As you venture into the Southlands with your stalwart adventurers, you might come across some interesting little trinkets—or you could start your characters off with one! What follows is the start of a list of trinkets that we hope all of you out there in the wider Kobold community will add to over time! You can also find more inspiration from the upcoming Southlands project on the Southlands Kickstarter page.
Trinkets
- A rose water sprinkler made from ornately woven gold and agate contains a substance that does not smell like rose water. This liquid remains unidentified.
- This rare black calabash has red-hued seeds woven into the mesh around it. What the seeds are is anyone’s guess.
- This kawala is not crafted from reed, but instead appears to be made from the bones of a large avian creature.
- A black silk bag contains seven veils of hues that change color each sunset.
- A steed’s anklet crafted from jade has hieroglyphic warnings of dire things to come. The message is continued on the missing anklets of the set.
- This handheld mirror is cracked with one missing shard of glass. Each new moon, the missing shard appears, and voices singing unsettling songs emanate from it until the sun rises.
- This stone scarab is pure white unless in the presence of demonic beings, which is when it turns black.
- Three golden asymmetric hoop earrings, when interlocked in a certain pattern, form part of a metallic map.
- Dancing within this crystal vial is a belly dancer. A tiny drummer sits off to the side playing beats you cannot hear.
- Simply by holding this metallic ring over your mouth and blowing into it, you can breathe a gout of illusionary fire.
Please feel free to add your own trinkets to this list!
One of the things my players loved doing before starting Hoard of the Dragon Queen was rolling for trinkets. In fact, we’ve taken to rolling on the chart when it comes to inspecting bodies of the slain NPCs just to see if there is something useful (or cool). Including this set among a d100 chart in the Southlands guide would be a really neat addition.
My addition: Three vials containing brightly colored spices, so rare that they can only be obtained from the Great bazaar.
A clay mancala board with ten shallow cups carved into the surface and a small leather pouch containing dozens of oval glass beads. The beads are of various colors, and upon each of the game pieces is emblazoned a unique golden rune.
A lamp that when filled with a liter of water and rubbed, creates a cloud that provides a shaded area a 100 meters in diameter. The effect lasts for 1D6 hours, but each hour after the first requires the addition of another liter of water. The cloud is quite visible, obviously magical, and will likely draw the attention anyone in the neighborhood.
A walking stick that ends in an animate undead ostrich foot.
A wind-up clockwork monkey wearing a vest and a fez. When activated the monkey rhythmically clashes two symbols together. The noise lasts 3+1D3 rounds and gives a -1 penalty to all die rolls of any evil spirits. Unless, of course, you got one of the evil monkeys, in that case all bets are off. But no, really, what are the odds of that?
Hundreds of hollow balls of fired clay that rattle slightly when you shake them. When cracked open they each reveal perfectly preserved specimens of opalescent scarab beetles, all of different species.
A giant sized back-scratcher made from dire-lion claws. A tuft of hair from the tail of a horse decorates the handle. It would probably make a pretty lethal improvised weapon for a human sized wielder.