Potion of Shifting Hues

From: The Shifting Enigma

This shimmering liquid subtly changes the drinker’s hair and eye color for a short duration. In the labyrinth, consuming the potion might also provide a brief resistance to illusions or allow easier recognition of magical effects.

Expanded Lore

• Origin: There are a few possibilities:
  • Feywild Trickery: It was originally brewed by playful fey creatures as a harmless prank, eventually finding its way into the hands of alchemists.
  • Ancient Illusionists: This was a minor recipe, a test for apprentices who would go on to create more potent illusions. It holds lingering notes of such magic.
  • Accidental Creation: Some legend might involve a clumsy mix-up among various tonics, creating the hue-shifting effect as a surprise side effect with some additional minor enchantment.
• Cultural Perception:
  • Vain Nobles: Used frivolously for fashion in certain decadent courts. This creates both a market and stigma associated with the potion.
  • Performers & Spies: Actors use it for quick changes, spies for subtle disguises. This ties to a history of both entertainment and intrigue.
  • Labyrinth Connection:  Illusions within the labyrinth may be keyed to specific visual cues the potion subtly disrupts, or could be linked to recognizing ‘true’ colors of hidden magical auras.

Expanded Uses

• Temporary Identification: Changing physical features makes it a quick (though unreliable) way to throw pursuers off your trail.
• Confidence Booster: For someone struggling with insecurity about their appearance, it offers a short-lived ‘makeover’.
• Signaling in Secret: Allies could develop a basic color-shift code, especially important if verbal communication is dangerous or monitored.
• Creative Application: Altering colors has uses beyond appearance. Alchemists may use it to momentarily disguise ingredients, or savvy users could modify it to act as a crude forgery detection tool.

Tier 1 Stats

• Cost: Moderately affordable (20-50 GP equivalent) due to common ingredients but skill required in brewing.
• Rarity: Fairly common in major settlements with alchemist vendors; less so in rural areas.
• Duration: Varies from 1 to 4 hours based on brewer’s skill.

Requirements

• Ingredients:
  • Shimmerpetal: A faintly iridescent flower that contains the shifting color properties
  • Prism Berry: Provides a catalytic element to change existing pigmentation
  • Purified water or neutral alcohol base for liquid matrix
• Skill/Tools: Alchemist’s supplies OR herbalism kit (with proficiency) for a less reliable concoction
• Optional in the Labyrinth: An infusion of Minderal Root – found within the maze that enhances resistance to mental manipulation in general.

Tags: Consumable, Illusion, Utility, Temporary

Where & How It’s Sold

• Apothecaries & Alchemist Shops: The most common source, found in cities and larger towns. The quality and duration of the effect vary based on the seller’s skill. May be stocked alongside other minor potions and cosmetics.
• Theatrical Troupes: Travelling players often keep a few vials on hand for swift costume changes between roles. These could be of lesser quality compared to a dedicated brewer’s work.
• Underground Markets: Found in shadier circles where disguises are needed. May be sold as ‘Shimmerdrop Tonic’. Quality is suspect, potential side effects more significant.
• Specialty Vendors: A traveling, fey-themed merchant caravan might carry it as a curious trinket. High novelty, possibly bundled with other playfully transformative items.
• Unexpected Sources: A quirky general store, or alongside dyes/fabrics where discerning buyers use it as a tool to color-match ensembles.

Environment & End-Uses

• Urban Sprawl:
  • Discreet Disguises: Changing hair color in crowded cities can temporarily confuse pursuers.
  • Social Deception: Used by grifters for fake identities, especially those targeting nobles obsessed with fashion trends.
  • Entertainment: Street performers, dancers, and even bards utilize the color change for added showmanship.
• Wilderness and Ruins:
  • Subtle Signaling: Rangers, scouts, and smugglers use pre-arranged hair color shifts to convey messages from a distance.
  • Creature Confusion: Throwing off a beast that tracks by a certain color, albeit briefly, can offer crucial moments in desperate situations.
  • Ruins Exploration: If some magical traps have visual activation cues, an altered pigment temporarily changes the adventurer’s visual “signature”, perhaps granting a sliver of time for safe passage.
• Labyrinth Specific:
  • Resisting Illusions: Disrupting an illusion that depends on specific eye coloration may grant an edge in perception rolls.
  • Perceiving Magical Auras: If magic in the labyrinth has particular colored emanations, shifting one’s own hues could improve detecting those hidden effects.
• Social Settings (High Stakes):
  • Political Intrigue: For attending a masquerade with hidden motivations, or temporarily impersonating a member of a specific royal lineage with known physical traits.
  • Escape from Custody: Combine hair and eye color shift with subtle outfit changes to blend in immediately on the run.

