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THE BRAND OF AVARICE

The first brands of avarice was crafted by the Sorcerer Prince Ajan. The tributes paid to Ajan by his lords were being constantly jeopardized by the legendary rogue Ser Kella. Attempts to capture Kella had failed, even when aided by Ajan’s powerful magic. So Ajan crafted a brand of avarice for each of his lords — with each bearing the seal of the lord for which they were destined – and commanded them to include their brands with all future tributes as a guarantee of their payment. Ser Kella, after falling prey to the brands at least twice, abandoned his depredations upon Ajan’s tributes.

Today the brands of avarice are a relatively inexpensive form of magical protection against theft: A wizard or sorcerer will enchant a normal gold piece and place it within a pile of similar or identical coins. The owner of the coins will know to avoid this particular piece (which is usually identified with some minor marking and can be removed safely by anyone wearing a pair of gloves). However, the moment it is touched by bare flesh, the brand of avarice will bond itself to the person’s flesh and will resist all physical efforts to have it removed short of amputating the body part affected.

Depending on where the brand attaches itself, the character may be subject to a penalty on any affected ability or skill checks (this may include spells with somatic components – including dispel magic). For example, if the brand is grasped by the fingertips (as is quite likely) their manual dexterity will be affected. A common mistake is to then attempt to pry it loose with the other hand (thereby binding both hands to the coin). DM’s should use their best discretion as to what types of penalties to apply (and just how badly a character can get stuck to himself – or others).

Also note that the brand is capable of acting on more than one individual at a time. Thus if another PC, NPC, or monster were to touch the brand (or if the affected character were to touch another PC, NPC, or monster with the brand), the brand would effectively bind the two characters together at the point of contact.

The easiest way to remove the brand is through the use of a dispel magic spell (wealthier patrons will usually have the brand created by a high level wizard – making it comparatively more difficult to remove). However, even this will still leave a physical imprint of the coin’s surface on the victim’s skin. This mark will not usually impair the victim’s ability to take normal actions (although the DM may decide otherwise under special circumstances), but will continue to identify the character as the victim of a brand so long as it is visible.

Caster Level: 5^th
Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, make whole
Market Price: 4,000 gp

COIN OF ALARUM

Another device for theft deterrence, the coin of alarum is more direct in its methods of persecution: When brought near coins it hasn’t been near before, it will sound a klaxon-like alarm. Typically the coin of alarum would be placed unconspicuously among the other coins of a house’s wealth, so that when a would-be thief placed it next to his personal wealth the alarm would sound.

However, as an added security measure the sound of the alarm does not appear to emanate from the coin itself – instead seeming to simply fill the air around it. The thief will assume that he has triggered an area affect, and flee – never realizing that he is carrying his own accuser with him. It may take quite some time for the victim to finally discover why the klaxon returns every time they add change to their coin purse.

The coin of alarum takes fifteen minutes to acclimate itself to a new coin. The klaxon will stop as soon as the acclimation process is finished. If a coin is removed from the presence of the coin of alarum and then returned, the acclimation process must be repeated. The coin has also been enchanted in such a way that a dispel magic spell will not only work automatically, but will also have a duration of fifteen minutes (the spell can be used to acclimate the coin without having to live with an alarm sounding). Spells such as silence will also work to quiet this pernicious little item.

Although coins of alarum can be commonly found just about anywhere today, they were originally a creation of the dragons – often serving as triggers for more elaborate magical defenses or traps. Many dragons continue to use the coins to this day, using the sound of the alarm as a trigger for a contingency spell which teleports the rest of their treasure safely away.

Caster Level: 5^th
Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, alarm
Market Price: 100 gp

Go to Part 3

Here is a thing which I forgot existed. Back in June 2002, Campaign Magazine published “Gilted Fiends”, an article I had written which contained a number of cursed coins for D20 fantasy games. Back in 2011, I archived that article here on the Alexandrian. What I had forgotten is that I had actually written a direct sequel to this article which was never published because Campaign Magazine went out of business.

