1. The carved wooden figurehead from the prow of a ship – a woman with long flowing hair and the tail of a fish. She clutches a wicked spear and points off to the horizon. The sea-monster has placed her gently in a deep crack between two rocks, where she watches over the entrance to the lair.
2. A circular mine, studded with rusted iron spikes and wrapped in chains.
3. The beacon room of a lighthouse, placed carefully over a deep rock pool like a makeshift dome. An octopus lives in the pool, presumably kept as a pet by the sea-monster.
4. A collection of hooks mounted on severed wrists. Some are very old, the wrists little more than bones and rags, but some still ooze congealed blood. Inspecting them reveals that the older ones have been removed much more violently than the newer ones. Practice, it seems, makes perfect.
5. The beak of a giant squid daubed with incoherent symbols painted in its own ink.
6. A makeshift mirror, a riot of shards and fragments of glass, pieced together from a thousand stolen spyglass lenses.
7. A collection of nautical charts, crudely stuck together in the spots where they overlap. They’ve been written on in ink and blood and marrow, in illegible words formed from an alien alphabet.
8. Hundreds of femurs, held in an ancient net. They’ve been broken to different lengths, smoothed and sharpened, and painted with unique symbols. Beside them on the ground, an ink circle divided into seventeen segments each bearing symbols of their own. Some of the bones have been cast into the circle.

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Alex Clippinger’s Leaves from the Circle: Druids and Rangers for 5e is out now and I had the pleasure of writing some trinkets for it.

He generously agreed to let me share some of them with you, so without any further ado here’s a table of trinkets for rangers and druids.

1. A fist-sized wooden carving of an anatomical heart, with arteries formed of thick black vines that always appear slick and wet. It is warm to the touch and seems to pulse in your hand.
2. The pages of this small journal have been coated in clear wax to preserve them against the elements. It contains notes and illustrations about various common herbs, roots, and fungi, along with recipes and instructions on the best way to prepare them to be eaten.
3. This crude idol is made from yellowed shards of bone bound together with ligaments and other sinew that have been preserved somehow. Did you make this, or take it from someone?
4. This conch is pale pink and lined with veins of dark gold. When you hold it to your ear it whispers to you.
5. This wide circle of velvet is stitched with symbols, numbers, and short phrases in geometric patterns. When not in use it folds up into a makeshift pouch that holds the bones and stones you cast onto it as part of your divinations.
6. This sealed, hollow tube is made from light wood and painted with clouds and forks of lightning. It is filled with heavy iron balls that create a rolling sound like thunder when the tube is tilted.
7. This strange insect is encased in amber. It has a long armored thorax with multiple legs, and appears to have a head at both ends. The amber has been sealed in a brass housing and hangs from a slim necklace.
8. This long walking stick has been shaped from a length of bone. It is carved with intricate runes and has a curving onyx handle mounted on the top.
9. This long wooden flute has been carved to resemble a rat’s tail. There is something deeply unsettling about the sounds it emits when played.
10. This thick mask covers the lower half of the face. Its leathery material is made from chunks of flesh taken from numerous creatures, stitched together and tanned.

You can buy Leaves From The Circle here.

If you’d like me to write a table of trinkets for you leave me a tip on Ko-Fi or drop an email to chris [at] loottheroom [dot] uk for inquiries about commercial rates.

Jenny asked me to write a table of trinkets in exchange for a tip on Ko-Fi. She left it up to me to pick a prompt, so I wrote things inspired by her game Drums In The Deep.

If you would like your own table of trinkets, drop me a tip on Ko-Fi!

1. A broken skull, still attached to a gristly length of spinal column. Worms live in the eyes, and something dark and wet gleams beneath their writhing.
2. Jagged shards of slate, each as long as a forearm and as wide as a blade. They have had strange symbols scraped into them, each one stained with a dark liquid that has dried into a flaking crust.
3. A square wooden apothecary’s box, discarded. The lock is rusted and broken. Dusty bottles inside contain the dried remnants of unidentified potions and tinctures, long gone to ruin.
4. A slim leather journal, water-logged and stained. It contains a half-drawn map that seems to resemble the tunnels you have been passing through, but with glaring differences. Notes on the page edges indicate that the cartographer had been struggling to pin down the geography of the place, whether through inexperience or for some other reason.
5. A garland of flowers lying around the neck and chest of a long-dead corpse. They are somehow still in bloom, and their petals wave softly in a breeze nobody can feel.
6. A small abacus wrapped in mouldering leather. The beads are made from an assortment of teeth and knuckle bones.
7. The hilt of a sword, the blade broken off where it joins the cross-guard. The bearer’s hand is blackened and burned and is still wrapped around the hilt, the bones bonded permanently to the metal due to extreme heat.
8. The chalk outline of a hastily-drawn protective circle, ringed with runes and sprinklings of powder. The circle has been broken by a long smear of blood that is long dry.

