Gnomish Tinkers Goggles

From: The Shifting Enigma

These cracked goggles have mismatched lenses that occasionally provide fleeting glimpses through illusions or offer cryptic clues as subtle visions. However, prolonged use might also strain the wearer’s eyes, causing brief moments of distorted vision.

Expanded Lore

• Accidental Creation: Legends vary. One tells of a gnomish inventor testing a contraption meant to see magical auras, only for it to explode. The Goggles were found with cracked lenses, imbued with that unpredictable, residual magic.
• Passed Down Relic: In some gnomish families, the Goggles are a quirky heirloom. Each wearer adds slight modifications as they grapple with the visions, trying to make the chaos more purposeful.
• Whispers of Lost Technology: Some sages hypothesize they hold echoes of a forgotten gnomish invention intended to pierce hidden truths. This explains their unreliable, almost maddening nature.

Expanded Uses

• Troubleshooting Gnomish Tech: When malfunctions aren’t mechanical, the Goggles may reveal malfunctioning runes, lingering enchantment remnants, or even mischievous sprites tampering with machinery.
• Navigating Deception: Subtle flickers of suspicion over an NPC’s true self, whispers in the back of one’s mind – clues useful to cunning individuals to see beyond lies.
• Deciphering Ruins: Ancient inscriptions shimmer subtly in an otherwise unremarkable glyph. They hint at traps, secret passages, or echoes of past events crucial to understanding the site.
• Wild Magic Insight: Near sources of chaotic magic, they buzz and spark. While painful, those brief moments might grant a fleeting understanding of otherwise incomprehensible magical fluctuations.

Tier 1 Stats

• Cost: Moderately expensive (100 – 200 GP equivalent) due to rarity and chaotic nature. More affordable if directly bought from an eccentric gnomish tinkerer.
• Rarity: Uncommon outside gnomish circles, usually as a one-of-a-kind creation rather than mass-produced.

Requirements

• Skill Proficiency: Arcana or Investigation checks may be required to make proper use of the glimpses/visions offered.
• Side Effects: A DC 12 Constitution save might be needed after prolonged use. On failure, suffer from disadvantage on Perception checks for the next hour due to blurred, strained vision.

Tags: Tool, Utility, Artifact (minor), Divination, Unreliable

Where & How They’re Sold

• Gnomish Enclaves: Found tucked away in gnomish communities. May be a family heirloom offered for sale by a tinkerer in need, or an ‘oddity’ sold by a shopkeeper curious to see who takes on the unpredictable Goggles.
• Wandering Salesfolk: Occasionally, traveling merchants (especially if gnomish or halfling) carry the Goggles after acquiring them. Their pitch centers on mystery and potential, rather than concrete benefits.
• Black Markets: More illicit networks dealing in minor relics or strange magical items might have the Goggles. Sellers likely exaggerate their divinatory powers while downplaying the risk to vision in this less savory context.
• By Accident: Hidden behind a loose brick at a ruin, the Goggles might simply be stumbled upon as part of exploration. No price, just the risk of the relic itself!

Environment & End-Use

• Gnomish Workshops: In the hands of inventors, they function as troubleshooting tools when mundane investigation reveals nothing wrong with a failed device. Often leads to frustration but sparks inspiration in some.
• Intrigue & Investigation: For agents, detectives, and the like, the Goggles add another layer to analyzing people and situations. Best paired with high social skills to leverage those strange flashes of insight.
• Ruin Explorers: When mundane knowledge about a site fails, the Goggles could be a last resort. Results can be cryptic, and may hint at threats rather than treasure, adding a risk-reward dynamic.
• Near Magical Hotspots: Those studying wild-magic zones or places where the veil between realities is thin could use the Goggles to analyze otherwise incomprehensible energy flows – albeit with potential strain on their eyes.
• In Desperate Hands: A pawnbroker might have the Goggles as collateral for an unpaid debt. For adventurers with limited coin but facing a mystery, they could be a gamble if all else fails.