Without further ado, here is that article — never before seen — providing more mischievous and dangerous coins with which to plague your PCs.

Cursed items are a long-standing tradition for D&D, for a very simple reason: They’re a lot of fun. A character plagued by their cursed possession not only has the challenge of overcoming the difficulties created by the curse, but also the long-standing problem of getting rid of the curse permanently. Cursed items serve as a source of conflict, challenge, and storytelling.

But there’s a problem: Players are paranoid. Hand them a sword carved with cryptic runes and the identify and analyze dweomer spells begin to fly. They have no intention of being caught flatfooted – and nothing magical is going to escape their careful analysis. If they’re looking for it, they’re going to catch that curse before it ever gets close to them. As fun as they might be, cursed items never really get a fighting chance.

Wait a minute, though. What if they don’t think to look? Sure, the first thing they’re going to do with a dragon’s hoard is start looking for magic in every sword, staff, ring, and scroll. But…

Who casts detect magic on a pile of coins?

Nobody. When they kill the orc and loot the body, no one ever stops to consider that the bent copper piece they found was actually a Lucky Penny. And as frustrating as missed magic might be if they ever realize the truth, imagine their despair when the gold coin they liberated from the ogre’s lair turns out to be the greatest bane of all…

Enchanted coins, though, offer more than just the opportunity to slip a good curse under the character’s defenses. They can also provide the fodder for a variety of adventure themes – ranging from “good things come in small packages” to the almost ubiquitous “money is the root of all evil”. Money is a part of everyday life – for the characters and the players – so don’t hesitate to use it as a story element or adventure seed.

That being said, here are a few dirty tricks to slip into your PCs’ money pouches…

WEALTH BANE

The wealth banes were created by the Scarlet Coven – mad mages convinced that the plight of the poor would be alleviated if only the gold of the wealth was disposed of. It took the coven nearly a decade of effort to gather the wealth necessary to create the banes, and it is whispered that the treasure troves of three mighty dragons – Silvermane, Harshfire, and Blacktongue – were consumed.

In the end, the coven was successful. The result, however, was not as they intended. The wealth banes were quickly detected, and decisive action was rapidly taken against the coven. Although the coven’s leader, Kesand, would not be captured until almost nine years had passed, the “glorious” vision of the Scarlet Coven never came to pass.

A wealth bane appears to be a normal copper coin, but when placed in close proximity to a platinum, gold, or silver coin the wealth bane will transmute their metal into common copper. For every hour that a wealth bane is kept within a foot of other coins (for example, within a coin pouch) there is a cumulative 10% chance that the other coins will be transformed into copper.

Most of the wealth banes were either destroyed or are now kept – carefully – in private collections as curiosity pieces. Others, however, followed the whimsical paths of commerce and disappeared into the far corners of the globe. Often their victims never become aware of what caused the strange transformation, and end up spending the wealth bane as if it were a normal coin – passing it on to some new victim.

Caster Level: 15^th
Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, polymorph any object
Market Price: 150,000 gp

Go to Part 2

I was recently linked to this story on Facebook: U.S. Government Bans Native American Tribe From Protesting On Their Own Land – Send In Police To Remove Protesters.

As far as I can tell, the linked story is bullshit. First, it’s unclear which judicial action it’s reporting on. The article was written on September 7th, but the only judicial action on that day was actually a victory for Native American protestors.

Digging a little deeper, however, it appears that this is actually just a spam site that’s repackaging a story that got a lot of clicks on Facebook so that it can harvest some of that proven clickbait. It was most likely posted by an algorithm that noticed an uptick in Native American-related or pipeline-related stories on social media, and decided to copy-paste an earlier story on those topics which was a known success at attracting likes and shares.

The story it was copying, however, was actually just a spammy repackaging of actual reporting that had taken place several days earlier by Telesur.

Telesur’s story, however, wasn’t accurate. And their headline (“Native Americans Banned from Protesting Pipeline on Own Land”) was total bullshit. As Native News Online accurately reported, the judge’s order only prohibited them from physically interfering with construction. It didn’t ban them from protesting. Furthermore, the site covered by the judge’s order wasn’t actually on a Native American reservation, so it never banned them from ANYTHING “on their own land”.

