The Chalice of Worldly Reflections [Wondrous Item]

[Kellus]

Another wondrous item I made that didn't quite make the cut. I liked this one a lot. :smallsmile:

Chalice of Worldly Reflections

Aura moderate divination
CL 7th
Slot –
Price 15,120 gp
Weight 2 lb

When this simple silver cup is filled with water, the bearer may gaze into it and see all the world reflected therein. Gazing into its limitless depths takes 1 minute, and forces the bearer to make a Will saving throw against a DC of 16 as they realize their own insignificance against such a grand scale. Failure indicates that they are affected as if by a crushing despair spell for the following 7 minutes, and gain no other benefit from the chalice.

If their saving throw is successful, they gain a +2 insight bonus on Knowledge (geography) and Survival checks for the following 24 hours. In addition, they instantly learn about the land in a 10-mile radius around them. They learn about any significant terrain features in the area, as well as settlements, buildings, special types of terain, and significant weather. This effect ignores any kind of illusion, such as hallucinatory terrain. The chalice may be used three times per day, but only once per day per person.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, scrying; Cost 7,560 gp

Pricing: 4 (spell level) x 7 (caster level) x 1,800 x (3/5) (charges) x (1/2) (ad hoc hostile effect)

[DracoDei]

Commune with Nature might actually make more sense to me than Scrying given the nature of the item... also given the fluff and the difficulties in using it in an offensive manner I would leave Crushing Despair out of the creation requirements...

Definitely NOT worth the gold for the skill bonuses... the ability to locate structures might be worth it...

I like the "Minor Total Perspective Vortex" (contradiction intentional) thought...

[Prometheus]

I played with the idea of a magic item that makes the closer something is to you the smaller it seems and the further something away is the larger it is (rather than the way it is now, in which closer objects are larger). This leads to some odd geometry (you end up defining a set ring in the far distance and projecting lines over the object towards you rather than projecting lines from you into the distance) and the fact that objects closer to you can still obscure further away objects has odd consequences as well.

You would see yourself and the ground around to as minuscule, the window that you are looking out would be enlarged as the walls around you shrink away. As you gaze into the forest you find the broccoli sized trees quickly give way to enormous woods. To it's left, the skyline is dominated by a jagged swarth of red recognizable as a mountain. When you peer out the window and look upwards, taking your eyes out of it's shadow, you find the entire sky is ablaze with multicolored-light.

Anyway, if you wanted to you could give it this sort of "Extreme-Fisheye" effect as fluff.