Important Factors

• Reputation Matters: Positive rapport with gnomish communities makes finding them easier. Those seen as reckless or overly exploitative likely struggle to buy the Goggles.
• Perception of Value: Their price changes based on the seller’s knowledge. A clueless pawnbroker has them cheap, a renowned gnomish arcanist will see their potential value and up the cost.
• Desperation of the User: For a situation where conventional means fail, the Goggles are especially tempting despite the downsides. This desperation itself may play into the visions offered…

Sensory and extra-sensory perceptions when using the Gnomish Tinker’s Goggles:

• Sight
  • Visual Description: Flashes of distorted realities overlay the visible world. This could be warped images of the present, echoes of past events, glimpses of hidden objects, or seemingly nonsensical, symbolic imagery.
  • Positives: Offers hidden clues, sometimes hinting at otherwise unnoticed solutions.
  • Negatives: Fleeting and potentially confusing. Distracting from mundane information vital to safe navigation.
• Sound
  • Auditory Description: A faint whirring and buzzing of malfunctioning machinery accompanies activation of the goggles. At times of intense visions, this might escalate to the sound of gears grinding or static-like bursts.
  • Positives: Adds to the device’s strange allure, and serves as a warning the goggles are “working”.
  • Negatives: Distracting in quiet environments and may draw unwanted attention to the wearer.
• Smell
  • Olfactory Description: A subtle scent of ozone and burnt metal lingers around the goggles – the telltale smell of chaotic magic and experimental engineering.
  • Positives: May help identify other enchanted artifacts or areas where magic is unpredictable.
  • Negatives: Not readily apparent unless actively smelling the goggles themselves, making it less reliable perception.
• Touch
  • Tactile Description: The goggles feel oddly warm to the touch, with occasional pulses of energy coursing through the frame and mismatched lenses. They give a tingling sensation to the wearer’s temples and nose.
  • Positives: Reinforces the item’s magical nature and may intensify visions upon prolonged use.
  • Negatives: If visions become too strong, the tingling sensation can turn to searing pain.
• Taste
  • Gustatory Description: Lingering metallic aftertaste on the tongue when using the goggles for an extended period, especially near sites of powerful magic.
  • Positives: A side effect that could warn of nearby magical disturbances even after removing the goggles.
  • Negatives: Unpleasant to taste, and its usefulness is very situational.
• Extra-Sensory
  • Cryptic Visions: This is the core effect – brief, unpredictable flashes of insight. Content varies wildly: warnings of dangers, hints towards solving puzzles, snippets of potential futures, etc.
    • Positives: Potential to cut through illusions, see past deceptions, and gain foresight.
    • Negatives: Overwhelming, unreliable, often more questions than answers.
  • Empathic Echoes: Near people with strong emotions, the wearer may get “bleed through” feelings tied to their visions.  Grief from a battlefield long past, excitement in a hidden treasure vault, etc.
    • Positives: Adds another layer to understanding a location or a person’s true inner motivations.
    • Negatives: Emotionally overwhelming if unprepared, could cause the wearer to act without logic.
• Important Notes
  • Proficiency Matters: Users with magical aptitude or skills like Arcana/Investigation have an easier time discerning useful clues from the chaotic visions.
  • Overuse Penalty: Extended use causes eye strain and headaches, hindering regular senses temporarily, along with potential for even more unsettling visions.
  • Unpredictable Device: The goggles don’t work “on command” making their usefulness unreliable in time-sensitive situations.

Tinkering with Visions:  Recipe for Gnomish Tinker’s Goggles

• Materials Needed
  • Base Goggles: A sturdy set of work goggles – brass, leather, and magnifying lenses preferred.
  • Faulty Focusing Crystal: Ideally, a cracked or irregularly shaped crystal from a defunct divination item. It holds unpredictable magical residue.
  • Enchanted Scrap: Bits of wire, gears, and lenses taken from other malfunctioning or disassembled gnomish contraptions.
  • Conduction Fluid: A vial of Everbright Oil – this luminescent substance amplifies and distorts magical emanations.
• Tools Required
  • Jeweler’s Toolkit or Tinker’s Supplies: Includes precision tools for assembling and modifying small mechanical elements.
  • Arcane Implements: (Optional) Used to coax unpredictable enchantments into the components and focus the chaos energy.
• Skill Requirements
  • Proficiency with Crafting Tools: Jeweler’s Toolkit OR Tinker’s Supplies is essential for delicate work and assembling the device.
  • Arcana OR Investigation: To identify useful material from non-useful junk and to manipulate the latent magical energy in the components.
• Crafting Steps
  • Disassembly & Preparation:
    • Dismantle the base goggles carefully, keeping all intact parts. Clean and polish the frame and original lenses.
    • Prepare the faulty focusing crystal – this might require further cracking (safely!) to enhance its unpredictable enchantment warping properties.
  • Chaotic Infusion: The salvaged enchanted scrap goes through a simple infusion process. Soak the pieces in the Everbright Oil while reciting gnomish tinkerer’s incantations (“May your malfunction be another’s marvel!”) or playing slightly off-key music. Doing this under a full moon might heighten unpredictability.
  • Goggle Reconstruction: Reassemble the goggles, replacing one original lens with the faulty crystal. Embed the soaked enchanted scraps discreetly in the frame – near temples, along connecting wires, or in the nose bridge.
  • Risky Calibration: This requires either Arcana knowledge or pure intuitive risk. The crafter should briefly wear the unfinished goggles near a minor source of unpredictable magic (perhaps a faulty enchantment on a mundane item). Any reaction and subtle shift in the visual distortion offered by the crystal acts as calibration.
  • Final Touches: Add additional engravings or gnomish embellishments – these can serve dual purpose as subtle conduits or a way to vent excess magic and prevent dangerous feedback.
• Additional Notes
  • Success is Unpredictable: There’s no guarantee for functionality. The Goggles might work only sometimes, reveal confusing nonsense, or even cease to function at all.
  • Crafter’s Mark: A gnomish tinkerer will put their unique mark somewhere on the Goggles (hidden initials, a doodle of an exploding invention, etc.), adding to the lore if found by others.

