Treasures 2

More treasures for your players to discover in occultists’ basements and the back rooms of old curiosity shops. First treasure post here. Make Academic or Technical rolls to identify these.

1. Greenland Spar. Jomsviking navigation crystal. Looted from the Uunartoq fjord settlement by the Victual Brothers in 1428. Found in an abandoned boat shack in the Turku Archipelago. Invisible things can be seen through it. Reveals extra planets when aimed at the night sky.

2. Ghost Shirt. Made from buckskin by the Paiute prophet Wovoka. Deflects bullets. Worn by Chief Kicking Bear during the Battle of Greasy Grass. Sold by Buffalo Bill to a Glaswegian bank robber in 1891. Uncomfortable. Fits under a long coat. Only works when it’s about to rain.

3. Catalan Barsoom. Portolan chart of Noachian Mars, showing the coastline of the northern ocean and the spice ports of the Valles Marineris outflow channels. Made in 14th-century Majorca. Green figures in turbans depicted riding insects. Bug-eyed Antichrist crouches atop Olympus Mons.

4. Glyph Cone. Live venomous sea snail. Shell marked with angular cuneiform - generated by a chemical cellular automaton, devised by Lemurian scientists to preserve their sacred texts. Neurotoxic needle kills in minutes. Specimens routinely found by Queensland divers.

5. Hockomock Hinkypunk. Cluster of luminescent floating grubs - the souls of Wampanoag shamans. Bottled by a Connecticut trapper during King Philip’s War. Uncorked in a rural area, they fly off in all directions, permanently haunting the vicinity with strange misleading lights.

6. Taduki. Dried leaves in a hessian pouch. Lets you relive past lives if smoked. Harvested in the Drakensberg by slaves of the Zulu dwarf wizard Zikali. Distributed by Omani traders from Zanzibar and Muscat. Horribly addictive. Use D&D rules for medieval memory adventures.

7. Paramaribo Judge. Gold vessel found in Suriname by 17th-century Dutch settlers. Traded to the river Caribs by Mansa Muhammad ibn Qu. Djinn inside can fairly settle any dispute, given calculation time and library access. Currently considering the ancient case of Animal v. Man.

8. Plum Dust. Rosewood box stolen by Hitachi Province fisherman from a hollow metal vessel shaped like an incense burner, discovered on the ocean around 1803. All the box contained was a pink skull made from lacy crystal that dissolved into powder on contact with the air.

9. Cipher Block. Brick from Solomon’s Temple. Absorbs heat. Hums when left in sunlight. Inscribed in Hebrew with a Name of God. Any building constructed using it will develop rudimentary consciousness, capacity to grow. Taken from foundations of Keziah Brown’s Arkham cottage.

10. Nosferatu Coffer. Sealed by seven locks, one for each classical planet, requiring a key of the corresponding alchemical metal. Holds the heart of the oldest vampire. Plants die around it. Removed by subterfuge from a Swiss bank vault - the Gnomes of Zurich want it back.

11. Ottakar. Life-size wooden mannequin. Four feet tall, proportions subtly wrong. Manufactured by a German firm to the exact specifications of the Symbolist painter Odilon Redon. Figures drawn with it as a model tend to resemble the same pallid entity - and move when you look away.

12. Mist Whistle. Skull-shaped Aztec whistle found in Tlatelolco. Makes a dry shrieking sound and summons an ice-cold mist when blown. Skeletons bathed in the mist get up and dance. Attracts the bones of underground giants - +10% chance to cause an earthquake every time it’s used.

13. Brain Cylinder. Holds Knud Andersen, bat expert, recently returned from a tour of the crystal cities and fungal forests of the Oort Cloud. Bubbling with excitement - wants to publish his new biological discoveries. Sleeps a lot. Only good things to say about his mi-go hosts.

14. Lucky Penny. Minted in 2043. Steel. James K. Polk on one side - lightning bolt on the other. Brings good luck in battle to its owner - opponents have a way of tripping over and dealing themselves comically grotesque wounds. Bad luck in all other fields. Can’t be reclaimed once lost.

15. Slime Helm. Diving helmet full of cold black ooze. Used in an attempt by rich Theosophists to investigate magnetic anomalies detected off New Zealand’s southern coast. Hauled up years later by Chilean fishermen. Ooze can be poured out - there’s always more.

16. Stopwatch. Made from an abandoned time machine, found by urchins in a Southwark warehouse and dismantled for scrap. Can freeze time for thirty seconds. Usable once a month. Ape-men from the future must destroy it to avert the paradox that ends their species.

17. Dowsing Pendant. Tiger’s eye pendulum on gold chain. Gives you direct access to the Akashic Records. Charge it up with sunlight and suspend it over a map to see where you’re supposed to go. Destiny of all previous owners - Mughal princess, French aristocrat - has been horrible death.

18. Thunderclap Bomb. Cast-iron sphere full of gunpowder. Blessed by 888 Taoist priests. Character for “heaven” on the side. Last of a bundle used by Song dynasty warriors at the Siege of Kaifeng. Will level a building and summon a celestial bureaucrat to see what all the noise is about.

19. Aqua Tofana. Thumb-sized vial of colourless liquid. Makes you fall so deeply in love with the first woman you see that it kills you. Brewed from toads and mercury by the Palermo poisoner Giulia Tofana in 1633. A kiss each day from your inamorata delays your painful death.

20. Imperial Harpoon. Hurled by the Roman general Belisarius into the flank of the sperm whale Porphyrios, who plagued shipping in the Sea of Marmara during the reign of Justinian I. Retrieved from the beast near Mocha Island in 1838 and hung above the altar in a Nantucket church.