Thursday 9 December 2021

31 Days of Orb

  1. Munition Sphere. When dropped, falls until it hits the ground, without concern for any objects it does not consider to be 'the ground'.
  2. Orb of Ice. Snow globe slash terrarium. Preserves a stable slice of ice age ecology and a small fishing village of political undesirables collected over the last millennium. Little plug in the bottom for putting new things in.
  3. Orb of Children. An attractive red colour, irresistible when bouncing. Anyone remotely childish will be compelled to kick it, everyone else will have a hard time not lovingly beholding the impromptu scrum. 
  4. Orb of Anger. Tiny, squishy. Can be squeezed when angry, in order to store your anger in the ball while in no way diminishing the anger you feel. Thrown in to someone's face it will piss them off more than they were expecting.
  5. Orb of Edges. Bright silvery, feels like fish-scales, beautiful but innocuous. Twisted and pressed just so, it collapses into 36 thin, razor edged short swords. Pressed not so, it explodes into the same. Three consecutive wisdom checks to re-ballify, 1d3! damage on every failure.
  6. Shame Ball. Soft clay shaped like a human in fetal position, shivers gently with sobs. Not good to have in your pocket for long periods.
  7. Orb of Daemon. Contains a guy named Damon, who is now very clear on the spelling difference. Unconvincing when he suggests a mix-up, or that a demon tricked him in here. Enough secondhand knowledge of dark rituals, from wizardly interrogations, that he actually might be able to answer your questions.
  8. Orb of the Present. A crystal ball that shows what's happening here, now. Bad timestream management means the present is actually a few seconds ahead and a little to the left of what most people experience. Much more useful to time travelers. 
  9. Orb of Night. Absorbs light and beam effects, re-emits them softer and more silvery. In darkness it grows spidery legs and crawls around doing trickery.
  10. Skull Ball. Looks like the back of a head, all the way around. The brain inside is long-dead and half-fermented, making it all the more potent as a psychic resonator, alchemical reagent and illithid foodstuff. Definitely not an ostrich egg.
  11. Forest Bole. Immensely heavy. Its many folds and rot holes hold everything you need to grow a forest: squirrel-stashed seeds, leaf litter, termites, worms, mulch, and many hundreds of birds, bugs and mice. Valuable to druids, comforting to dryads, a menace to agriculture.
  12. Orb of Help. Battered and leathery. Desperately wants to be of assistance, will try to do anything you ask, but the lack of appendages, sense organs and brain makes it basically useless.
  13. Orb of Food. Closely resembles a ball of dough. Can be baked to produce a crunchy, edible crust. Organic matter pushed in will be slowly digested. Left unattended, it will katamari around eating the most highly processed foods it can find.
  14. Orb of Ooze. Proximity thickens bodily fluids. Slows poisons, may cure or cause sinus infection. Skin contact for a few minutes will harmlessly plasticize flesh and bones, an hour will smother eyes and ears with slime, providing a new array of tactile and chemical senses.
  15. Orb of Snow. Used to contain a thriving ice age terrarium. Now contains a big crack in the side and ten thousand asphyxiated elk. Quite a lot of snow comes out when shaken.
  16. Unholy Orb. Covered in dense, ever-changing limericks and bawdy pictograms. Always on the edge of whatever the viewer finds offensive. Longer study reveals darker and more salacious designs, which the viewer finds more and more titillating.
  17. Orb of Nap. A soap bubble containing ten minutes wholesome rest. Whoever pops it falls immediately asleep, the orb reemerging as a snot bubble during their final snore.
  18. Orb of Balefire. Swirling ball of straw, neatly woven into itself. Emits a thin, steady stream of smoke, but never ignites. Held to something flammable and blown through, it will start a small, easily controlled fire.
  19. Runic Orb. Said to contain a hidden map to an even more hidden treasure, actually just teaches you dwarvish if you play with it for a month or two.
  20. Orb of Huge. Starts off very very small. Sucks the bigness out of things that are bigger than they should be, or that have a smaller state to revert to. Stored bigness leaches out slowly, or quickly if you suck on it.
  21. Orb of Push. Slide one under something heavy to make it effortless to push around. Roll under someone's foot to make them easy to push over. Visually indistinguishable from a ball bearing.
  22. Orb of Doors. Can be used to roll up an unlocked door, then unrolled on almost any surface. Depth of the new room or hallway is in proportion to the quality of the door.
  23. Orb of Slow. Everything seen through its green glassy surface moves in slow motion. Peripheral vision moves normal speed, the mild paradox incites migraines.
  24. Orb of Tower. Causes dirt beneath it to gently mound, bricks to stack, timbers to lurch upright. Will slowly build dangerously unstable piles almost anything. Most practically useful as a muse for architects.
  25. Orb of Arcane. Absolutely ancient, soaked in magic and impressions of thousands of wizards. Has a polite, detached tone, a broad expertise sabotaged by bitter jealousy of true sentience.
  26. Boss Orb. When given a good smack, gets up and fights you. Starts off popping out a single arm, grows more appendages and weak points every time it's started up. Gives out more and more coins each time it's beaten, replaces the gold by eating those it defeats.
  27. Orb of Gold. Makes the holder more believable, and gradually smellier. After a week, anything they say will be trusted, and no one will want to be anywhere near them
  28. Orb of Toxin. Swirls sinisterly. Beloved by snakes. In no way reacts to poisons of any kind, but makes malicious gossip hit closer to home, narcissists feel more confident, the entitled feel more entitled.
  29. Orb of Ghost. Looks to a ghost like a ghost looks to people. They find this terrifying. Responds bizarrely to holy water, exorcisms, makes a good test of their potency.
  30. Reverse Orb. Circular patch of reality exposing the big orb the universe sits in. Can't really be grabbed or held by the edges, surprisingly easy to drag around with suction pads. Definitionally indestructible, perfectly reflective. Passing through it magically will land in you very strange places.
  31. Orb of the World. Small, accurate map of the whole world, bizarrely deformed to fit on a sphere. Sufficient tools of magnification make it a suburb focus for all kinds of long distance magic, planning aid for long voyages, weather prediction tool.


 

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