Need a cool Artifact... thinking a mirror?

[Monstrrr]

So I'm building an encounter where a person steals something and disappears out of the city, promoting the city officials to ask the PCs to go get the thing. I was trying to decide if it was an Artifact or information. I had the name "Asura's Mirror" pop into my head and i liked it.

This city is an Eladrin city that occasionally passes into the material plane from the feywild, so the thief will take their loot back to the feywild with them.

What does the mirror do?

Is something imprisoned inside it? Does it show the viewer something special? Is it a portal to another plane?

[solidork]

Asura was a legendary spymaster who worked in secret while hiding behind the public facade of a courtesan. She had a number of magical artifacts that she used in her capacity as an intelligence agent that were disguised as things that her public persona might use. The mirror is a powerful scrying device that allows you to view things within the city remotely (even across the planar boundary) and cast magic through the scrying sensor.

Something that they really don't want in anyone else's hands, but also not so useful to the party that they'd be tempted to keep it.

[NichG]

When Asura's Mirror reflects someone, it shows everyone they ever killed personally and in anger standing behind them with the most recent deaths closest. The holder of the artifact can call forth vengeful spectres to attack the person reflected, which emerge one at a time once the mirror has been activated and stop only when all spectres have been released or when the holder of the mirror bids it to stop. The spectres are phantasms produced by the mirror with no real connection to the souls of those killed and with fixed power, and can and will only attack their target even if attacked by others. The spectres do not time out, and know the direction to their target to follow them, but travel only at walking pace (though they pass through walls and terrain).

Killing the spectres softens any karmic link between the killer and the murder they committed - any effects the murder had on their alignment, any other detection or divination magic that would reveal them as the murderer, etc, are as if the murder never happened.

So it's a good tool to either solve murders or cover them up.

[Tawmis]

Give'em a plot twist.

This valuable mirror has been stolen by a thief. The local authority has turned to the party to chase down this horrible thief.

The thief has ventured back into the feywild with the mirror...

When the party confronts the thief - the thief explains that Asura's Mirror is named so, because the spirit of Asura - his love, is trapped in the mirror.

As it would turn out, a bitter older, female sibling saw that Asura was more beautiful - and clearly more viable to be selected for a suitor.

The thief knows, because he was the male suitor of royalty.

Out of jealous rage, this older sister gifted Asura this cursed mirror which trapped her in another plane.

And now the thief wants to travel to this plane of mirrors - and save Asura.

And he's now asked the party help him do it.

[Monstrrr]

Give'em a plot twist.

This valuable mirror has been stolen by a thief. The local authority has turned to the party to chase down this horrible thief.

The thief has ventured back into the feywild with the mirror...

When the party confronts the thief - the thief explains that Asura's Mirror is named so, because the spirit of Asura - his love, is trapped in the mirror.

As it would turn out, a bitter older, female sibling saw that Asura was more beautiful - and clearly more viable to be selected for a suitor.

The thief knows, because he was the male suitor of royalty.

Out of jealous rage, this older sister gifted Asura this cursed mirror which trapped her in another plane.

And now the thief wants to travel to this plane of mirrors - and save Asura.

And he's now asked the party help him do it.

I love all of this so hard.

[Tawmis]

I love all of this so hard.

Thank you.

I love turning situations on their side - where what appears to be one thing, is something else.

Can't do it all the time, or the players begin to expect it every time.

But when you do this from time to time, it's a nice shock of a "Oh damn, things aren't what they seem!" to the players.

[Monstrrr]

Thank you.

I love turning situations on their side - where what appears to be one thing, is something else.

Can't do it all the time, or the players begin to expect it every time.

But when you do this from time to time, it's a nice shock of a "Oh damn, things aren't what they seem!" to the players.

Yeah, that's really great! I always *want* to do something like this, but I never think about it for some reason. I think I'm going to tie together your idea and also the one where there's a spymaster who uses the mirror to scry anywhere in the city. Basically, I think it'll go kinda like this... Asura had a unique ability. She had no talent for magic, but she was able to use a mirror to scry anything within 5 miles of her. Asura was beautiful, much more so than her older sister Calanis. Calanis became the spymaster of the city, but was always jealous of her younger sister, who eventually starts being courted by a prince of the city.

Calanis eventually gifts Asura with a mirror, which traps Asura's soul and binds it to the city. Calanis uses this mirror to scry anywhere within the city, but it is limited to the city alone.

When the players talk to the city officials, they'll only know that the mirror is a tool the spymaster uses to scry on the city, not where it came from.

When they follow the thief into the feywild, they find that he is a prince of the city, who will tell them of his love Asura and her jealous sister. He asks them to go into the mirror plane with him to save her. They will, of course.

They're in the middle of a big over arcing story though, and I don't want them to take too long in the mirror plane because they got **** to do. But I'm thinking they'll travel through the feywild to get somewhere to access the mirror plane, basically go in right to where Asura is being held, defeat some kind of crazy mirror creature, and release her.

As a reward, one of the fey leaders will enable them to pas through the feywild without the risk of losing time there, so they can use it to travel quickly to their next destination on the material plane - which happens to be across the continent from where they are right now,

[Tawmis]

They're in the middle of a big over arcing story though, and I don't want them to take too long in the mirror plane because they got **** to do. But I'm thinking they'll travel through the feywild to get somewhere to access the mirror plane, basically go in right to where Asura is being held, defeat some kind of crazy mirror creature, and release her.
As a reward, one of the fey leaders will enable them to pas through the feywild without the risk of losing time there, so they can use it to travel quickly to their next destination on the material plane - which happens to be across the continent from where they are right now,

Well if things are time based - you could make it so any time spent in the "Mirror Plane" - time doesn't pass. So when they exit - they literally have spent no time in the regular world.

Also maybe have fun while in the mirror plane - where spells do weird things. A healing spell does damage. A damaging spell heals. Maybe magic works crazy in this new plane? :)

Suddenly clerics are casting "heal" spells on monsters to damage them, while wizards are blasting their team mates with fire spells to "heal" them. :)

[Shinizak]

In Hindu mythology Asuras we’re a type of… not good divine beings (though not uniformly evil). There’s no clear conceptual parallel like a demon or anything. Instead they are simply immensely powerful beings with a higher cosmological role than humans. Think Demi gods, superheroes, giants, etc.

Soooo maybe this mirror has an asura trapped in it. Or the mirror can give a person the powers like an asura. It’d be the equivalent of somebody stealing a briefcase nuke, or taking the keys to a one of the world’s most dangerous prisoners.

[Eldan]

There is a D&D creature called an Asura, too, though I can't say if they ever occured again after second edition Planescape and Al-Qadim. They are archons (lawful good inhabitants of Celestia) who instead of falling to evil and becoming devils have turned chaotic and "fallen" that way. They look sort of like blue angels made of fire. Special powers are Truth-related: they can tell truth from lies, and can also give the ability to magically tell truth from lies to others.

[ArcanaGuy]

Asuras are anti-authority otherdimensional beings.

The Asura's Mirror was a gift to the city ages ago to keep the officials honest. No one can lie within the government buildings without the mirror indicating the lie had taken place.

The nobles of the city arranged to have the mirror 'stolen' and are sending the group after a fake. They have arranged for the fake to be 'accidentally' destroyed by the party during its recovery, so that they can blame the party for the destruction of the city's 'treasured artifact', and not have the commoners after them to retrieve it.

The actual mirror has been relocated out of the city to a secret location where they can 'disappear' dissenters to, where the mirror is used during interrogations.