Interesting contents for bank lockboxes to steal

[Madeiner]

Hi there.
My players are currently running a steampunk eberron adventure about stealing from a Kundarak bank.
Once they reach the vaults, i assume they will want to open as many lockboxes as possible, so im designing the contents of it.
I'd like some suggestion about fun, interesting contents to be found:

Here's what i have now:

- Family Jewels, worth 6k gp, but easily recognizable
- All kinds of random jewels in different lockboxes
- Lady underpants, accompanied with a message "I will not wash them ever again after tonight"
- Famous painting that was thought lost
- Fotographs of a man in a brothel, getting whipped by a masked lady. You have seen the man already, but can't remember where.
- Videotape labeled "Vacations in sharn" but containing top secret footage about impending danger
- Strange magical artifact that cannot be easily identified. The first one to touch it gets to make a will save. Nothing happens regardless of the result. Will make something up if PCs investigate
- A heavy locked box with a key. If unlocked and opened, it contains a message "Farewell, son of a **". It explodes a few seconds after being opened. Bonus to save if the PC says they are gonna drop it immediately
- A psionic crystal and blank documents labeled "top secret". A message says "for your eyes only". This one is actually found by the psion which is researching time travel. The documents have been put there by his future self who traveled into the past and put the documents there. They contain the plans of a time machine. This is cue for a future adventure where the PC goes to the past and puts the documents in the lockbox.

Can you suggest anything interesting?

[Mercenary Pen]

Possibly some Da Vinci-style blueprints for mechanisms that would- on closer inspection- never work (maybe even add in some elements of Escher for added fun)

[supermonkeyjoe]

- They open the box and there's nothing in it but a puff of stale air... or is there? those abjuration runes inscribed on the inside of the box couldn't be relevant could they?

- they open the lid of the box, at the same time, the bottom of the box is opened, they look in to see mirror-universe versions of themselves looking back.

- Elf Pudding

- A very ornately carved stone key

- A dragonmark, just sat there in the box

- Thirteen Kundarak keycharms and details on how to retrieve twelve of them.

- a bone, engraved with a language that none of the PCs know, if they take it to be translated the translator throws it down and runs screaming from the room in terror

- A single golden Galifar, gives the holder a +10 luck bonus on any craft or profession checks they make, nonmagical.

- A magic mouth spell that utters a cryptic riddle, then spits on the pc.

- Irrefutable evidence proving that a recent high-profile trial convicted the wrong person

-

[Moriwen]

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0245.html

Bottlecaps.

[supermonkeyjoe]

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0245.html

Bottlecaps.

Thought that was going to be a reference to Fallout for a second

[Kornaki]

- A psionic crystal and blank documents labeled "top secret". A message says "for your eyes only". This one is actually found by the psion which is researching time travel. The documents have been put there by his future self who traveled into the past and put the documents there. They contain the plans of a time machine. This is cue for a future adventure where the PC goes to the past and puts the documents in the lockbox.

Maybe the message says "For my eyes only"

[Madeiner]

Maybe the message says "For my eyes only"

Very useful suggestion :) thanks!

Possibly some Da Vinci-style blueprints for mechanisms that would- on closer inspection- never work (maybe even add in some elements of Escher for added fun)

Extremely interesting. Now to find some blueprints online...

- Thirteen Kundarak keycharms and details on how to retrieve twelve of them.

Great suggestions you put there! All of them, really!
Can you clarify this one? Is this a reference to some movie i have to see about bank robberies? (this smells of ocean's eleven?)

[ReaderAt2046]

-Several solid gold bricks, unmarked and each wieghing in at above 100 lbs.
-A small golden key (powerful magic item that can be used to cast at-will Dimension Door.)
-An extremely large turnip.
-One box should be totally empty except for a blank sheet of paper saying "Guess what spell I prepared before this theft!" (Explosive Runes, of course).
-An eastern-style idol with a Glabrezu bound into it, forced to serve the holder. It cannot be forced to use its Wish, but may be willing to bargain.
-A deck of many things
-A 6-year-old's crayon drawings, pages and pages of them.
-A map of a continent noone has ever heard of.
-A pair of matched Luckblades.
-A Sunblade and a Flametongue.

[Moriwen]

Ooh! One box could belong to a hoarder, and be absolutely stuffed full of things. Old receipts, rotting food, maybe a few things which would go off easily. There's probably some valuable deeds in there, if you've got about three weeks to spare...

