Collected from the web: There are over 200 bodies on Mt. Everest.

Because it is so difficult (if not impossible) to retrieve those bodies, they are simply left in situ. Grisly, but fascinating monuments to those who have attempted the most famous of climbs.

(For the record, if this were to be the way I died, I would actually prefer to have my body left there and remembered. A fleeting touch of immortality.)

What’s interesting is that many of these bodies have become actual landmarks. Some have earned nicknames. They have become part of the mountain and part of the experience of climbing the mountain.

Turning this to our most prevalent topic here at the Alexandrian: When I’m DMing, because I’m forgetful, corpses will frequently end up disappearing as if they were phasing out from a CRPG. This is not a deliberate choice on my part; quite the opposite, in fact. When I remember to account for corpses, some great gaming experiences have come from it: Whether it’s the heads of formers PCs on pikes outside the Caverns of Thracia. Or the murder investigation launched when the PCs irreverently left corpses laying in an alley. Or the mystery posed by disappearing corpses in the labyrinth. Or the sinking, near-poisonous miasma which resulted from the PCs leaving a bloody charnel house of corpses to molder and rot.

At an open game table, of course, this sort of thing will crop up more frequently. (Where the heck did that corpse of a necromancer come from?) But even without an open game table, you can consciously choose to have the environment evolve when the PCs aren’t looking; or evolve as a result of the actions the PCs have taken (or not taken). The typical milieu of a D&D campaign is strewn with corpses. Don’t forget about them.

John and Abigail, the play I wrote starring John and Abigail Adams, is now available for the Nook.

Through war and peace, tragedy and joy, the friendship and love of John Adams and Abigail Smith formed a passionate and enduring marriage which helped shape the future of a newborn America .

Through long years of separation – brought about by John’s work in Boston and Philadelphia during the events of the American Revolution – the couple’s only means of communication were their letters. Literally thousands of letters survive, and this unique adaptation – in the style of A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters – allows the couple to live again in their own words.

The play was produced independently in January 2002. It received a second production in August 2007 as part of the Minnesota Fringe Festival.

Of its inaugural performance in 2002, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune wrote: “John and Abigail is an adroit adaptation … a chance to hear about the sacrifices involved in championing the American Revolution. John and Abigail endured their extended separations with pen, paper, and patience, communicating news of disease, death, battles, longing, and love.”

The play is also still available for the Kindle and in a print edition from Lulu.

Buy Nook Edition – Buy Kindle Edition – Buy Print Edition

David and Tellius both requested a compiled PDF version of 101 Curious Items. And so I shall oblige:

(click image for PDF)

Enjoy!

“101 Curious Items”, of all the things I’ve written, may be the one I have found most useful on a personal level. I refer back to it constantly, using it to fill in bits of detail and flavor whenever I start running dry during dungeon prep. (Or just when I feel a particular complex is a little too “normal” and utilitarian.) Even if I don’t use one of the items from the list directly, I’ve found it to be a great source for inspiration. For example, the “Items of Interest” in the bloodwight nests of The Complex of Zombies drew heavily from this article.

The article was originally submitted to Dragon. It was rejected due to a lack of mechanical content and because some of the items included magical effects that weren’t statted up like “proper” magic items. A few months later, the article became one of about a dozen that I sold to Campaign Magazine. Unlike most of the stuff I wrote for Campaign, this one made it into print and I actually got paid for it before the magazine went out of business. It was published in the June 2002 issue.

Curious Items 1-25
Curious Items 26-50
Curious Items 51-75
Curious Items 76-101

I love including these kinds of little details and oddities. As another example from The Complex of Zombies, there is the manuscript entitled Observations of Alchemical Reductions and the Deductions Thereof by Master Alchemist Tirnet Kal. A Craft (alchemy) or Knowledge (arcana) check (DC 22) reveals that it was once a well-known alchemical text, but that the last copy of it was thought lost several centuries ago.

These little sparks of creativity tend to light up the game world for the players. And you can never tell when little sparks will light surprisingly bright conflagrations. I’ve seen a PC define their entire personality around something I thought of a magical knick-knack. On another occasion, the PCs took some items similar to the ones in this article and launched a bidding war between several powerful factions. The connections they made during that bidding war have had all kinds of strange, long-term consequences for the campaign.

You can see some similar thoughts being explored in “Putting the ‘Magic’ in Magic Items”.

A fun little exercise to try at home: The next time you’re getting ready to run an adventure, take three of the items from this list and drop them in. Maybe just leave them lying randomly about (or stuffed into someone’s pocket). Maybe twist the item to the setting. Maybe twist the setting to the item. Whatever works. Then wait and see what happens when your players stumble across the curiosity.

101 Curious Items – PDF

Go to Part 1

76.     A stone table in the midst of the wilderness which is, nevertheless, always filled with a fresh meal whenever travelers come across it.

