This square of impossibly soft ivory linen is edged in faded blue thread and embroidered with a map that never stays still. Tiny silver stitches mark villages, battlefields, sickrooms, ship decks, and lonely roads where tears have fallen upon it. Some routes are stitched in gold, others in black, and new lines appear whenever the cloth absorbs a tear. Its corners bear four delicate symbols: an open eye, a cupped hand, a road vanishing into stars, and a single drop of blue glass.
Map of Sorrow
The handkerchief is embroidered with a shifting map depicting every place where it has absorbed tears. While attuned to it, you always know the direction and approximate distance to any location shown on the map, provided it is on the same plane of existence. A location may be added to the map when the handkerchief absorbs at least one tear shed in genuine grief, joy, relief, or compassion there.
Merciful Comfort
As an action, you can press the handkerchief against a creature within your reach. The creature gains 2d8 temporary hit points and can immediately repeat one saving throw against being frightened or charmed, ending that effect on a success. Once this property is used, it cannot be used again until the next dawn.
Tearway
As an action, you can name a mapped location and unfold the handkerchief. You and up to five willing creatures within 5 feet of you teleport to an unoccupied space within 30 feet of that location. If the destination is on another plane, this property fails and is not expended. Once used, this property cannot be used again until the next dawn.
The Small Obligation
When you attune to the handkerchief, it reveals one unresolved sorrow connected to a mapped location. The DM determines the obligation, which should be a specific but reasonable task, such as delivering a final message, returning a keepsake, witnessing a grieving person's story, or arranging a proper burial. Until you make a sincere effort to fulfill this obligation, you have disadvantage on saving throws against being frightened. The obligation is not required to be completed immediately, but the handkerchief cannot reveal a new destination for Tearway while you knowingly abandon it. Once the obligation is fulfilled, you have advantage on saving throws against being frightened for 7 days, and the handkerchief reveals a new obligation at the next dawn.
Witness to Grief
While holding the handkerchief, you can spend 1 minute listening to a creature describe a genuine sorrow without interrupting or attempting to solve it. At the end of that minute, the creature can end one effect causing it to be frightened or charmed. A creature can benefit from this property only once, and the handkerchief cannot use it again until the next dawn.
Lore
The Tearcloth is said to remember not the places where people suffered, but the places where someone cared enough to preserve their sorrow. Its map has included royal chambers and prison cells, plague houses and wedding chapels, and once marked the deck of a ship that sank beneath a moonless sea. Those who carry it are called Wayfarers of the Weeping Thread, though some believe the title is less an honor than a promise.
History
The handkerchief was embroidered by Maelin Voss, a traveling midwife who spent forty years recording the tears of those she helped. Upon her death, the cloth was found folded beneath her pillow, bearing a route to every person whose grief she had witnessed. It has since passed from healer to priest, from undertaker to adventurer, and from each owner to the next only after a final obligation was completed. The last known bearer vanished while following a newly appeared trail into a ruined city beneath the desert.
