Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Band of the Unseen Seen, A System-Agnostic Magic Item

Band of the Unseen Seen, aka the Other Ring

Description:  A plain gold finger ring, easily mistaken for a simple wedding band.  Magical senses will detect a strong aura of narrowly-focused divinatory magic, with advanced techniques learning the exact powers below.  Even mundane wearers may realize the ring bears some enchantment, as many report an eerie sensation of glimpsing movement just on the edge of vision while wearing it.

Powers:  The wearer of this ring can clearly see invisible creatures and objects, although they will seem slightly translucent and glow faintly as long as the invisibility effect is active.  It does nothing to help with regular camouflage, stealth skills, or optical illusions that might conceal a subject, although actual invisible subjects that are using any of these are much easier to spot than normal (wearer gets to roll twice and take the better result).  

Possible Origins:  Unknown, but most likely the product of a wizard who was paranoid about unseen threats, most likely from fellow spellcasters.  In any case the enchantment involved has been duplicated by other artificers in more recent ages.

Complications:  The wearer has a nagging feeling that something they can't quite see is lurking just out of sight, but this rarely causes more than the occasional nervous twitch in your average adventurer.  Unstable or cowardly individuals may suffer from increasing paranoia if they wear the ring for extended periods, made worse if others suggest they remove the ring for a while and relax.

Perhaps more significantly, while wearing the Band of the Unseen Seen the wearer cannot become invisible under any circumstances, with any such effects simply nullified by the ring.

Design Commentary:  Very limited utility item but handy when it does come into play.  

If your campaign can support some bad referential humor, then the bearer will occasionally be accosted by one to nine mysterious shadowy cloaked figures (often riding black horses) who will demand to see the ring.  If fought, they act as whatever wraithlike undead your system favors but dissipate into dark mist (along with their steed, if any) after being struck by a single attack of any kind.  If one is allowed to examine the ring, its snorts in disgust, says something to the effect of "Wrong one again!" and they all dissipate at once.

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