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Image Credit: An iron mine and miners working. Etching by J. Heath, 1813, after C.M. Metz. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Nevyn Holmes asked me to write a table of weird memorabilia in exchange for a tip on Ko-Fi. Nevyn’s game GUN&SLINGER is on Kickstarter at the moment and it’s one of the best things I’ve read this year. Check it out!

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1. A collection of 8-inch tall figures of characters from well-known folk tales. They are carved out of wood and expertly painted, but something about the facial expressions on each one is mildly unsettling.
2. A cassette tape, one of only 50 copies in existence. It is signed by the artist, but the signature seems to shift and change each time you look at it.
3. An old, faded poster for a concert, housed in a heavy wooden frame. The date of the event is several years in the future even though the poster itself must be twenty years old.
4. A pair of linked rubber wristbands that always feel slightly moist to the touch, with two embossed phrases – WWSD? and NO GODS NO MASTERS ONLY THE DEPTHS.
5. A set of guitar picks made of thick plastic. They have been moulded to look like nails taken from the gnarled big toe of a troll.
6. A folded map of the subterranean tunnels beneath the city. It comes from a licensed tour operator designed to provide a tourist experience, but someone has annotated it to show other passages that the general public never get to see.

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Image Credit: Woodcut of the Wunderkammer room, from Dell’historia naturale. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Encounter Roleplay asked me to write a table of Lovecraftian trinkets to go with their Cthulu games.

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1. A long, sinuous key set in silver. Eldritch symbols are embossed along the shaft, and the teeth of the key resemble grasping tentacles.
2. A map of a large, sprawling manor house, drawn on a thick leathery parchment. It has been annotated in an unknown hand that writes of strange geometry and spaces behind the walls that should not exist.
3. A long twisted wand made of crystal. The tip splits into three thick points, each carved with a leering face.
4. A train ticket, torn partway through and clipped with a conductor’s ticket punch. It is valid for one journey from Newburyport to Arkham.
5. An antique, yellowed photograph. It depicts a group of men standing on the end of a long wooden jetty. The are dressed in high-collared black coats and tall narrow hats, and each of them is holding a long, narrow knife. A shape on the floor at their feet appears to be a mutilated human body. A handwritten note on the back of the photo states “Innsmouth, 1845”.
6. A stack of glass beads on a long wooden dowel. They are cloudy and imperfect but their hues and deep and luscious, a variety of purples, greens, and deep oranges, flecked with yellow and gold.

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Image Credit © Penetralia Press/Alex Mayo used with permission

Encounter Roleplay asked me to write some trinkets to tie in to their Zewihander Grim & Perilous game. Trinkets within the system tend to be low-value objets d’art, which is exactly the kind of thing I enjoy writing.

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1. A green velvet coin purse tied with black ribbon. It contains a handful of brass pennies, worn smooth and shiny from regular handling.
2. A thick iron ring holding a pair of heavy keys. The head of one has been shaped and engraved to resemble the head and beak of a raven. The head of the other resembles an hourglass.
3. An oilskin bag containing a collection of severed fingers and toes. They have been wrapped in gauze and soaked in saline in order to preserve them, but they began to rot a long time ago.
4. A set of false teeth housed in a wooden box. Each tooth has been carved with a different alchemical symbol.
5. A foot-long piece of driftwood carved with a two-headed horse. One of the heads has a single long horn; the other has tusks descending from its lower jaw.
6. The boss of a shield, dented and battleworn. It is engraved with a roaring lion’s head.

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Image Credit: James Graham Marquess of Montrose about to mount the ladder to the gibbet in the marketplace of Edinburgh. Wood engraving after C.R. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

This set of trinkets was created for ThatSaltyGinger in exchange for a tip on Ko-Fi. Lauren is one of my favourite streamers and an all-around good person, and I was really happy to come up with some evidence of the Cult of the Bloody Tongue.

1. This small figurine is around 8 inches tall and carved from a solid piece of red onyx. The base resembles bubbling liquid, with a single long tentacle extending upwards out of it. 
2. A tangled mass of glass and metal that resists your attempts to make sense of what it looks like. Pieces of the glass seem to pass through the metal in places, and sections of it twist in ways that don’t seem possible. It draws your eye constantly even though looking at it fills you with a low-level sense of dread.
3. A small music box with a copper crank. It is painted with stars and strange symbols, and when the crank is turned it plays sounds of quiet sobbing and howling winds.
4. A glass dome mounted on a heavy piece of wood, like a snowglobe but bigger. It contains a miniature diorama of an unknown city complete with temples, red-roofed buildings, gardens filled with fountains that somehow flow with real water, and bridges of veined marble arching over wide streets and narrow waterways. The windows blaze in an unseen sunset, and staring at it too long fills you with a sense of something almost-remembered.
5. A small urn made from red-veined marble. It is empty, but smells faintly of burned spices.
6. A black velvet pouch with a silk drawstring. It contains a set of seven-sided dice carved from bone, with numbers stained in shimmering black ink. Each of them is marked with an ankh in place of the number 7.
7. A small travelling chest containing sets of ceremonial robes. They are made from long strips of silken fabric in the deep red hues of the setting sun.
8. A miniature oak tree growing in a wide, shallow pot lined with mossy stones. The wood is twisted and warped, the boughs twining over each other as though trying to reach out and grasp something.
9. A mask of a man’s face, made from soft wax that is cold and clammy to the touch. It is very pliable and seems like it should be easy to pull the wax apart, but it resists any attempts to do this. There are no holes for the eyes, and sinuous red lines are painted down the cheeks from the base of the eye socket. 
10. A glass vial stoppered with blood-red wax. It contains a shimmering, metallic dust that calls to mind the silent burning fury of a falling star.
11. A heavy book bound in an unidentified black material that is always slick and clammy to the touch. The pages are thick, irregular sheets of paper and containing seemingly nonsensical scrawlings of strange symbols and formulae. It looks like nonsense, but it’s easy to find that you have spent long minutes blindly following the shapes of the ink of the paper.
12. A thin flute made from bone. One half has been dipped in deep red pigment. Playing it produces no audible sound.