Important Notes

• Side Effects: Poorly concocted potions could have uncontrolled colors, change skin tone, or even make hair temporarily glow in the dark!
• Perception vs. Reality: Disguising yourself with mundane shifts is only reliable up to a point. Mannerisms, voice, and actions are harder to change than hair color!

Experiences when activating the Potion of Shifting Hues:

• Sight
  • Visual Description: The liquid swirls with iridescent colors, changing subtly with every tilt of the vial. There might be fleeting glimpses of the drinker’s new hair and eye color within the fluid before it’s consumed.
  • Positives: Visually appealing, reinforces the potion’s function. Could act as a rudimentary quality check (murky potion may have unpredictable results).
  • Negatives: Colors themselves don’t indicate positive/negative side effects, this is still somewhat of a gamble.
• Sound
  • Auditory Description: A subtle fizz or a faint chime-like sound might accompany the activation as the magic takes hold.
  • Positives: Offers some tactile confirmation the potion is functioning beyond visual cues.
  • Negatives: Subtle, easily overpowered by ambient noise. Doesn’t carry specific insights into effect.
• Smell
  • Olfactory Description: Could range from no scent to a faintly floral aroma to hint at natural components, or a subtle metallic tinge to denote magical processes involved.
  • Positives: A pleasant scent adds to the experience, a foul odor could hint at a flawed concoction.
  • Negatives: Easily affected by surrounding smells, the least reliable perception.
• Taste
  • Gustatory Description: May vary by brewer. Perhaps a sweet, fruity flavor to mask any underlying ingredients, or a sharp, almost medicinal taste to imply potency.
  • Positives: Can help ‘sell’ the potion itself, especially to hesitant users.
  • Negatives: Strong taste may be unpleasant; doesn’t guarantee efficacy beyond masking an unrefined recipe.
• Touch
  • Tactile Description: The potion feels cool to the touch in the bottle but slightly warms (tingling sensation) after consumption as the change takes hold.
  • Positives: Reinforces a physical change taking place.
  • Negatives: Feeling no change could indicate a failed brew or lack of individual susceptibility.
• Extra-Sensory
  • Aura Shift: Those able to see magical auras might perceive a change in the drinker’s aura. Color intensity and even shape may temporarily flicker reflecting the influence of minor illusion magic.
    • Positives: Useful for magically astute individuals to confirm an effect.
    • Negatives: Requires specialized perception, and may not offer additional details other than ‘change’.
  • Intuition: Some users might have a strong ‘gut feeling’ about a particular Potion of Shifting Hues. Positive indicates they’ll get the result they need; negative signals the possibility of side effects or failure.
    • Positives: Taps into the subconscious or even some minor divination from the potion itself.
    • Negatives: Not reliable, easily swayed by the individual’s own hopes and fears.

Important: Consider character abilities/backgrounds when applying these perceptions! A seasoned potion-user or someone attuned to shifts in magic will get more mileage out of these descriptions than a magic novice.

