FORBIDDEN OBJECTS FROM PLACES MEN FEAR TO TREAD

 Everyone wants more than what they have. You aren't exempt, you stupid liar freak.

Go on, take your pick:

1. A hollow lump of sandstone, about as big as a balled fist, with something inside that scrabbles around when shaken. Put it to your ear, and it whispers in a voice choked by dust:

It's so dry in here. Bring rain to the desert. Give me life. 

This is an entombed familiar, a special little geomantic trinket. Cut your palm--or crush a bunch of ants in your hand, it loves ants--and hold the stone; the voice inside will guide you towards the closest naturally-occuring source of precious metals, oil, or other valuable resources. It also has a talent for civic planning and interior design, although it views these fields through a distinctly mystic lense- it's a big fan of ley lines and cosmic currents, and will probably start cursing you out if you so much as mention things like "zoning". If you break the rock open, all that's inside is some dust and the inanimate, desiccated corpse of a horned lizard. Good job, jackass, you broke it.

2. A piece of wood, charred black and twisted into a lightning-bolt shape. Hold it in your hand, and you'll feel a faint tingling sensation up your palm all the way to the elbow- something between a static shock and having your arm fall asleep.

As long as you hold this charm, your other hand is capable of producing an electric shock with nothing but a touch. It's about as bad as a wall socket, a hundred and twenty volts- enough to kill with respiratory arrest or cardiac arrhythmia, if the person you shock is in contact with water or metal, but more likely to hurt like a son of a bitch and make all their muscles tense up. For you, though, it just feels like a nasty little static shock.

3. A little vial of powder, no more than a pinch worth, with a color like old fat and pine resin. It smells and tastes like ash and unwashed fingers.

Ever need a Hand of Glory but don't feel like carrying a severed body part around with you? Just snort or otherwise ingest this stuff; for fifteen minutes to a half hour, anybody who makes eye contact with you will be paralyzed as long as you maintain it, and all doors will unlock before you. Side effects include kleptomania and intrusive flashes of memory from the poor bastard this stuff was made from.

4. A ring, made from plain copper. There is very little interesting about it, aside from a tiny epigram engraved on the inside:

REJOICE: NOBODY CARES

This ring deadens emotions, all of them. Fear, anger, joy, sorrow, pain- nothing at all. The apathy it induces is supreme; it takes an active force of will to make yourself to take any action but standing around and watching things happen, including taking the ring off. There just isn't any reason to bother doing or feeling anything, whether there's a knife at your jugular or you're learning things man was not meant to know.

5. Five fat lozenges, just small enough to fit on the tip of your thumb, sealed in a little packet of brown wax paper. They taste like getting slapped in the mouth and are faintly greasy to the touch.

Swallowing one of these lovely little candies, in so many words, makes you into a godawful bully. Any efforts you make to browbeat, humiliate, or otherwise socially harm others are significantly more effective; you just know exactly what to say to undermine someone. Problem is, you can't turn this off; your cruelty is brutally indiscriminate to everyone you speak to. Thank God this only lasts for an hour.

6. A stone mask, about as old and simplistic as one of its kind can be, with a wide, grinning mouth and no eyes to speak of. Age has worn it smooth, giving it only the vaguest impression of human facial features, and it was broken in half and pieced back together with dull bronze at some point in its interminable history. A pair of eyes have been painted on the inside very recently, right where a wearer's eyes would sit.

This mask allows the wearer to see into the past when worn, although it requires a minute of unbroken meditation per hour of range into the past and you only sees what you would see from your exact position while meditating. The effect is much more potent if you're on hallucinogens, to the tune of a day of range per minute's meditation, but it has to be a strong enough dose that you're basically incapacitated until your body cleans itself out. The visions of the past, at least, remain accurate.