The Centuryglass Lantern

by Frazer 👁 69 views

Charges: 3 (regains at dawn)

This antique bullseye lantern is fashioned from blackened brass veined with hair-thin lines of tarnished silver. Its four glass panes are smoky and slightly convex, each etched with a ring of tiny numerals marking a century. A pale blue flame burns inside without oil or wick, and the handle is wrapped in cracked burgundy leather. When opened, the lantern's light falls forward in a narrow beam, but every object it touches throws a second shadow in a different age.

Shadow of the Past As an action, you can light the lantern and expend 1 charge to illuminate a 30-foot-radius sphere with dim, silver-gray light for 10 minutes. Within the light, every solid object and creature casts a translucent shadow depicting what occupied that exact space 100 years ago. The shadows are silent and intangible, retain the rough shapes, sizes, and movements of their historical subjects, and cannot be perceived beyond the lantern's light. A shadow cannot reveal a creature's identity, thoughts, or invisible details, but recognizable uniforms, weapons, structures, and other visible features appear as they did at that time.

Historical Certainty The lantern's visions are not illusions of the present and cannot be altered by disguises, mundane darkness, or illusions. A creature observing the shadows can make a DC 15 Intelligence (Investigation) or Intelligence (History) check to distinguish genuine historical details from occluded or ambiguous ones. On a success, the observer can accurately determine the former placement and general appearance of a visible object or structure; on a failure, the information remains suggestive but uncertain.

Unbroken Record The lantern shows the past of a location rather than the past of an object. If the lantern is moved, its vision changes to reflect the new location. It cannot show events occurring more than 100 years before the moment it is lit, and it shows only what would have been visible from the lantern's position and angle. A creature or object that was not physically present leaves no shadow.

Keeper's Flame While the lantern is lit, its flame cannot be extinguished by wind, water, or ordinary means. It sheds no heat and consumes no oil. You can extinguish it as a bonus action.

Lore

The Centuryglass Lantern is said to have been made by Odran Vell, a royal archivist who believed every place retained an imprint of its former inhabitants. After a century spent interviewing ghosts and excavating ruins, Vell trapped a dying star's reflection inside a lamp and taught it to remember. Some scholars call the lantern a miraculous historical instrument; others insist that the shadows are not memories at all, but witnesses waiting to be understood.

History

The lantern vanished from Odran Vell's sealed archive on the night the royal palace burned, leaving behind only a perfect shadow of the palace as it had stood a hundred years earlier. It has since appeared in abandoned manors, plague pits, battlefields, and one newly built city square where it revealed the foundations of a forgotten temple. A private collector known as Edris Quill has spent decades tracing its movements and claims to know precisely where it is now. Quill offers extravagant sums for reports of its use, though those who accept the payment often discover that the collector already knew the location and was waiting for someone to light it.

Created by Frazer 👁 69 views