This palm-sized saltshaker is carved from a single piece of translucent sea-green crystal veined with threads of rose and black. Its silver cap is shaped like a tiny many-eyed heart, and each perforation is rimmed in tarnished gold. Instead of ordinary salt, it contains endlessly replenishing grains that sparkle like frost beneath moonlight. The shaker is always faintly warm when held by its owner, and its contents change color according to the owner's strongest emotion.
Seasoned by the Soul
When you use the shaker while preparing food, the salt takes on a flavor that reflects your strongest emotion at that moment. Joy tastes sweet and bright, anger burns like peppered iron, grief tastes of bitter brine, fear is cold and metallic, love is warm and savory, and deceit tastes unmistakably sour. The flavor cannot be disguised by mundane or magical means.
A Meal Without Lies
If a creature eats food seasoned by the shaker, it must succeed on a DC 18 Charisma saving throw or be unable to knowingly speak a lie for 1 hour. The creature can still remain silent, evade a question, or speak an incomplete truth. A creature that succeeds is immune to this property for 24 hours. This is a charm effect.
The Cook's Confession
When you finish preparing a meal for at least one other creature, you learn the dominant emotion each intended diner feels toward you. You also learn whether each diner is currently concealing a fact that would materially affect their relationship with you. This property reveals emotional truth, not the concealed fact itself, and does not reveal thoughts.
Honest Hospitality
Once per long rest, you can season a meal that takes at least 10 minutes to prepare. For the next 8 hours, each creature that eats the meal gains advantage on Wisdom (Insight) checks and saving throws against being charmed or deceived. In addition, such a creature has advantage on Charisma checks made to speak sincerely about its feelings or intentions.
Salt of the Open Heart
Once per dawn, you can sprinkle the shaker's salt over a table, hearth, or serving platter, creating a 20-foot-radius zone for 1 hour. Within the zone, creatures have disadvantage on Charisma (Deception) checks, and any creature that knowingly speaks a lie must succeed on a DC 18 Charisma saving throw or take 3d6 psychic damage and be unable to speak for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the silence on a success.
An Unwelcome Seasoning
The shaker never produces a neutral flavor. If you prepare food while suppressing or denying a powerful emotion, the resulting seasoning reflects the emotion you are actually feeling rather than the one you claim to feel. A creature proficient in Insight immediately recognizes that the flavor is an emotional confession, though it does not automatically know which emotion it represents.
Lore
The Unvarnished Shaker is said to have been made by Salmara Brineheart, a legendary chef who believed every meal was a promise between the cook and the eater. She created it after discovering that kings, lovers, and saints could all lie with their mouths while remaining perfectly sincere in their own kitchens. Salmara's final recipe was never recorded; those who tasted it claimed it made them remember the one truth they had spent their lives avoiding.
History
The shaker passed through royal banquet halls, monasteries, pirate galleys, and one notoriously unhappy adventuring party. It ended three wars by exposing the false grievances of the rulers who started them, but it also ruined countless engagements, alliances, and dinner parties. Its last known owner was an infamous innkeeper who kept it beneath the bar and served every guest a pinch of its salt before hearing their troubles. After her death, the shaker vanished, reportedly carried away by a raven that had tasted her cooking.
