An oddly shaped map to a greater treasure.
a key object to open a larger device.
The ashes of the former king which can be used to prove that he was a bastard and that there is a living heir other than in public eye.
as simple as a box of dust of disappearance (downright handy stuff for a morally ambiguous chap in it's own right)
one of the 3 relics that show rulership (crown jewels) over an old culture. Not in and of itself important but with all 3 items, it could be used to bluff the undead guardians of that kingdom to let the living past...
If you want it to be something important, have it be a folding disk that when properly opened is a 7 pointed star with a small handle on one side. It is a key that opens a vault that releases Cthulhu.
Or have it be an Adamantine coin that has been sharply bent in half. It is an item of no real worth to anyone aside from the fact that the two keep stealing it back and forth from each other in a silly game of one up. In the past it was the symbol of the ruler of the local thieves guild, when their used to be only one. It was bent when the old guildmater was over thrown by a coalition of other guilds to show the loss of his power.
A toy hawk that dispenses malted milk balls.
|
Its a vampires coffin, which he casts shrink item on during the day
Its a permanently shrunk item: box, chest or somesuch and the original wizard who can unshrink it is dead - but maybe some magics can temporarily suppress the shrink
It is a magical secret chest recall copy - that is now on a 60 day time limit for retrieval by its owner
It contains a gem of stolen light which shows some scene of great importance or significance
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I had a 'Father's Ring' that was constantly being stolen back and forth between two 'brothers' that 'Father' had thrown out. Reality: 'Father' was the wizard that the rivals had been apprenticed to. All 3 were morally detestable backstabbers and double dealers. He tossed them out and attempted to Lich himself (fail) and they believed the ring was the key to his tower (now occupied by an undead horror). The party lived in the false fear that the two were powerful wizards for several levels before the Fighter had an epiphany that they couldn't be all that powerful or they'd have gotten into the tower on their own.
|
Just tell them it's something indescribably cool. :P
But I like a lot of the ideas posted thus far!
When I'm in doubt, I steal shamelessly from a cool movie. In this case, I'd probably go with Hellraiser.
Or -
It could contain the D&D equivalent of the Hope Diamond. Worth a fortune, but places the user under a profound curse of unluck or else attracts trouble in some way.
Or it could be a small clockwork device which can open almost any lock. But its true function is as part of a much larger device, and a cabal of nasty people is trying to get their hands on all the pieces.
or -
If you want to get really silly: when a character opens the box, describe to the other players how there's an amazing golden glow which illuminates the face of the opener, who's eyes widen in awe. However, flatly refuse to state what the opener saw.
or -
If you want to be really meta, tell them it's a slightly used McGuffin, worth about 1000 gold pieces on the open market, which gives the bearer a +1 morale bonus to AC. Then if they decide to keep it, you can send wave after wave of mysterious bad guys after them. "Hand over the McGuffin!!"
Hellraiser was the first thing I thought of when I read the description, of course you could have it be the opposite, it contains a holy relic of some sort (angel feather, saint's skull, tears of Desna, what ev), and the player's after some puzzling unlock it to give them a divine vision of a quest...the box could provide the player's clues/divine guidance/gm hints in the future.
I would write out a nice bit of poetry on a scrap of paper.
Toss it in an old keepsake box along with a dried flower, an old ring, and a old brass key. Nothing worth anything. But each one holds an important role in up coming quests. It makes a nice prop for game day. And your PCs can have a ton of fun figuring out what each clue is for.
I like an idea from a mini series on the Sci Fi network (forget the name of it though) where an event took place in a hotel room and all the mundane crud in the room were imbued with some kind of fantastic power. When all of them were assembled in the room they opened up the true power of the event, recreating it and temporarily opening a portal to another space and time.
So to that end...they open the box and find nothing more impressive than a simple brass key. It radiates no magic and seems kind of junky. But something about it seems intriguing - some bit of detail that you hand out like in the right light, just for a second, it looks like its made of living flame.
Turns out the key is needed to find all the other items. The original NPC that hired them has another item; a pair of glasses. The NPC is a minor player in a conspiracy involving "collectors" all looking to unlock...and that is left to your campaign planning.
Could be an underground shrine with dueling portals to both the negative and positive planes, maybe a magical/fey nexus, Abadar's First Vault, or the demi-plane inside the mind of a ridiculously powerful lich.
or combining your PC's idea and Wolfsnaps penchant for plagirism: pull a Harry Potter. The party opens it and finds a mundane trinket that isn't the entire phylactery, but one of seven the lich split his soul between. The NPC is in fact either your Dumbledor or an agent therof and, for the FULL HP effect, when one of the PC's claps eyes on the thing they suddenly get a terrible migraine and feel a bizarre presence attempting to invade their mind, something to do with a scene long forgotten from their childhood.
