This palm-sized music box is crafted from black walnut polished until it reflects candlelight like dark water. A tarnished silver band circles its lid, engraved with tiny names that vanish whenever viewed directly. The lid bears a miniature inlay of a closed eye surrounded by seven mother-of-pearl notes. Inside, a delicate brass cylinder turns beneath a comb of silver teeth, though no visible crank is attached. When it plays, the box's interior fills with a faint color matching the strongest emotion carried by the song: rose-gold for love, pale blue for grief, green for envy, and white for forgiveness. Its music is always just loud enough for the attuned owner to hear.
Song of the Remembered
When you open the box, it plays a soft, wordless melody for 1 minute. The melody is the song, tune, or fragment of music that a dead creature who knew you most recently hummed, whistled, or sang while thinking of you. If no such creature exists on your current plane of existence, the box plays a mournful lullaby. You instinctively know whether the dead creature remembered you with love, regret, anger, gratitude, or indifference, but you do not learn its name or location from the music alone.
Echo of the Departed
While the box plays a melody belonging to a specific dead creature, you can use an action to concentrate on the music and learn the general direction and approximate distance to that creature's corpse, spirit, or place of final rest, provided it is on the same plane of existence. This guidance lasts until the song ends. Once you use this property, you cannot use it again until the next dawn.
A Comforting Refrain
Once per dawn, when you finish listening to a melody produced by the box, you can gain advantage on one Wisdom (Insight), Wisdom (Perception), or Charisma (Persuasion) check made within the next hour concerning the dead creature whose song was played. In addition, you have advantage on saving throws against being frightened for the duration.
The Box Remembers
The music box does not merely reveal remembrance; it creates it. Each time the box plays a melody belonging to a dead creature, that creature becomes aware of you and begins thinking of you at least once each day. This initially feels like a blessing, as the box produces more frequent and more personal songs. A creature cannot resist this effect while dead, though a soul protected by a deity, trapped in an artifact, or beyond the reach of mortal magic may be unaffected.
Quietly Cursed
The curse is hidden until revealed by identify, a similar effect, or a successful DC 20 Intelligence (Arcana) or Wisdom (Religion) check made while examining the box. After a dead creature has been made to think of you by The Box Remembers for seven consecutive days, its spirit is drawn toward you. If it has a body or a place of rest, it begins moving toward you by the safest available route; if it lacks one, it manifests as a ghostly presence near you during the next midnight. The spirit is not automatically hostile, but it is compelled to seek your attention and cannot willingly travel more than 1 mile from you once it arrives. Each subsequent seven-day period draws another dead creature whose song the box has played. A spirit drawn in this way can be laid to rest only if you speak with it and fulfill a request meaningful to it, cast remove curse on the music box, or destroy the box. Destroying the box requires dealing it 20 radiant damage while it is playing; if destroyed, all spirits bound by the curse are released and may react according to their nature.
Curse.
The box secretly turns remembrance into a summons. Every dead creature whose melody it plays is compelled to think of the attuned creature, and after seven consecutive days its spirit is drawn toward the box's owner. The curse remains while the owner is attuned and can be ended by remove curse, greater restoration, or destroying the music box. A spirit already drawn remains until it is laid to rest or the curse is ended.
Lore
The Remembrance Box is said to have been made by Ilyra Venn, a court musician whose entire family died during a winter plague. Unable to bear the silence of her empty house, Ilyra built the box from the wood of her childhood piano and silver taken from funeral bells. On the first night it played, it performed the lullaby her dead daughter had hummed whenever she thought of her mother. Ilyra believed she had found a way for love to survive death. The box was treasured for generations as a device of consolation, though every family that kept it eventually complained of footsteps, voices, and visitors arriving after midnight.
History
The box disappeared from Ilyra Venn's manor after her death, only to reappear decades later in the possession of a grieving noblewoman. That woman used it to hear from her late husband, then from her parents, and finally from servants and childhood friends. By the end of the year, twelve ghosts inhabited her estate, each demanding that she remember a different promise. The manor was abandoned after the noblewoman vanished. The music box was recovered from her bedroom, still playing a melody no living person recognized.
