The Bereft Saltshaker

by Frazer 👁 6 views

This small saltshaker is carved from translucent white rock veined with threads of rose, blue, and mourning gray. Its silver cap is pierced with seven tiny holes arranged like a pair of clasped hands, and a worn engraving circles its middle: "No table is complete." The shaker is always cool to the touch and contains an inexhaustible supply of fine, pearlescent salt. When its magic stirs, the crystals briefly take on the color of the attuned creature's strongest emotion.

Mood Seasoning When you sprinkle salt from the shaker onto a dish, the food takes on a flavor reflecting your strongest current emotion. Joy makes it bright and sweet, grief makes it rich and bittersweet, anger makes it hot and sharp, fear makes it cold and briny, love makes it comforting and fragrant, and similar emotions produce appropriately evocative flavors. The effect is harmless, lasts until the food is eaten, and can be perceived only by creatures that taste the food.

Shared Feeling A creature that eats food seasoned by the shaker must succeed on a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw or briefly experience a muted echo of your current strongest emotion for 10 minutes. This does not force a creature to act against its nature, but it can influence its mood and grants advantage or disadvantage on the first Charisma check it makes during that time, as determined by the DM. A creature that succeeds is immune to this property for 24 hours.

Feast of the Heart Once per long rest, you can season a meal meant for up to eight creatures with an emotion you are currently feeling. For 1 hour after finishing the meal, each creature that eats it gains temporary hit points equal to your proficiency bonus and advantage on saving throws against being frightened or charmed. The meal loses this magic if it is not eaten within 1 hour.

The Missing Sibling The shaker is one half of a matched pair. While its sibling is on the same plane of existence, you always know the direction to it, provided you are within 1 mile. Once per long rest, you can hold the shaker and name the sibling to learn its distance, rounded to the nearest mile, and whether it is above or below you. If the sibling is within 60 feet, the shaker softly rattles and its salt glows pale blue.

A Taste of Longing If you season food while thinking specifically of the missing sibling, the food tastes faintly of the sibling's last meal or the place where it was most recently used, as determined by the DM. This impression is brief and imperfect, but it may provide a useful clue. The property cannot reveal a creature's name, exact location, or thoughts.

Lore

Cooks say the shaker was made by the twin saltwrights Nera and Vell, who believed that every meal was a conversation between the hearts of those who prepared it. Their matched shakers were used to end feuds, celebrate births, and preserve the last flavors of dying kings. The pair became known as the Salt of Welcome and the Salt of Remembrance. No one agrees which name belongs to this shaker, only that it has been separated from its sibling for so long that it has developed a magical longing of its own.

History

The pair was commissioned for the Feast of Two Moons, a diplomatic banquet intended to end a century-long war. Before the feast began, one shaker vanished from the royal kitchens. The remaining shaker was later recovered in the hands of a grieving cook who claimed that every dish tasted like an unfinished farewell. It has passed through monasteries, merchant houses, and adventuring companies ever since, always bringing comfort to tables but never remaining content when its sibling is near.

Created by Frazer 👁 6 views