Or its a rock.
... im sorta thinking the guy they are working for is going to turn out to be a vampire, or at least works for one himself.
...
other than that im open to anything. it could even be a magical item of some sort, but it should definitely have some sort of nefarious purpose or application.it could be a part of something quite powerful, or a component for a ritual.
If the guy is a vampire- The box contains what appears to be shards of bloody glass. The box itself is slightly magical, preserving the blood so that it is still wet to the touch. Opening the box breaks the enchantment, but it can be restored by a spellcaster who knows what they are doing with the right cantrip (exact details up to you). Without the enchantment or a similar mechanism, the blood will slowly dry and eventually be useless.
The blood is of a special vintage, needed as a component for a ritual of some sort. The man's vampiric nature came in handy for his employer, who used him to hunt down the blood quickly.
Potential natures of the blood:
-Blood of a saint, murdered unjustly.
-Blood of someone destined for greatness killed before they were fated to.
-Blood of a truly innocent person.
-Blood of the last remaining lineage (hero, royalty, infamous villain)
-Blood of a rare magical beast.
-Blood the employer donated to someone else for magical purposes, stolen from that purpose violently.
Potential rituals for using the blood:
-Fuel for a magical furnace needed to make a specific item. Other fuels can be used, but this one would work exceptionally well and put other plans ahead of schedule (making it worth some effort but not totally vital)
-Summoning the power of the blood's owner into a permanently controllable clone, for later evil purposes.
-Appeasing an otherwise difficult-to-control beast planning to be summoned at a stellar conjunction. The summoning can happen anyway, but other plans will be needed to subjugate it.
-An ingredient for making an artifact to act as a sympathetic link to the blood's original owner. Spells cast into the item automatically take effect on them at any distance, bypassing many common defenses. Original owner can be the employer, important political figure, head of a mage's guild, important member of a powerful church, or someone dear to the employer but otherwise unimportant (wife, ex-lover, child, relative's child, longtime friend).
Parka, that is truly awesome. Kudos.
|
I have always found this intriguing and wished I had a group to try it out. The morally ambigous chap could be anyone of the cabal or perhaps more likely the father who has gotten a bit Machiavellian. The Lost Room
I'm a fan of a} incentive and b} foreshadowing.
I'd consider having it be a prison. Something very, very nasty is inside that thing. They open it, the very nasty escapes. It should pause to rub it in a little bit then head off to parts unknown to conduct a crusade of intense evil.
Ten or fifteen levels from now they can hunt it down and finally put an end to the suffering they unwittingly caused. Then take credit for it. There's your morally ambiguous.
If your group is prone to moral pitfalls, I'd definitely present them with another dilemma - such as the box having evidence of a something to blackmail the owner - it has a ledger of the members of the Red Dagger Assassin's Guild. Worth a substantial reward to the local authorities, but is it worth making a new, deadly adversary?
I kind of like the hope diamond thing, but with the following twist...
The diamond can only be found, given away, or purchased, but not stolen. Anyone stealing it has a curse on them, something nasty (think the gold coins from Pirates of the Caribbean). They gain the undead template, can't eat, can't sleep, and look like skeletons by moonlight. Yeah, it's really cool at first, until they start failing will rolls because they feel soulless all the time. And they start slowly sliding toward CE.
EDIT: The only way to get rid of the curse is to steal it back and return it to the person they stole it from originally.
I like the idea of something that randomly grants curses or bonuses for a certain length of time and then wears off. Sort of like a deck of illusion or the old deck of dealing from 1E
Pull a Pulp Fiction. Never let the PCs open it. And only have NPCs open it. When it does open have a golden light spill out from it. It'll keep them guessing and make you look really creative. And yo don't need to do much work. Sell it right and it'll be awesome.
If they are in possession of it right now, how would you keep them from opening it themselves? I know it works awesomely in a movie or book, but in an RPG or even a video game, it sounds prohibitively hard to do.
Even if it were locked, they might have a rogue, mage or other character capable of getting it open. An answer of "it's too complex for you to pick" or the like risks ruining the effect.
If there is a way to do it, it would be pretty awesome. Kind of like Egg-Shen in Big Trouble in Little China, less can be more- "How'd you get up there?" "Wasn't easy!"
Edit- re-read and don't like how defeatist this sounds, but not fully sure how to re-word. I'm actually interested in seeing if there is a way to do this, not trying to shut down the idea...
it could also arbitrarily teleport them places that they may not want to go when they open it.