The Truthkeeper's Pocket Watch

by Frazer 👁 12 views

This palm-sized pocket watch is crafted from dark brass polished to a smoky sheen. Its face is ivory, marked with twelve tiny black keys instead of numerals, while a second miniature dial beneath the hands displays its accumulated tally. A glass window reveals silver gears turning with unnerving precision. Its chain is made of linked copper rings, and the watch's ticking becomes rapid and sharp whenever falsehood passes nearby.

Lie-Touched Ticking While you are attuned to the watch, you can hear its ticking clearly even amid ordinary background noise. When a creature within 30 feet knowingly speaks a deliberate lie, the watch's ticking accelerates noticeably for 1 round. The watch does not reveal which creature lied, the subject of the lie, or whether the speaker was mistaken, confused, or deceived.

The Running Tally The watch maintains a magical count of each time its Lie-Touched Ticking property activates. A tiny numeral visible beneath the minute hand displays the total, up to 999, and never resets. You can open the watch as an action to review the tally. The watch's count cannot be altered except by a remove curse spell or similar magic at the DM's discretion.

Count Anything As an action, you can designate one simple, observable category of event for the watch to count, such as doors opened, names spoken, creatures entering a room, or lies told. The category must be clearly defined and observable by the watch, and the DM determines whether an event qualifies. For the next 24 hours, the watch increases a separate tally whenever that event occurs within 30 feet of it. You can have only one category active at a time, and you can end or replace the category as an action. The watch can record up to 999 occurrences for a category before its display remains at 999.

Unerring Time The watch always displays the correct local time and continues functioning on any plane of existence. It cannot be paused, hurried, or made to run backward by nonmagical means.

Lore

The watch was designed by Orla Venn, a notorious courtroom investigator who believed that truth was not a virtue but a measurable quantity. She built its first mechanism after spending seven years recording every contradiction spoken during a royal succession dispute. The finished watch became known as the Truthkeeper, though some sages insist it does not distinguish lies from the desperate stories people tell themselves.

History

After Orla Venn's death, the watch passed through the hands of magistrates, inquisitors, spies, and suspicious spouses. Its most famous owner was a diplomat who used Count Anything to record every promise made during a peace summit. The final tally, discovered after the summit ended, exceeded eight hundred; no surviving account agrees on how many promises were actually kept.

Created by Frazer 👁 12 views