Recipe for the Potion of Shifting Hues

• Materials Needed
  • Shimmerpetal (3): A small, faintly iridescent flower commonly found near waterways
  • Prism Berries (2): Vibrant berries known for their light-scattering properties. Often found in sunlit clearings.
  • Purified Water (1 vial): For creating a neutral base for the potion.
  • Minderal Root (Optional for Labyrinth use): A small, glowing root found in some maze areas. Enhances resistance to mental tricks.
• Tools Required
  • Alchemist’s Supplies: Includes mortar and pestle, vials, basic heating apparatus.
  • OR Herbalism Kit: Requires less specialized tools but the process is less precise.
• Skill Requirements
  • Proficiency in Alchemist’s Supplies: Ensures proper extraction and mixture of ingredients to create a stable potion.
  • OR Proficiency in Nature OR Survival: To successfully identify and harvest the necessary plants.
• Crafting Steps
  • Preparation:
    • Grind the Shimmerpetal into a fine powder using a mortar and pestle. This releases its color-shifting properties.
    • Crush the Prism Berries to extract their catalytic juice.
  • Base Infusion:
    • Gently heat the purified water in a distillation flask or simple crucible.
    • Carefully add the ground Shimmerpetal powder and stir slowly until the water takes on a subtly shimmering quality.
  • Catalytic Reaction: Remove the base infusion from the heat source. With precise timing, add the Prism Berry juice, stirring rapidly. The potion will take on a brighter, swirling coloration.
  • Stabilization: Allow the mixture to cool slightly. While still warm, filter the potion to remove any solid remnants. If stability is still questionable, a single drop of alchemical stabilizer may be added.
  • Optional –  Labyrinth Enhancement: Grind a small piece of Minderal Root. Incorporate this luminous dust during the Stabilization step. It will imbue the potion with minor mind-shielding properties.
• Additional Notes
  • Duration & Intensity: The duration of the effect and the vibrancy of colors achieved are based on the brewer’s skill level.
  • Failed Concoctions: May result in unpredictable color shifts, shorter duration, or even minor side effects (glowing hair, temporarily changing skin tone, etc.).

Legend of the Shifting Draught

In the time before time, when tongues etched whispers instead of songs, they told of the Shifting Draught. Some claimed it was born from the first rainbow, caught in dewdrops by a curious sprite. Others swore a wise hag, weary of feuds over mere looks, brewed it from tears she’d trapped on petals at midnight.

Sages murmured its origin lay in the Trickster God’s stolen paintbox, its colors too wild for even his whims. But however it came to be, all agreed it possessed a simple, fleeting magic. To sip the Shifting Draught was to transform – hair the hue of sunsets, eyes like the shimmering sea, all for a blink of an eye.

Knights adorned themselves with colors of lost loves before battle, hoping for visions before the last strike. Rogues gulped it down in shadowed alleyways, their forms as changeable as their schemes. Players donned it like masks, a single swig shifting them from prince to pauper in the time of a curtsey.

Yet, some scoffed, for the transformation was like mist on a summer morn, thin and quick to fade. It was no tool for true conquest or unbreakable deception.  So, it became a symbol – a potion of dreams, of temporary escapes from the burdens of an unchanging form.

And thus, the story reminds us with a mischievous swirl of color…

Moral of the Story: True change lies not in the mirror’s tricks, but in the spirit beneath the surface.

Suggested conversions to other systems:

Call of Cthulhu

• Theme: Vanity, a tool for temporary disguise, potential gateway to unsettling self-reflection.
• Sanity Cost: Minor; seeing your features radically shift briefly could slightly erode composure (0/1D2 at most).
• Skill Usage: Spot Hidden to notice potion use in others, or Chemistry/Apothecary for knowledge about brewing & potential side effects.
• Itemization: A one-use potion found in vanity cases, on stages, or sold by shady dealers. Failed concoctions could make changes horrifyingly grotesque or permanent.

Blades in the Dark

• Theme: A useful “gadget” for social scores, potential backfires as disguises get harder to maintain over time.
• Actions: Primarily tied to Sway rolls for changing demeanor or creating fleeting distractions. Tinker can create it, with risks if lacking quality ingredients.
• Vice Tie-In: Perhaps overuse of the potion could be a custom Vice – “Fleeting Faces” which leads to an obsession with appearance and crumbling reliability.
• Heat Risk: Use for major deceptions attracts heat – rival crews notice suspicious “changes” of personnel, or authorities are put on alert.

Dungeons & Dragons (5e)

• Theme: Lighthearted utility/roleplay item with minor illusion mechanics.
• Rarity: Uncommon, primarily in large cities or from alchemists with a flair for the cosmetic
• Item/Action: Consumable potion. Use an Action to drink it – temporary change of hair and eye color. Duration based on brewer’s skill (likely 1d4 hours). No combat benefit, purely social.

