching its primary function.

Properties: These autonomous companions serve specific purposes based on their design. Available models include:

• Clockwork Owl: Enhanced perception and night vision, can record and replay sounds
• Brass Spider: Climbs walls, spins copper wire, detects vibrations
• Silver Fox: Tracks scents, disarms simple traps, delivers small items
• Copper Songbird: Mimics voices, creates distracting sounds, alerts to danger

Warning: Mechanical familiars develop distinct personalities over time. They require regular maintenance and occasionally develop quirks ranging from charming (collecting shiny objects) to troublesome (activating at inopportune moments).

Ætheric Spyglass

Appearance: An extendable brass spyglass with multiple lenses that can be rotated into position. The main lens is ringed with small sapphires and etched with arcane symbols.

Properties: Reveals invisible entities, magical auras, and enchantments when viewed through. Different lens combinations allow for various detection specialties:

• Blue lens: Reveals illusions and disguises
• Red lens: Shows sources of magical energy
• Yellow lens: Highlights hidden mechanisms and traps
• Green lens: Detects life energy and distinguishes the living from undead

Warning: Prolonged use in areas of intense magic may cause temporary synesthesia—experiencing one sense as another (seeing sounds, hearing colors, etc.).

Magical Implements

Bottled Starlight

Appearance: A crystal vial sealed with silver wire, containing what appears to be liquid light that shifts between pure white and pale blue.

Properties: When uncorked, releases true starlight that illuminates a 60-foot radius for 1 hour. This light reveals all invisible objects and beings, negates magical darkness, and causes fey creatures to become entranced for 1d4 rounds.

Warning: DO NOT OPEN INDOORS. The light will seek the highest point in any enclosed space, potentially damaging ceilings or roofs as it attempts to reach the sky.

Whisperwind Scarf

Appearance: A finely woven silk scarf that seems to float as if in a gentle breeze, even in still air. The fabric shimmers with subtle patterns resembling wind currents.

Properties: When worn around the neck or head, allows the wearer to send whispered messages on the wind to anyone they’ve met previously, so long as the recipient is outdoors and within 1 mile. Also grants advantage on saves against inhaled toxins and can capture and store a single sung note for release later.

Warning: The scarf sometimes carries back whispers not intended for the wearer—secrets spoken to the wind by strangers within its range.

Folding Sanctuary

Appearance: A small, ornate tent made of shimmersilk that fits in a pouch when collapsed. Intricate protection symbols are embroidered along the seams with silver thread.

Properties: When set up, creates a 10-foot diameter space that is:

• Temperature controlled regardless of external conditions
• Soundproof from outside to inside (but not vice versa)
• Protected from scrying and detection magic
• Slightly displaced from the material plane, making it difficult to notice

Warning: Time passes unpredictably inside—sometimes faster, sometimes slower than the outside world. Users should not plan precise exit times.

Empathic Gemstone

Appearance: A smooth, oval-shaped stone that changes color based on the emotions of whoever holds it. In its neutral state, it appears as cloudy quartz.

Properties: Absorbs and stores emotional energy, allowing the user to:

• Sense the emotional state of others within 30 feet
• Project stored emotions in a 15-foot radius
• Temporarily suppress their own emotional responses for clarity in crisis
• Communicate basic feelings to creatures that don’t share a language

Warning: The gemstone retains emotional imprints from powerful experiences and may spontaneously project these when in environments similar to where they were absorbed.

Arcane Artifacts

Synchronicity Dial

Appearance: A pocket-sized brass device resembling an astrolabe with multiple rotating rings and a central crystal that pulses with a soft rhythm.

Properties: When activated, creates a field of enhanced probability in a 10-foot radius for 1 minute. Within this field, coincidences become more common—dropped items land where needed, missed attacks might trigger favorable environmental effects, and seemingly random events tend to connect in meaningful ways.

Warning: The mathematical principles underlying synchronicity are complex; for every beneficial coincidence generated, an equally improbable (but not necessarily negative) event will occur within 24 hours.

Arcane Lexicon Lens

Appearance: A monocle with a frame made of intertwined silver and copper, the lens itself appearing to contain swirling text that becomes readable when held to the eye.

Properties: Allows the wearer to comprehend any written language they encounter. For magical texts, it provides a basic understanding of content without granting the ability to cast spells from them. Also highlights hidden messages, coded text, and magically concealed writing.

Warning: Occasionally causes the wearer to unconsciously speak in random languages, particularly when startled or emotional.