So, to sum up: Inaccurate reporting tied to a completely inaccurate headline caused a bunch of fringe websites to post mock-outrage stories about something that wasn’t actually happening. One of those mock-outrage stories remixed the headline into a mostly fact-free rant masquerading as a news story and paired it to a really great photograph that caused people to click it and share it. Then some trashy sites noticed that the post was popular and duped it in order to harvest the advertising revenue.

The photograph, by the way, is actually of a Brazilian man from 2012: “An indigenous man stands as riot police stand guard during the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Wednesday, June 20, 2012. Brazil’s indigenous are protesting the government’s plan to construct the large Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Amazon.”

And that’s how most Americans are getting their news in 2016.

Which is a problem. Because, as we’ve just demonstrated, what the algorithms, systems, and mob psychology of social media select for is not the dissemination of truth. It is the dissemination of outrage. When you unthinkingly allow yourself to take in that outrage, you’re doing a disservice to yourself. And when you unthinkingly allow that outrage to drive your actions — even the simple action of hitting a Like or Share or Retweet or Up Vote button — you’re doing a disservice to everyone around you.

Chobits is the story of a young boy who discovers a robotic girl (a chobit) in a garbage pile, takes it home, and turns her on. It quickly becomes apparent that this is no ordinary chobit, and a great deal of mystery builds up around the chobit’s true identity and the strange abilities she appears to possess. Along the way, CLAMP kind of flirts with commenting on the objectification of women (but seems to mostly just use that as an excuse to objectify them). The central enigma and the flirtation with deeper commentary on the “fan service” of modern manga kept me reading until the end and then… Well, let me just tell you.

REALLY SERIOUS SPOILERS

This is the truth behind the great engima of Chobits:

We discover that Chi — the chobit discovered by our protagonist — was created by a pair of computer scientists who wanted to create a fully sentient AI, and they think of her as their daughter. One day, however, Chi realizes that she wants to experience true love. So she comes up with a foolproof plan to do that:

“I will give myself amnesia and enter a comatose state. I want you to throw my comatose body on a trash pile and hope that my one true love finds my unconscious body there.”

I… umm… Wow. Okay. That’s really stupid.

Not done yet, though, because then her mother says: “We wanted our daughter to find true love, so after she went into a coma and couldn’t consent, we reprogrammed her so that if her first boyfriend didn’t marry her she would not only commit suicide but murder every other android on the planet.”

Guys, that’s not really a great plan, I think–

“Also, we specifically made our daughter so that she could fall in love with someone. But then we designed her body with an off switch in her vagina so that if she did fall in love with someone and then they had sex, it would delete her entire brain and functionally murder her.”

What. The. Fuck. Is. Wrong. With. You?

And just as you’re reeling from the big reveal that this entire story is about the secrets kept by some phenomenally fucked up people, they follow it up with: “Why did you call them chobits? Why not just call them robots?”

“Oh, because we didn’t want them to be bound by the Three Laws of Robotics.”

Because, obviously, that’s how the Three Laws of Robotics work: You just name something a robot and the Holy Spirit of Asimov fills their corporeal form and binds them forevermore by the Three Laws.

Fuck off, CLAMP.

GRADE: D

A guide to grades here at the Alexandrian.

Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

Tim Höregott is providing a German translation of both the Alexandrian Remix of Eternal Lies and the system cheat sheet I designed for Trail of Cthulhu. He will not be translating the handouts (he intends to use the originals), but will be translating all the various guides and cheat sheets. (If anyone else is interested in translating the handouts, please feel free to contact me.)

Tim is also the author of the Listen to the Gods blog (which is not in German), so make sure you check that out.

ETERNAL LIES REMIX (GERMAN)

1.0 Kampagnenübersicht
1.1 New York
1.2 Savannah
1.3 Los Angeles

TRAIL OF CTHULHU CHEAT SHEET (GERMAN)

(click here for PDF)