This squat boot scraper is fashioned from black iron, its four hooked teeth polished to a dull silver. A narrow brass plaque is riveted beneath the grate, though its inscription changes whenever its attuned bearer receives a new obligation. Tiny footprints, claw marks, and hoofprints wind around the frame, each ending at a miniature engraved doorway. Despite its weight, it always rests perfectly level, even on mud, ship decks, or uneven stone.
Scrape Away the Stain
The boot scraper is a portable iron grate that weighs 8 pounds. As an action, you can place one foot upon it and drag your footwear across its silver-edged teeth. The scraper removes mud, dirt, blood, ordinary stains, and nonmagical grime from you and your worn or carried equipment. It also ends one of the following conditions affecting you: poisoned, diseased, or frightened. Once this property ends a condition, it can't do so again until the next dawn.
Unburden the Soul
When you use the scraper, you can choose to remove one curse affecting you or one cursed item you are carrying. The effect is suppressed for 24 hours rather than ended, and the curse returns afterward unless it is removed by an effect such as remove curse. Once you use this property, you can't use it again until the next dawn.
The Small Obligation
When you finish attuning to the scraper, a sentence appears beneath its grate in writing visible only to you. It names a modest, specific obligation chosen by the DM, such as delivering a letter, returning a borrowed object, speaking a person's name before sunset, or offering food to a particular creature. The obligation must be reasonably achievable within 7 days and must not require certain death, theft of a unique treasure, or the direct violation of your core beliefs. Until you fulfill it, you have disadvantage on ability checks made to resist being charmed or compelled to make a promise.
No Unpaid Passage
If you knowingly refuse or deliberately neglect the obligation for 7 days, the scraper marks your left boot with a black iron sigil. While marked, your speed is reduced by 10 feet, and you can't benefit from magical teleportation or extradimensional travel unless you are traveling to fulfill the obligation. The mark disappears when the obligation is completed or when the attunement ends.
Keeper of Thresholds
While attuned to the scraper, you can cast detect evil and good once per long rest, but only while standing in a doorway, gate, archway, or other clearly defined threshold. The spell requires no material components.
Lore
The Bailiff's Threshold was made for an ancient court that judged not crimes, but unfinished promises. Its bailiffs believed every traveler carried some residue of where they had been: road dust, spilled blood, broken vows, and favors left unpaid. The scraper was placed at the court's entrance so visitors could arrive clean enough to be heard.
History
According to legend, the scraper was forged by Odran Vale, a celestial magistrate who served a forgotten god of hospitality. Odran vanished after accepting a promise from a king who refused to honor it. The king's palace was later found empty, every doorway bearing the same black iron footprints. Since then, the scraper has appeared in inns, border forts, and abandoned customs houses, usually in the possession of someone who has just made a promise they would rather forget.
