The Bearings of Discord

Wonderous Item, Rare

This is a bag of fifty ball bearings, that, on first inspection, seem perfectly ordinary. However, should you drop one, it immediately begins berating any creatures within 120 ft that know at least one language, insulting their dress, appearance, parentage, manner of speech, race, morals, intelligence, age, smell, name, and a bewildering array of other attributes. The bearing will insult those nearby in their native languages. It deals 1 psychic damage per round to a random creature so insulted within 120 ft. If no suitable creatures are in range, it will wait silently until a suitable creature approaches it.

If two or more bearings are dropped within earshot of each other, they immediately begin to shout loudly at each-other in a pidgin of the native languages of every creature within 120ft, or in Common, if there are no creatures nearby which speak a language. This causes no damage, but is very hard to ignore.

If more than twenty bearings are dropped in a small area, the resulting argument is loud enough to temporarily deafen and cause 1d4 thunder damage per round to any creature within 120 ft of the epicenter, and can be heard for miles if outdoors.

They are immediately silenced as soon as they are touched, and remain so when placed back inside a leather bag. Additionally, they can be detected by any power that detects fiends. While they are technically sentient, they have no overarching goals or personality besides the overriding need to insult anything and everything.

Background Note:

The Bearings of Discord are a failed experiment by the lesser demon Xonraq. He wanted to create a means to literally "sow discord" in an area, and gathered fifty soul larvae who had been guilty of envy in life, and entrapped them in steel. After discovering their inability to focus on any creature when another bearing was nearby, Xonraq dumped out the whole bag in despair, and was immediately forced to flee from the resulting cacophony. Despite being scattered and lost from time to time, somehow the whole set always manages to find its way back together. When asked to comment on this property, one archmage simply said, "Misery loves company."



Image is copyright Queensland Museum,

licensed under cc-by-sa-3.0.