[AntiTrust]

A doll that looks an awful lot like one of the players characters with various pins stuck in it (it radiates faint necromancy)

[nedz]

Depends upon the nature of the game really

— A scroll with some *explosive* writing on it

— Three old buttons

— An Iron Flask

— A copy of a PhD thesis from the Miskatonic University

— Legal documents. A Pact Infernal

— Three live scorpions

— A mysterious map with a mysterious X on it

— Three bottles of fine wine

[illyrus]

- List of targets and locations (lockbox was used as a dead drop)

- Fake IDs of an official the PCs know

- A wedding ring with the inscription "I will always be by your side" sitting on top of divorce papers or a death certificate

- Backup spellbook

- A lich's phylactery (with possibly a very ticked off lich a teleport away if they set off any alarms)

[ArcturusV]

Secret Family Recipe. 16 herbs and spices.

... now I'm making Farscape References. Heh.

Criminal Evidence is my "serious" suggestion. Someone who can't let something go for whatever reason. Guilty conscience, or a need to relive the crime by keeping trophies, etc. It's too dangerous to keep where someone might find it. So yon "No Questions Asked" bank keeps it for him and he can visit it as needed.

Which, if it is obviously some evidence of a crime, makes for an instant plot hook as well. The old "Nazi Gold" sort of thing. If someone has it, means someone is the Nazi, and players love to kill Nazis, so you know they're going to try and track down who's box that is to smash their teeth in.

[Xelbiuj]

Are you expecting them to get to every box or is it more of a quick smash n grab?
Efreeti Bottle
Treasure map
a tiny mechanical creature waiting to assassinate a specific target
2nd'd for the voodoo doll idea and infernal pact docs.
Phylactery or soul gem for a demilich
currency for a country that no longer exists
deed to a ______
spell book with unique spells
an egg

[Madeiner]

Are you expecting them to get to every box or is it more of a quick smash n grab?

They have about 20 lockboxes they can have access to. (those who were abandoned, contested, not paid for, or the owner has been arrested or is currently missing, all opened with a single master key)

I will have them pick a number and i will tell what's inside that lockbox.
They can only open one lockbox every five minutes or they will trigger an alarm.
Also, when the "bomb" box is picked the explosion is loud enough that the guards will trigger an alarm.

[The Dark Fiddler]

For a bit darker of a lock box, there's this classic: an old and rare vintage of wine or some similar drink and an ornate but mundane dagger.

[TheThan]

A Dungeons master’s guide, A player handbook, A monster manual, character sheets, and dice.

A key to another lockbox

A stack of scrolls that are 1d4+1 spells

Plans for robbing this very vault

A checklist of adventuring gear

Deed to an estate.

Evidence pointing out (random female NPC) is actually the princesses of the realm (note, I know NOTHING about eberron.

Keys to the airship. (you said steampunk).

[nedz]

A plain gold ring, possibly on a silver chain.

[TuggyNE]

Can you clarify this one? Is this a reference to some movie i have to see about bank robberies? (this smells of ocean's eleven?)

It's a reference to the consistent "13-1" theme of Eberron: 13 dragonmarked houses and one is no longer extant, 13 planes and one is kept (mostly) inaccessible, 13 moons but one is gone, and so on and so forth.

[Fortuna]

I have an old old Dragon with some suggestions for random things to acquire from picking powerful pockets. Although it's written for FR, most of it should be reasonably portable.