77.     Carved into a natural rock face is an elaborately decorated arch. When first seen it appears to be merely decorative, with the supposed “doorway” leading into solid, unfinished rock. If the arch is approached by sentients, however, it will suddenly burst into life with a scintillating array of light. Anyone entering this magical portal will disappear for several seconds before being returned to the very spot from which they left.

78.     A small, leather-bound book filled with prophecies. All of them will be found to be true, but the last of them is dated just a few weeks ago.

79.     The mounted head of a deer, its impossibly massive horns possessed of a thousand and one points.

80.     A hollow glass sphere of surprising proportions – nearly three meters across. If it is broken those nearby will catch the barest scent of alien perfumes, hinting at strange lands belonging to the ancient time when the sphere was first forged and air trapped within it.

81.     A sword of truly mammoth proportions. Resting within a chamber more than thirty meters long, the sword stretches from one end to the other. Whatever creature was meant to wield this mighty weapon would truly stagger the imagination of a dragon.

82.     Poison drips – steadily and continuously – from the tip of a stalagmite which stands alone within a natural cavern deep beneath the surface of the earth.

83.     Within a wooden box carved with pastoral scenes lies a leather purse, and within the purse are a handful of seeds. If these seeds are planted, they will take root and grow into plants of unnatural shape, hue, and life unlike anything seen upon this world, and operating by utterly alien principles.

84.     A scabbard stained the dark color of rust. Any blade which is placed within the scabbard will emerge covered in a sheen of blood.

85.     Within a house the PCs find an incredibly detailed doll’s house – a seemingly perfect representation of the very house in which they stand. In fact, upon closer inspection they will find the very room in which they stand, inhabited by a number of dolls equal to their own number, who are, in turn, examining a miniature doll house. This miniature doll house, in turn, is a perfect duplicate in its own right – complete with smaller dolls examining an even smaller house. If the investigation continues beyond a certain point (most likely requiring the use of some variety of magic), it will be shown that the iterative pattern begins to break down – things begin to be subtly altered with each subsequent doll house the PCs reveal. Eventually, these changes will begin to assume a horrifying aspect – made all the more horrible as it is discovered that these iterations are being wrought upon the world of the PCs.

86.     A cursed fishing pole made of blackened ash. It will never catch a fish – although, if one attempts to use it unbaited, they will succeed in catching skeleton fish.

87.     A bouquet of cut roses which will successively bloom and wilt over the course of a few moments.

88.     A disc of gold upon a chain of similar material. It appears, in almost all respects, to be a talisman of pure good – but, in fact, it is a fake. At the DM’s discretion its creators may have enchanted it as a periapt of health or amulet of health in order to perpetrate their hoax more effectively.

89.     A tablet of pure gold, inscribed with the core rites and beliefs of a venerable religion. Careful study of this tablet, however, will reveal subtle – but important – differences between these ancient practices and the current practices of the religion in question.

90.     An age-worn ivory figurine, which, nonetheless, bears an uncanny resemblance to a young woman the characters have just met.

91.     A tiny diorama made of oak and silver, depicting a prophecy of the last days of the world in vivid detail.

92.     A diamond of incredible beauty which slowly shifts its color from the purest white to canary to blue to black and back again.

93.     An ancient mummy which was given full burial rites and laid within a stately sarcophagus. Arranged on five pedestals around the sarcophagus are the canopic jars in which the mummy’s vital organs were placed. Although the mummy is not of the undead, opening these jars will reveal that its organs continue to function: The heart beats, the lungs fill with air and empty again, and so forth.

94.     A quiver of golden arrows. They are devoid of supernatural properties, but despite their unusual composition will perform as normal arrows would.

95.     A leaf from the great tree Yggdrasil.

96.     A set of wooden wind chimes which plays a different tune depending upon the direction of the wind which disturbs it.

97.     A charm of twisted black obsidian. Touching the charm unleashes strange, ghostly visions from a strange and alien world – utterly different in every particular, but eerily similar to our own world in its broad scope and form.

98.     The neverburning torch. A jet black torch, with an inscription in gold upon its side: “Only in your hour of darkest need will I light.” All attempts – magical or otherwise – to light the torch will fail, but if the character carrying the torch ever finds himself upon the brink of death, the neverburning torch will flare to life.

99.     In the face of a mountain, an ancient stone stairway has been cut. Each step has been meticulously carved with stunningly detailed mosaics, but upon reaching the top of the stairs a climber finds nothing but a sheer wall of stone – as if the stair’s makers had been stopped before their work could be completed.

100.     A set of pan pipes carved from the bones of a unicorn. When played, they do not make the slightest sound.

101.     A cache of ancient coins left from the elder days of the world and made by a civilization utterly alien to the values of today: They are carved from bloodstone, moonstone, and jacinth – with unknown faces and unreadable runes decorating their surface.

Reflections on “101 Curious Items”