This palm-sized music box is carved from black pearwood polished to a mirror sheen, with silver hinges and a lid inlaid with a mother-of-pearl moon surrounded by seven tiny garnets. Fine engravings cover its sides: closed eyes, reaching hands, and musical notes that seem to change when viewed from the corner of the eye. Inside, a delicate silver dancer turns above a comb of crystal teeth. Its key is shaped like a slender finger bone, though it is warm to the touch. When opened, the box plays without its mechanism visibly moving, and the melody seems to come from just behind the listener's shoulder.
Song of the Remembered
When you open the music box, it plays the song, melody, or wordless tune that one dead creature is unconsciously humming when it thinks of you. The box selects a deceased creature that knew you personally and died within the last 100 years. The song lasts for up to 10 minutes, though the box may repeat or vary it if the dead creature's feelings are conflicted. If no eligible dead creature remembers you, the box produces only a soft, incomplete melody.
A Voice Beyond the Grave
While the music box is playing, you may name the deceased creature whose memory you wish to hear, provided you knew its name and it knew you in life. You learn whether that creature currently remembers you with affection, regret, hatred, fear, or indifference. This property does not reveal the creature's location, thoughts, or afterlife.
Refrain of Consolation
Once per dawn, while the box is playing a song associated with a deceased creature, you can touch one willing creature that can hear it. That creature gains 4d8 temporary hit points and has advantage on saving throws against being frightened or charmed for 1 hour. A creature can benefit from this property only once per dawn.
Borrowed Familiarity
After listening to a deceased creature's song for at least 1 minute, you can speak and behave with fragments of that creature's remembered mannerisms for 1 hour. During that time, you have advantage on Charisma checks made to comfort, persuade, or deceive someone who knew the deceased creature. Once this property is used, it cannot be used again until the next dawn.
The Box Keeps Listening
Whenever a creature dies within 60 feet of you, the music box silently records the last tune, rhythm, or repeated phrase that creature associated with you. You can hear the recording the next time you open the box. The box can retain up to seven such recordings, after which the oldest recording is replaced.
Quiet Possession
The music box's curse initially appears beneficial. Each time you hear a song belonging to a deceased creature, you gain a faint emotional certainty about what that creature wanted from you in life. The certainty feels intimate and reliable, but it is not necessarily true; the DM determines whether it is accurate, incomplete, or maliciously distorted.
The Dead Grow Near
The curse subtly binds the attuned creature to the dead. After each long rest during which you opened the music box, you must succeed on a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw or gain one level of exhaustion that cannot be removed until you complete a long rest without opening or hearing the box. In addition, you have disadvantage on saving throws against effects created by undead that can hear the music box.
Final Audience
If you open the music box while alone, the song may continue after the selected creature's melody ends. Once per seven days, the box can instead play a tune hummed by a dead creature that has never met you but currently longs for someone who resembles you. When this occurs, that creature's spirit can perceive and speak through the box for 10 minutes. The spirit is not compelled to be truthful, and the box's curse prevents you from willingly ending the conversation before the 10 minutes expire.
Curse.
The curse is hidden until the music box has been opened on seven different days or its curse is revealed by magic. Once the curse is revealed, the attuned creature discovers that every song heard through the box strengthens the attention of the dead. Whenever the box plays, deceased creatures that remember the attuned creature can hear the music as well. After seven consecutive days of using the box, one such spirit begins appearing in the attuned creature's dreams, initially offering comfort and memories. Each subsequent week, another remembered dead spirit may join the dreams. The spirits are not necessarily hostile, but they increasingly demand the attuned creature's time, secrets, and presence. The attuned creature cannot end the curse by willingly breaking attunement; it must be removed by remove curse cast using a spell slot of 6th level or higher, greater restoration cast within a hallowed area, or a wish. If the curse is removed, the music box becomes mundane and permanently loses all magical properties.
Lore
The Dirgebox is said to have been made for mourners who could not bear the silence left by death. Its song is never the tune the living expect; it is the private melody the dead carry when memory turns toward someone they once loved, feared, envied, or betrayed. Some priests call it a merciful bridge between worlds. Others insist that the dead do not sing through the box at all, and that something beneath death merely imitates their longing.
History
The first Dirgebox was crafted by Othmar Vale, a royal toymaker whose daughter died before he could reconcile with her. He claimed the box played her childhood humming whenever he thought of her. Within a year, Othmar stopped speaking to the living and began filling his workshop with chairs reserved for invisible guests. When the workshop burned, seven music boxes were recovered from the ashes. Six were destroyed by the temple of Kelemvor. The seventh vanished, passing through the hands of grieving nobles, spirit mediums, and at least one lich who reportedly used it to identify the last song remembered by an entire dynasty.