• A rare item of potential arcane significance, perhaps useful in magical research or an obscure ritual. Although potentially very valuable to the right buyer, most people don't really care, so getting its full worth is a side adventure in itself.
• Recently-stolen regalia or similar, with rewards offered for its return and a swift death for the wrongful possessors.
• A palm-sized portable hole (four inches across and a foot deep), containing a set of thieves' tools, a silver-bladed dagger, a nine inch long iron baton which on command extends to be a twelve yard pole ladder, and a scrap of parchment reading "...six paes sunward of the crypt sundial stands a stone, amid tall grass and much ruin. At its base are four tiles. Beneath the tile marked wih the fish symbol is a key, cared of rock-crystal, which will unlock the spell book hidden by Orthabbas in..." (This one is one of my favourites)
• A tiny figurine of an angry-looking woman in a dark blue gown. She wears no armour, her bare arms raised as if in supplication or warding off a threat. She's actually a real made, trapped long ago by an enemy who tricked her into reducing her size and then locked her in stasis. If freed, she will be enraged and attempt to find and destroy her foe (now dead for over three hundred years).
• A silver ring, fashioned with two horns, and between them the inscription "Thelm Horn". Sages will identify this ring (which bears a dweomer of Divination but has no apparent powers) as one of the 'Lost Rings of Thelm Horn', Thelm Horn being a long-dead mage of some power. In fact, it is no such thing, being a device placed by a powerful demon also named Thelm Horn - each time the inscription is read aloud, there is a chance that the demon will hear and investigate.
• A plain ivory coffer (worth a few gp on its own) that radiates an Illusion aura. It is latched, but has no lock and is not trapped. When opened, it releases a swirling cloud of winking motes of light which rise up around the head of the opener to coalesce into a ring of several ioun stones, circling the head of the character and probably attracting attention - but granting no benefit, because the stones do not exist. Successful dispel magic (CL 11) will end the illusion, but any purely physical efforts will be assiduously avoided by the stones.
• A hand-sized brass jewel box, without a lock. When opened, it emits a small glowing globe that springs wildly up into the air. The globe evades any attacks or capturing attempts, bounces to the ground, and rolls forty feet in a random direction. As it rolls, a peevish man's voice emanates from it, saying "So I said to him, 'Why, yes, of course black sigils are dangerous, because they do this.'" At which point the globe explodes, dealing some amount of damage to all within thirty feet, bypassing all resistances and damage reduction.
• An old, worn stone box, one hand wide and thick and ten hands long. It has rusting iron clasps all around it and appears at first to be empty - in fact, it contains an invisible mace, fashioned all of a piece. Whenever the mace is grasped, a great voice roars out from the mace - "Destroy them! Destroy them!" - every few minutes. The mace is permanently invisible, and dedicated to destroying dragons - on contact with a dragon, it explodes for 5d6 damage to all within twenty feet (reflex save for half), the dragon taking 10d6 damage with no save.
• A glass globe containing a swirling milky-white gas, which will expand rapidly if the globe is shattered. The gas is nonmagical, but living beings who come into contact with it are overcome by a killing frenzy, throwing themselves physically upon the nearest creature until they are removed from the cloud.
• A gold piece that radiates a faint illusion aura, among several hundred nonmagical gold pieces. When first touched, it causes the ghostly white illusion of a harp to appear in midair about twenty feet behind and a little above whoever touches the coin. The harp plays faint, eerie and intricate music constantly. Touching or using magic on the harp will not affect it, and it can pass through any barrier. It will follow until dispel magic is applied to the coin, the person it is following dies, or another living being touches the coin.

There are others, but these seemed the most useful to you.

[Sith_Happens]

A key to another lockbox

...Which contains the key to a third lockbox, containing the key to a lockbox in a different bank, which contains the key to yet another lockbox in the first bank, inside of which is a large stash of very naughty magazines.

[nedz]

A locked box, which contains another locked box, which ...

[Calmar]

A treasure map.
A skeletonized gnome bank assistant.
Two silver mirrors.
2d6 gold pieces.
A previously valuable 2nd Edition item that is no longer usable.

[Fortuna]

...Which contains the key to a third lockbox, containing the key to a lockbox in a different bank, which contains the key to yet another lockbox in the first bank, inside of which is a large stash of very naughty magazines.

No, no, no. Clearly the key in the second lockbox opens the first lockbox.

[TuggyNE]

A previously valuable 2nd Edition item that is no longer usable.

A 6e item that is not yet usable.
A treasure map with the X at the location of the bank.

[Hida Reju]

Rip a page out of Season 1 Fringe - A part of a machine that lets you rip holes "Plane Shift" With a clue to the next piece.

Or you could go creepy since you have a time traveler - Note time stamped "Do not open until ____ time." with magic that will erase the contents if opened before that.

A book that has diary entries about events that has not happened yet.

The Soul of a prominent politician/Leader of the world.

Information being held that protects someone from retribution that now it has been stolen the party has the choice of letting them die or saving them now that its out in the open.

A single Skeleton key. When placed in any lock(It fits all locks) it opens a door(Teleport style) to a specific rest stop in Idaho.

Anything you think would belong in SCP

[nedz]

No, no, no. Clearly the key in the second lockbox opens the first lockbox.

That's how Gary would have done it

[ReaderAt2046]

-Several beads of atium, since you have someone who's studying time.
-A belt of Genre-Changing
-Keys to a vorpal forklift.
-two working badger-launchers.
-several pounds of chocolate.
-Shrieker spores.

[Sgt. Cookie]

A child's tear-stained doll.