Escaped gaming meme

[mithriltabby]

The Ring of Sartorial Entropy is a silver ring set with a black opal. It requires a great deal of effort to distinguish it as magical— the enchantment is well hidden— as is its effect. Press on the underside of the Ring with your thumb, and an invisible, nearly undetectable beam of entropy will shoot out of the gem. The first being it strikes will experience slow, subtle sartorial disruptions: hair will get mussed or tangled, makeup will run, knots will come untied, buttons will pop off, and fabrics will exhibit a strange attractive power for beverages and sauces of strongly contrasting colors.

The Ring’s effects are far too slow to be useful in combat, unless each round of blows alternates with a minute of banter. It is primarily useful in court intrigue to create embarrassment and to force people to retire from the discussions to repair their toilettes.

This is another one of those delightful little items to throw into the game— perhaps as a bribe from a retiring courtier, or to capture from a well placed enemy who can be coerced into revealing such details— to see how the player characters react.

The effect of the Ring is trumped by Kirmisina’s Earring, which is a small cabochon of clear adamant (the magical gem that diamonds dream of being when they read fantasy novels) in a gold setting designed for a pierced earlobe. (It will function just as well in a nostril or navel.) The Earring negates all sartorial entropy, magical or not: it must be removed in order to wipe away makeup or change hair styles. Hair will still blow in a breeze, but it will always settle back into its previous configuration; makeup simply will not run, even after three weeks of slogging through a swamp, and shoelaces will never come untied by accident.

I created the Earring in response to all those television shows where the heroine somehow manages to get through any number of stressful situations without ever having to worry about her appearance; it’s really just fantasy commentary on the order of the Chainmail Bikini of Armor Class 5.

Comments

[cmccurry.livejournal.com]

Hair will still blow in a breeze, but it will always settle back into its previous configuration; makeup simply will not run, even after three weeks of slogging through a swamp, and shoelaces will never come untied by accident.

Hmmm...I will have to look for that in most anime series. It would explain quite a lot.

[mithriltabby]

I’m pretty sure Xena had one of those, too...