Devices

Sorry for the long wait, I had to read Hellboy again.

Intelligent foes have plans. They have obsessions, theories, and most importantly; experiments. While dungeons are complicated trap structures designed to tear adventurers into chainmail studded chunks, lairs are instead neurotic tangles of abandoned and active projects. An important distinction must be made between “traps” and what we will call “devices”. A barbarian might stumble onto a false floor, and fall into a moat of bloodthirsty piranhas: trap. His rogue compatriot might then stick her hand into a mysterious barrel, only to find it gnawed off by bloodthirsty trilobites kept as ritual ingredients: device. Their witch friend might then find itself pulled through an irrigation pipe due to a bloodthirsty pressure differential: dualities are difficult. A wizard that can weaponize their pet projects is liable to do so, for wizards are the most bloodthirsty beasts of them all.

(Press here for a fun and related little video! Trust me! Faith!)

Devices, no matter their purpose, can be used. Figure out how they are operated, and get a rough sense of what they’re supposed to do. They are just as much toys for curious players as they are toys for spellcasters. Devices are almost always active projects, and fulfill at least one of these criteria.

• Too bulky and/or immobile.
• Not yet reliable.
• Too dangerous.

A device that does not fulfill any of these is effectively a magic item instead.

Familiars, servants, and advisors do not count as devices. Vehicles often do, though steeds sometimes do not.

WIZARDS

A wizard is always trying to figure something out. Very likely they have encountered a fundamental rule of reality (which chafes terribly against the wizard brain), and are pacing back and forth trying to figure out a way to cheat it. If they cannot cheat it, they try to circumvent it. If they cannot circumvent it, they break it. They can always break it, if they accept the consequences. 

Time is linear and unchanging!

Complex, multi-bulbed hourglass hooked to a crude typewriter.

An aviary of messenger birds who fly in various eras, sharing timelines only within their cages.

Scrying pools of amber and tar, for the past and future. Servants embedded in either through permanent suspension.

All men are mortal!

A hydroponic garden of golden-appled trees.

A bronze and black steel Soul Distillation Kit.

Various perpetual death machines, to hassle and delay local psychopomps.

Other people do what they want, not what I want!

A glass armonica, whose music sounds like unmasked madness.

A lighthouse that reflects moonlight onto those beneath.

Porcelain men with exposed brains of wet clay, onto which ideas and suggestions are sculpted.

I am in danger of being surpassed in intellect!

Library of brains surrounding a crystal “vaporisation chamber”, and a connected hookah.

An apiary of mouldering spellbooks, producing honey of wisdom.

Stone puzzle box that leeches intellect through the fingertips, draining into the hidden chamber inside.

I am alone in my tragic genius!

Tubes of slowly maturing homunculus-men of varied quality.

Rat-labyrinth so expansive it functions as a thinking machine.

Demonic sundial, summoning a different lord of Hell each hour.

Other wizards pursue thematic obsessions.

The Elements

Elementally-sealed room, absent entirely of natural spirit. Before it stands an elemental decontamination chamber.

Dragon shaped cauldron-statue, whose diet determines the weather.

A failed philosopher’s stone, whose gold is poisonous and whose immortality is vampiric.

The Ocean

Tanks of selectively bred deep sea horrors; bespoke piscine-cephalopodan-crustaceans.

Towering salt lamps that project views of ancient seas.

The skeleton of a first generation whale, from whose seat one can inhabit any living whale.

Cosmology

A gigantic, constantly thrashing “Heaven locating compass”.

Ritually blinded apes tasked with finger-painting doors to other dimensions.

A statue set of an angel and devil playing chess, their game accurately representing the struggle between order and chaos.

Creation of Life

Hanging animal carcasses which bud with nascent oozes instead of decay.

Empty canopic jars surrounding a bronze sarcophagus that animates organs.

Lightning rods hooked up to an operating table. Lots of taxidermy about.

Simple Physics

Two opposing hallways, which respectively shrink or grow objects moving through them.

A three dimensional “elevator” chamber that really moves the entire structure around it.

A great lead bell that absorbs all noise for a mile around it, and releases it at once when struck.

WITCHES

Witches regardless of what other tools they have dreamed up, typically have three things. A steed (wooden, iron, or flesh) to ride upon, a vessel (oven, cauldron, mortar, and so on) to birth dreams within, and a grimoire (often a book) to read and to record visions of the spirit world. Witches are also hoarders, and have many miscellaneous things for many miscellaneous purposes. Their devices are almost always kept closer to their heart (for witches have much smaller lairs in general), and oftentimes are closer to magic items. 

