Friday, April 10, 2009

Ten Botanical Treasures

- A smallish oaken strongchest, bound in bronze: inside it rests four fat, tightly-packed pouches of waxed linen filled with a brilliant scarlet dyestuff and three dried bundles of the ruddy, weedy herb of unknown type the dye was rendered from. One bundle is tied with a crude map to the source of the herb.

- A hand-sized black jade casket, lined with gold-shot red silks cradling a jade mushroom.

- Half a pound of pure, reddish-gold tears of myrrh of the highest quality, sewn into a courier's packet of silk-lined leather.

- A hand-sized bundle of rishi -- a herb resembling lavender, though with blossoms of pale grey -- tied with a blood-stained white ribbon. Attached is a small scroll with instructions for using the herb to combat an illness referred to only as "the crawling death".

- A flat box of pale wood etched with a repeating pattern of ivy-vines, roughly a foot long by six inches wide by two deep. Inside, nestled in tissue, are a dozen perfect quills of cinnamon, deeply coloured, scenting faintly of rose and fit for an emperor's table.

- A carefully-coiled vine of white bleeding-heart, preserved in spirits within a globular glass flask. If used to strike an undead creature, the blossoms will cause damage double that of holy water and then fade into motes of light.

- A half-dozen fat leather pouches packed with cottonseeds. The drawstrings of each pouch have a single cotton boll attached, in the following colours: rust, green, pink, gold, brown, and grey. The bolls do not appear to have been dyed or otherwise altered in any way.

- A cask packed to the utmost with brown bean-like seeds or nuts with a distinctive earthy-sweet scent. Accompanying the cask is a mortar and pestle of rough black granite and a scroll describing the crushing of the nuts into a paste to be mixed with heated water, spiced and worked to a froth, then drunk. In the document, the nuts are referred to as kakaw.

- A healer's kit, complete with needles, bandaging, two steel flasks of poppy extract and a half-pound of the dark green, red-tinted bloodstaunch moss that heals 1 hit point per daily application.

- A single perfect, unblemished peony, icy white tinged with pale blue. Legendary, it is said to bring the dead to life -- for a time -- if the blossom is placed within the wound that killed the victim.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dyes and fabric-useful plants are always nifty treasures. I like the healer's kit quite a lot, and, of course, I highly approve of the kakaw. ;3

taichara said...

@eliyes:

Dyes and fabric-useful plants are always nifty treasures.

Especially when they make your players have to think a bit --


I like the healer's kit quite a lot, and, of course, I highly approve of the kakaw. ;3

Of course you do ;3

Chris said...

Half a pound of pure, reddish-gold tears of myrrh of the highest quality, sewn into a courier's packet of silk-lined leather.

<3

Taichara - the greatest living hamster!

taichara said...

<3

Taichara - the greatest living hamster!


Thank ye kindly! <3

Is it for this part of the entry in particular, or just because? I could have written scads of resins (and spices) but alas, figured most poor readers would hang me ;3

Michael S/Chgowiz said...

I sense a tremor in the Force, as if 100 more treasures of botanical nature were put on a numbered list of 01-100 so that enterprising DMs could gain wondrous gifts from it... ;)

(VERY cool stuff!)

taichara said...

I sense a tremor in the Force, as if 100 more treasures of botanical nature were put on a numbered list of 01-100 so that enterprising DMs could gain wondrous gifts from it... ;)

Hehehe. If I could write so many without enterprising DMs growing quite tired of spices and incense and other such things, it could happen some day ~


(VERY cool stuff!)

Thank ye :3

Michael S/Chgowiz said...

Personally, that wouldn't bother me re: spices and stuff. The 100 list is for utility, not for every treasure has to be vastly different.

taichara said...

@Chgowiz:

Personally, that wouldn't bother me re: spices and stuff. The 100 list is for utility, not for every treasure has to be vastly different.

In that case, ye tempt me mightily sir! I shall have to see what I can do in the next week or so ... ;3