Magic Item

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Magic Items are inanimate objects with magical properties. Unlike most magic, they are generally usable by Innocents, which may not even cause Karmic blowback if there are clear warnings or warning signs attatched. Peddlars are Others who craft or find magic items, while a Gilded Lily is a human with a similar knack.<ref name=":0">Peddlers - A broad grouping of Others with a knack for making or finding objects that have some power to them, which they then distribute. They may make, curse or tweak the items or manipulate the subjects so they destroy themselves in a way that is karmically just (often violating a warning given with the item), then sweep in to reclaim the item and the power it gathered. Collectors may deal with or trade with Peddlers, who are often skilled at transubstantiation, or who can point them the right ways. Gilded Lilies (or Gilded) - A loose term for people, non-Other, who are often unawakened, who have a knack for coming into possession of things of value or leading a train wreck of a life where they keep stumbling onto cursed items and trinkets. There are a variety of names and labels for such people and variants. Important or useful ones can include artists or craftsmen who make things of value that fit to patterns or become natural hallows for certain kinds of Other, ‘Gilded’ Heroes or notable people who have a tendency to turn things they regularly handle into an item that could fit a collection (see Legacy items, below), people who’ve become the target of a trickster spirit (or spirit of misfortune, or god, or whatever) who come across magical or cursed items on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis. - Pact Dice: Collectors </ref> Collectors specialize in collecting and using magic items, while Enchanters specialize in creating them.

Cursed Items

Perhaps the most common type of magic item, at least outside of Practitioner hands, is the cursed item; one which preys on the unaware.<ref name=":1">A lot of devices and ‘found’ items tended to be… problematic. When an Other got into an item, it tended to be frustrated or angry, or else a

predator lying in wait, or a conniving thing trying to use the device

as a vector to hurt people.

These items, from the scratch-a-sketch to the polaroid camera, were ones Zed had tended to. Curses removed, Others managed or pulled out, bound, and put back in again. In cases where those Others had been ones

who preyed on fear or negativity, the items unfortunately became things
that couldn’t recharge or sustain themselves. - excerpt from Out on a Limb 3.z

</ref> Much like a Brownie, a cursed item will frequently offer some benefit, only to take back more than it gave should some rule be broken. The "fair" trade of benefits given, clear warnings, and sometimes a gradual descent from Innocence or humanity, help to mitigate the karmic protections normally afforded to Innocents.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":2">An Incarnation of Poverty might try to spread poverty. Sometimes that would be with a cursed item; innocents handle it, they ignore the warnings printed on the item or shared by the seller, they lose their earthly belongings and fortunes, they die or suffer a dark fate, the item gets passed on, having strengthened Poverty, until someone figures out a way to deal with it. Other times, it’s a ritual that finds its way to people’s hands. [...] that’s the gamble, of sorts. Will the ritual pull in enough to be worth the cost of inducting an innocent? If the ritual brings in enough

poverty, for example, or brings in enough other people who fail, it may
be worth paying the penalty or assuming the karmic responsibility. [...] Often, the karmic cost of bringing in innocents is tempered.  If it’s

just, if someone must opt in, and if there’s a possible way out, it’s less costly. Remember what I said earlier about the warning given with full expectation that the warning would be ignored? One such example. The Ritual Incarnate may be a game, or a pattern people willingly participate in, with enough traps or enough of an uphill climb that failing at the game is expected, and they may be difficult enough that by the time the participant is done, they are no longer capital-I Innocent, or even no longer human. - Lost for Words 1.4</ref>

Cursed items are often made by Faerie or Incarnations to further their goals,<ref name=":2" /><ref>She was pretty certain that presents and boons like the ones Keller was giving out were traps. That they’d be wonderful and fantastic up until the point that things turned sour. Maybe they became too much of a

good thing, maybe there was a rule that had to be followed, with some

horrific backlash if it wasn’t. Maybe there was a catch.
Exiled Faerie weren’t allowed to go after innocents, not directly. But, Maggie was fairly certain, they weren’t forbidden from doing something like giving a kid a flute that would summon a sprite to do their chores for them, with the caveat that the sprite would blind them if they ever tried to watch it while it worked.
End result? The kid would be stupid, the sprite would eat the kid’s eyes. People, the kid included, would rationalize it away as an accident, an infection, or just a freak occurrence. Life would go on as

normal, and the local Faeries-in-exile got their jollies without

breaking the rules.
- excerpt from Signature 8.2</ref> or by dedicated Peddlars who then reap the power an item harvests.<ref name=":0" /> A cursed item will also frequently contain a predatory (or simply angry/hurt/confused) Other.<ref name=":1" />

References