Legend of the Cracked Seeing Lenses

Before chronicles were scribed, even before lays were sung around hearths, whispers skittered amongst the tinker folk about the Cracked Seeing Lenses. Some say a wizened gnome, ever curious, peered into a shattered orb meant for great divination. Such potent sight overwhelmed him, leaving shards embedded in his own work goggles. Others sing of a lightning strike upon an inventor’s workbench, forever searing a pair of lenses with the storm’s wild gaze.

However the Cracked Seeing Lenses were born, every tale agrees they offer glimpses of hidden truths… yet also glimpses of maddening falsehoods.  Some wearers saw through a liar’s mask, proving their heart as twisted as knotwood.  Others spied secret rune workings, repairing devices thought forever dead. And still, others beheld echoes of the past, specters dancing over an empty field where great battles once echoed.

It is said a young adventurer, foolhardy yet kind, saw through the Lenses into a dragon’s lair. Yes, he glimpsed the hoard of glittering gold, yet also beheld a clutch of unhatched eggs, a vision not of greed but of a mother’s coming wrath. His tale changes with each telling – some say he fled in terror, others claim he stole a single egg to ransom against the mother’s rage.

And such is the wisdom born from this most perplexing item…

Moral of the Story: Truth exists beyond immediate sight, yet the path to uncovering it carries both great wonders and unsettling risks.

Suggested conversions to other systems:

Call of Cthulhu

• Theme: A tool for glimpses of unsettling truths, but at risk to one’s sanity. Fits investigators with a knack for the arcane yet lacking full occult knowledge.
• Sanity Cost: Use triggers visions on success but risks 1/1D3 Sanity. Visions themselves may be disturbing, leading to further loss.
• Skill Connection: Spot Hidden can be used to notice useful insights, yet fumbles may reveal misleading or overwhelming visions with no benefit.
• Lore & Research: Researching a creature, person, or place with the Goggles grants minor bonus, yet too much reliance increases difficulty of Sanity restoration.

Blades in the Dark

• Theme: An asset for risky scores, with the potential to backfire horribly. Fits the Tinker crew type especially.
• Action Rolls: Tinker Action to modify existing gear in preparation, adding ‘esoteric’ quality as they imbue Goggles. Use Attune roll when in the field to get cryptic insight on a tense situation.
• Stress & Fallout: Successful visions provide one-time stress relief. Failures cause stress buildup AND increase Heat from unexpected complications.
• Downtime Activity: Reduce Heat from “recovering from unsettling visions” which is more intense due to the device’s unreliability.

Dungeons & Dragons (5e)

• Theme: An enchanted oddity best for uncovering magical history or deception. May offer boons OR hindrances with equal chance.
• Item Rarity: Rare or Very Rare due to unpredictable usefulness. May tie it to a gnomish inventor NPC seeking them for study.
• Abilities: Use an action + Arcana Check to activate. Success offers glimpse relevant to target (location, item, creature). DM rolls on table: 1d4 determines if info is cryptic, accurate, misleading, or temporarily reveals illusions around user.

Knave

• Theme: Emphasis on item traits to drive unpredictable outcomes.
• Item Traits:
  • Divinatory (limited use per day due to eye strain)
  • Unclear Visions (DM interprets glimpses, may confuse as much as help)
  • Magical Artifact (minor, still prone to mishaps)
• Failed Use: Instead of the above, simply roll on a ‘Weird Gnome Tech Effects” table: Temporary bonus to DEX but disadvantage on INT checks… etc.

