Lichbone Dice

by Frazer 👁 35 views

This mismatched pair of ivory dice is yellowed with age and faintly veined with gray. Each face bears tiny angular numerals picked out in tarnished silver, while hairline cracks run through the bone without ever causing it to break. When shaken, the dice make no sound; when cast, they land with a soft click like a fingernail tapping on a coffin lid. In darkness, the highest face of each die glimmers with a dim green light.

The Dead Man's Favorite The dice are carved from a lich's knucklebones and remember the result their former owner most desired. Once per long rest, when you roll one or both of these dice as part of a game, ability check, or similar uncertain contest, you can choose the number shown on each die instead of rolling normally. The chosen results must be within the normal range of the dice.

Whispered Obligation When you finish a long rest, the dice whisper a brief request from the lich, such as delivering a sealed message, recovering a minor object, placing a particular mark, or speaking a specific phrase to a named creature. The request must be a feasible task that can ordinarily be completed within 7 days and cannot directly require you to harm yourself or another creature. Until you make a reasonable effort to complete the request, you have disadvantage on the next ability check or saving throw you make each day. Once you complete the request, this penalty ends and the dice remain silent until your next long rest. The Dungeon Master determines the request and may make it part of a larger plot.

Bone-Quiet While attuned to the dice, you have advantage on ability checks made to play games of chance or recognize whether dice, cards, or other gaming implements have been manipulated by magic.

Lore

The dice belonged to Vhalzareth the Patient, a lich who believed chance was merely another form of obedience. He used them to settle disputes among his servants, choose which villages would be terrorized, and determine which of his enemies deserved to become experiments. Though Vhalzareth was eventually destroyed, the dice retained the preferences of his calculating mind—and apparently his expectation that everyone who touches them should still be useful.

History

After Vhalzareth's phylactery was shattered, his remains were scattered across a salt marsh. A grave robber later fashioned the lich's knucklebones into dice and sold them to a traveling gambler. Every owner thereafter received improbable victories followed by increasingly peculiar requests. The dice were last seen in the possession of a prosperous merchant who vanished after being instructed to leave a black coin beneath the altar of an abandoned chapel.

Created by Frazer 👁 35 views