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Image Credit © Penetralia Press/Alex Mayo used with permission

Encounter Roleplay asked me to write some trinkets to tie in to their game The Haunting of Seawall Orphanage. which is a modern horror game in the vein of Stephen King’s Castle Rock novels. This is one of my favourite genres to play in and writing these was very satisfying!

If you would like your own set of trinkets, drop me a tip on Ko-Fi.

1. A brass lamp with a carnival glass lampshade painted with dancing children. They are smiling, but something about the way their mouths twist is deeply unsettling.
2. A boat made from folded newspaper and sealed with paraffin wax to make it waterproof. One of the stories on the page used to make it seems to be about the disappearance of a local child, though most of it is lost in the folds of the boat.
3. A thick book bound in faded red cloth. The title is embossed in flaking gold leaf, in strange symbols that do not look like any real language. The pages inside contain script in the same language, and the paper feels like it was once submerged in water. The inside front cover holds a bookplate from the Flagg Public Library. The only person to ever withdraw it was called Randall, though their surname is missing.
4. A small painting, oil on canvas, in a driftwood frame. It depicts Pretty Marsh Harbor on a stormy night. High waves crash against the docks while a bright moon peaks out from behind heavy clouds, picking out the figure of a woman in white with her back to the viewer as she strides into the water. It almost seems like she moves slightly every time you look away.
5. An old brass key sealed in a rectangular block of glass. The key is coated with verdigris and what appears to be bioluminescent algae which is somehow still alive even though the glass must be air-tight.
6. A shrunken head. It is gaunt to the point of emaciation, the skin pulled tight over the bones so that they jut out at strange angles. The eyes sit deep in their sockets and the lips appear tattered and torn. There is a strange reddish brown stain around the mouth.

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Image Credit: A storm at sea, with a sailing ship being wrecked on rocks, scavengers on the shore haul in booty. Etching. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

As part of my continued effort to make 5e’s starting equipment packs more interesting, today I present the Explorer’s Pack!

You can find the other packs in this series here.

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The Pack Itself

The explorer’s pack is a sturdy canvas backpack treated with wax to resist the elements. It carries a large number of external pockets fastened with heavy leather straps, and another pair of heavy straps over the main top flap to hold a bedroll in place. The top flap is made of a large piece of tarp that folds up to sit on top of the pack. When unfolded it opens to a large sheet 6 feet long and 4 feet wide, which can be tied off to a tree or overhang as a makeshift shelter, with the weight of the pack holding it down where the tarp joins it.

Inside The Pack

As well as the basics – a bedroll, a mess kit, a tinderbox, torches, rations, a waterskin, and 50 feet of hempen rope – the explorer’s pack contains the following items:

1. An assortment of short pieces of rope fashioned into loops to act as slings when climbing. Useful for tying off to rocks to run rope through, anchoring yourself, or for tying directly around lengths of rope to make ascent easier.
2. A rolled piece of thick canvas tied with narrow strips of leather. When unfurled it has a number of compartments sewn into it to hold cartographer’s supplies – calipers, a pair of compasses, slim vials of ink, a narrow quill, and a ruler. A wax-lined pocket sewn into the lining holds sheets of parchment.
3. A hollow wooden pole segmented into increasingly narrow sections so that they can be pushed down into each other. It is only a foot long when collapsed but extends up to ten feet. It comes with a set of different tips that can be screwed on or off – a sharp point, a small brass hook, a miniature saw blade, and a heavy brass ball.
4. A small belt pouch stained with ink made from bioluminescent plankton, so that it glows a dull greenish-yellow in low light. It contains essential items for exploring cave networks and other labyrinthine environments – lengths of different coloured string, a selection of coloured chalks, plus a lodestone and set of needles pushed through pieces of cork, used to make an impromptu compass.
5. A thick pocket-sized notebook filled with your notes and sketches. It is string-tied and bound in mulberry bark.
6. A strange insect encased in amber. It has a long armored thorax with multiple legs, and appears to have a head at both ends. The amber has been seated in a brass housing and hangs from a slim chain necklace.

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Image Credit: Explorers cutting up whales.. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)