Fate

• Theme: Narrative tool as much as mechanical boon. Invokes AND compels aplenty!
• Aspect Creation: Can temporarily make “I See Through The Illusion” an Aspect upon successful use, invocable against deception or to spot the hidden.
• Consequences: On failures, take on temporary Consequence like “Eyes Clouded By Odd Visions” – compels against mundane sight-reliant tasks.
• GM as Guide: Key here is making visions as narratively intriguing as possible, leading to complications as player interprets them.

Numenera/Cypher System

• Theme: Artifact linked to the echoes of lost, possibly dangerous technology.
• Item Level: 5-6, with benefits AND detriments. Difficult to decipher at first glance, requires focus on understanding ancient tech.
• Effect: Action to use + Intellect roll. Grants +1 bonus to perception-like tasks tied to specific focus for that scene ONLY. Failure imposes 1 point of Intellect damage each use (recoverable via rest).
• Discovery Table: DM creates a 1d20 table of weird side effects (visions of alternate timeline for a turn, brief telepathic link to unknown being, etc.) to keep players on their toes.

Pathfinder (2e)

• Theme: Unpredictable relic suited for experimental characters or uncovering magical secrets.
• Type: Wondrous Item, Divination Aura (faint but chaotic); Rarity – Uncommon or Rare based on potency.
• Activation: Focus Component with Arcana Check (DC varies: 15 for basic info, higher for deep secrets, lower if related to gnomish tech)
• Effects (Success): 1) +1 Circumstance Bonus to Recall Knowledge check about target; 2) Fleeting visions offer CLUES rather than clear answers
• Effects (Failure): Either Goggles dysfunction for the hour, OR 1d4 rounds of being Blinded as visions overwhelm.

Savage Worlds

• Theme: Quirky Hindrance & Edge. Can be acquired temporarily at GM’s discretion for especially puzzle-focused adventures.
• Hindrance: “Glimpses of Madness” (Major): When under stress, roll on Weird Visions table. Most offer cryptic insight relevant to situation, but some are purely distracting – causing hesitation or temporary penalties.
• Edge: “Tinker’s Sight”: Requires Smarts d8+, Notice d6+. Allows a Notice roll even outside combat to use Goggles. Success offers helpful clue OR negates illusion on object/NPC at risk of a Benny burned on bad vision.

Shadowrun

• Theme: Device or Program; fits Techno Rigger builds OR mages that dabble in the chaotic side of magic.
• Device: Matrix Overlay program of questionable legality. +1 Die pool to perception checks tied to spotting astral signatures or magical resonance. On glitches, sensory overload causes distractions in meatspace.
• Magical Item Variant: Enchanted goggles require magical skill roll (counterspelling?) to use. Successful activation increases dice pool to Assensing tests, but glitches lead to distracting sensory overload for 1d6 combat turns.

Starfinder

• Theme: Goggles are bio-implants OR tech item – both rare relics of a gnomish subculture dedicated to this chaotic divination.
• Mechanic or Mystic Item: Determines activation – INT check for Tech use, Mysticism skill for implants.
• Effect: Grant temporary boost to Sense Motive OR Culture (for understanding visions tied to ancient tech). Crit Success offers clear info but requires Will Save or be stunned 1d3 rounds from overwhelming insight.

Traveller

• Theme: Ancient gnomish artifact lost among trade routes. Finding an interpreter who can help DECIPHER visions becomes a quest itself.
• Trade Good: Moderate Price with “esoteric” tag limiting buyers. May increase if proven reliable as clue-generator in investigations.
• Focus Skills: Relevant focus (history, psionics, etc.) is used with Goggles. Success adds clues OR reveals illusion, but on failure character needs 1d6 days to recover from disturbing visions, impacting other tasks.

Warhammer (40K or Fantasy)

• Theme: Warp-tainted in 40K (minor corruption). Fantasy – used by Hedge Wizards at great risk to sanity.
• 40K Corruption: Each use carries 1% cumulative corruption gain which may later attract daemonic notice… but offers crucial insight at times.
• WH Fantasy Peril: Requires Channelling roll. Perils of the Warp likely for unskilled users (possessions, mutations, hallucinations), but high success could cut through magic illusions as intended.
• Lore Aspect: Visions point to the past, NOT future, making the Goggles useful to those trying to decipher history tied to Chaos/the Aethyr.