d20 Witch Devices

1. Fountain of infinite frogs.
2. Gallery of masks made of coral and seashells, that sing lower or higher with the tide.
3. Silver bathtub with clawed feet, with a holy water tap on one end and an unholy one opposite. 
4. Clay pot of sin-eating centipedes. 
5. Miniature coffin containing a mummified cat containing a gossipy demon.
6. Goblet of giant’s blood, so heavy it can only be lifted by the noble mouse.
7. Pantry of bottled lightning and jarred sunshine.
8. Spinning wheel that turns hair into gold, and prevents waking within its sight.
9. Banquet table that, when a severed head is placed upon it, conjures a grand feast from that head’s memories and dreams.
10. Magic mirror with a trapped intelligence within.
11. Bouquet of mixed flowers; bearing an eye, ear, nose, or mouth. One shared mind.
12. Small birdhouse, within which comfortably lurk three dozen feathered cats. 
13. Golden lyre that plays itself.
14. Cage of hundreds of butterflies, who burn to ash anything within their shadows.
15. Bearskin rug with a hollow mouth, flat regardless of how much is hidden within.
16. Gingerbread church with gingerbread monks.
17. Glass coffin that, when opened, chases down an inhabitant and shuts them in.
18. Pig that lays golden eggs when fed hens.
19. Mummy hand dipped in wax and turned into a candle. Opens locks.
20. Door that opens through walls, as long as it is installed with four bone nails.

NECROMANCERS

Necromancers do not tend to have devices. They do not need to study the esoterica of various fields like wizards; their work is self contained. A necromancer has a black bag, within which to store the fingertips and teeth of animated bodies, and often some kind of wagon or cart to carry corpses along with. This is not, by any means, a rule. The more powerful a necromancer, the less likely they need to be nomadic for safety. When necromancers can settle down into a lair, they can also afford side hustles and hobbies – often borrowing from the grislier pursuits of wizardry.

d8 Black Bags

1. The skin of a human face, flimsy as grocery-bag plastic.
2. A box of white wood.
3. A drawstring pouch of ghoul-leather, green and scabrous.
4. A bloodstained burlap sack on a long, knobbly stick.
5. A hollow-chested mummy strapped to one’s back.
6. A delicate and beautiful tortoiseshell, wrapped in silks when not in use.
7. A drinking gourd, overflowing with nectar of carrion.
8. The necromancer’s own mouth.

DRUIDS

Lairs are anathema to druids, preferring the base humility of dens. While wizards and witches have devices they experiment with, druids have Sites. A druidic site is a location through which to work long term rituals and plans. Others cannot properly use the site without druidic assistance, and attempts to do so will invariably end in grisly magical accidents, and often a persisting curse.

d4	Site	Purpose
1	A ring of standing stones.	The removal, and interchanging, of skins.
2	A tree hung with corpses of men and beasts.	The changing of the weather.
3	A cave mouth with a fur-matted floor.	The banishing of dreams and magic.
4	A former home reduced to rubble and ivy.	Unleashing disaster on civilization.

CULTISTS & OCCULTISTS

The difference is less than subtle. Cultists are frenzied worshippers of malefic gods or spirits. An occultist is one who dabbles in the study of ancient and strange magic. If cultists are wayward clerics, occultists are wizards with a romantic and dramatic bent. They overlap only in the ancient and abject beings they speak to. Both use sites, similarly to druids, to summon and bind these spirits. Cultist devices are gifts from their gods, used for strange purposes. Occultist devices are tools to understand these forces, and possibly channel their power.

Being	Site	Cultist Device	Occultist Device
Devil	Elaborately drawn chalk sigil within a salt pentagram.	A soulcatcher; a twitching web of tendons and iron.	Puppet theatre of doll-bound devils.
Elemental	A waterfall of impressive size.	A meteor carved into an immense cauldron.	Ashen terrarium of burning salamanders and carnivorous geodes.
Fairy	A circle of mushrooms atop a hollow hill.	A stone that must be polished, watered, and fed daily.	Book of proper manners, pressed sprites in the pages.
Chaos Spirit	A pulsing, weeping wound in the flesh of the earth.	A teeming well of primordial muck.	A cage made of Nothing, the only thing that can bind chaos.
Law Spirit	A spot where both a good and a wicked man were killed.	A five foot by five foot chunk of the sun.	A set of jade scales that measure Moral Value.
Mystery Spirit	A tree at the center of an island at the center of a lake.	A cracked crystal orb that leaks psychoactive mist.	Floor plastered with fortune-telling cards, covered with a thin layer of gemstone gravel.
Old God	A new church built atop an old grave mound.	One of the Old People, sealed alive in amber.	A miniature replica of a pre-human city, and its titanic destroyer.
Older God	The top of a tower that has already fallen.	A monstrous incubator of dark glass.	A broken orrery, to “disagree” with the alignment of stars.

Others: Clerics are expressly forbidden from having “devices”, resigned instead to keeping icons, relics, or holy symbols. Some, of course, deny this policy in their bored toyings with wizardry. Prophets and oracles are ascetic, their bodies are their only tools. “Sorcerers”, whatever that imprecise term may mean, are fond of resonant crystals of varied form and purpose. Most localized or unique forms of magic should be treated as specifications of the vast and wide field of wizardry, including alchemy, biomancy, illusion, and so forth. Bards, if they exist, are something else entirely.

(Very few things aren’t wizardry, and most of the others wish they were.)