Knave

• Theme: Simple yet fun. Focus on item traits in lieu of complex rules.
• Traits: Cosmetic Alteration (doesn’t disguise voice/physique), Single-Use, Potential Side Effects (roll on a d6 weird change table – glowing nose, etc.). Brewing may need a relevant background and item acquisition roll.

Fate

• Theme: Narrative shifts, emphasis on clever applications. Its flaws ARE what makes it fun.
• Aspect Tie-In: Create a short-lived Aspect – “Shimmering Emerald Eyes”, “Sunset-Streaked Hair”. Invoke for advantage in disguise scenarios, Compel when it leads to absurd complications or recognition fails.
• Consequence Tie-In: On failed potion attempts, take a Mild Consequence of “Uncontrollable Color Flashes” or similar, leading to hilarious narrative fallout.

Numenera/Cypher System

• Theme: Legacy of forgotten tech or bio-engineered oddity. Focus on unpredictable outcomes.
• Item Level: 3-4, moderately common Cypher. Use action to activate, with effects dictated by GM roll on a 1d100 flavor table.
• Potential Outcomes: Expected cosmetic shift, unexpected skin color change, hair grows uncontrollably for a scene, eyes project illusions – table determines duration and side effects both good and bad.

Pathfinder (2e)

• Theme: Illusion magic meets whimsical consumable
• Rarity: Uncommon. Primarily cosmetic potion – unlikely found on adventuring enemies, more in curious vendor stock.
• Crafting: Alchemist Formula – DC fairly routine (15-20 based on intended effect strength). Success yields several doses, Critical Failure = flawed result table
• Effects: Lasts several hours based on roll. Doesn’t alter disguise checks beyond changing coloration (hair grows longer but can’t mimic a different ethnicity/build, etc.)

Savage Worlds

• Theme: Quirky aid for creative players, fits Weird West vibes especially
• Powers: Existing “Disguise” Power temporarily gains +2 IF change fits chosen look. A more potent version of “Shapechange” Power could exist limited only to hair/eye color but at greatly reduced point cost.
• Hinderances: Can exacerbate “Ugly” Hinderance for comedic effect when potion malfunctions. A new Hinderance, “Changeable Features” (harder to gain trust) ties thematically.

Shadowrun

• Theme: Fits both magical side and ‘streetwear’ aesthetics for cosmetic augmentation.
• Gear & Programs: Can exist as both. Potion is the low-grade version peddled on streets (side effects on glitch). Program with temporary stat boost to social hacking skills exists but pricey & may draw unwanted attention.
• Matrix Manipulation: Potion grants bonus die when hacking against security focused on visual recognition. Program temporarily ‘masks’ the Runner’s physical descriptors in lower-security systems for deception.

Starfinder

• Theme: Focus on diverse aliens & first impressions to disguise oneself as a less threatening species temporarily.
• Magic Item/Tech Hybrid: Bio-engineered consumable grants minor bonus to Bluff for first interactions. Tech version – cosmetic holographic overlay – requires tech skill activation but grants ongoing bonus, risks feedback on failure.
• Drawbacks: Won’t fool in-depth biometric/medical scans. If species mimicry is extreme, grants penalties to skill checks that differ widely between ‘base’ and mimicked form.

Traveller

• Theme: Focus on social maneuvering amidst varied interstellar cultures and prejudices.
• Trade Good: May be common in “fashion-focussed” worlds, taboo on conservative ones. Offers minor bonus to initial encounter if mimicking culturally favored visual traits.
• Deception Tools: Used by infiltrators in high-stakes games. High risks – discovery ruins rep permanently in certain circles.
• Psionics Angle: Potion has trace psychoactive chemical aiding “Surface Thought” read for minor edge if that skill exists in your version of Traveller.

Warhammer (40K or Fantasy)

• Theme: 40K has echoes of Slaanesh corruption – obsession with the ‘perfect form’. Fantasy leans into illusions woven by Shadow Mages, or potions in charlatan hands.
• Corruption/Lore: Use exposes character to minor Warp taint OR lowers temporary Insanity in Fantasy version. Lore on origin hints the potion utilizes crushed fae-creature wings or similar dangerous sources.
• Mechanics: Grants advantage on the first Deception test where changed features matter. Critical fails attract horrific side effects (skin sloughs off, hair animates, etc.) based on setting tone.