Phase Cloak

Appearance: A cloak made of fabric that seems to ripple and flow like water, its color constantly shifting between deep blue and purple. Silver threads create constellations across its surface.

Properties: Allows the wearer to become partially ethereal for short periods (1-2 rounds), enabling them to:

• Pass through solid objects no thicker than 1 foot
• Temporarily become immune to physical damage
• See into the Ethereal Plane
• Touch incorporeal beings and objects

Warning: While phased, the wearer is visible on the Ethereal Plane and may attract the attention of entities dwelling there.

Sympathetic Sigil Stones

Appearance: A pair of smooth, palm-sized stones with matching symbols carved into their surfaces. The symbols glow faintly when the stones are within 1 mile of each other.

Properties: Creates a magical link between locations where the stones are placed, allowing:

• Sound to pass between the locations
• Small objects (no larger than the stone itself) to be transferred from one stone to the other once per day
• Awareness of general conditions surrounding the paired stone (temperature, light level, presence of life)

Warning: If one stone is destroyed, the other becomes unstable and may create a temporary portal to a random location before crumbling to dust.

Curious Commodities

Ever-Burning Coal

Appearance: A piece of coal that glows with a constant inner heat, radiating warmth without consuming itself or requiring oxygen.

Properties: Provides heat equivalent to a small campfire without smoke, flame, or fuel. Can be used to:

• Warm a small room or tent indefinitely
• Cook food when placed in a suitable container
• Keep water from freezing in cold environments
• Provide comfort in extreme cold

Warning: If submerged in water or other liquids for more than 1 minute, creates intense steam that can cause minor burns to nearby creatures.

Traveler’s Walking Stick

Appearance: A wooden staff with metal bands at intervals and various small mechanical components that can extend from its surface. The wood appears to change grain patterns subtly over time.

Properties: Adapts to different terrains and situations, providing:

• Superior balance on uneven ground
• The ability to test depth of water or quicksand
• Extension to up to twice its length for reaching or crossing gaps
• Conversion into a makeshift shelter support, fishing rod, or defensive tool

Warning: The staff develops preferences for certain types of terrain over time and may become difficult to use in environments it “dislikes.”

Weather Worker’s Barometer

Appearance: A complex glass and brass instrument with multiple indicators, small weather vanes, and a central chamber containing what appears to be a miniature storm system.

Properties: Provides perfect weather predictions for the local area up to 48 hours in advance. Advanced features include:

• Detection of unnatural weather patterns
• Warning of elemental influences
• Identification of weather-controlling magic
• Limited influence over minor weather conditions (can clear fog in a small area, briefly delay rain, etc.)

Warning: The device is sensitive to the user’s mood and may occasionally create small weather effects in its immediate vicinity that reflect emotional states.

Esoteric Oddities

Whispering Liar’s Coin

Appearance: A silver coin with an animated face on one side that subtly changes expression. The reverse side bears the symbol of a tongue tied in a knot.

Properties: When flipped during a conversation where deception is present, lands on:

• Face side: If the last statement was true
• Reverse side: If the last statement contained falsehood
• Edge (rare): If the statement was technically true but intentionally misleading

Warning: The coin occasionally whispers the truths and lies it has detected to nearby listeners when stored with other coins.

Nightmare Lantern

Appearance: A dark metal lantern with red crystal panels that cast shadows seeming to move independently of light sources. Small crystals hang from chains around its rim.

Properties: Absorbs negative energy from dreams, protecting sleepers within 20 feet from nightmares. The lantern gradually darkens as it fills with captured nightmare essence and requires periodic cleansing by exposure to sunlight.

Warning: If not cleansed before becoming completely dark, may release all captured nightmares at once during the next sleep cycle of nearby creatures.

Serendipity Snuffbox

Appearance: A small silver box with intricate patterns that seem to rearrange themselves when not directly observed. Inside is a sparkling powder with an ever-changing color.

Properties: A pinch of powder, when scattered, creates a brief moment of favorable coincidence:

• Lost items appear in obvious places
• Needed tools become immediately available
• Minor obstacles resolve themselves
• Brief environmental advantages appear in conflicts

Warning: The universe maintains balance—for each instance of good fortune, an equal measure of coincidental bad luck will affect the user within the next 1d4 days.

A final note in Thaddeus’s precise handwriting appears at the bottom of the last page:

Present your tokens to me when you have made your selections. Choose wisely, as each item has both benefits and consequences. Additional maintenance instructions will be provided upon selection.