Dungeon Dressing: Looting the Bodies
Few things are worse than a character showing interest in a throw-away monster. Perhaps, the heroes have entered a dungeon, butchered its denizens and now loot their enemies’ still-warm corpses. Use these lists to fill their enemies’ pockets with interesting but essentially worthless things.
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Shiny Treasures
A large, intricately etched brass button, clearly from a voluminous article of clothing.
A heavily scratched glass prism; in just the right light, it refracts light into tiny, jagged rainbows.
A beautifully tied bow has been ripped from the rest of its lacy ribbon.
A pair of small ceramic figures depicts a bride and groom; the bottom of the figures shows gnaw marks.
A soapstone sculpture of a human hand, with its little finger missing.
A steel palm-sized cog, heavily charred as though by an extraordinary fire or explosion.
A pewter medal awarded to veteran soldiers of a neighbouring kingdom.
Five feet of green satin ribbon, covered in spots of dried blood.
A steel spur in remarkably good shape, despite having been removed from its boot.
A whetstone with a hole drilled through its centre as if to sharpen the edges of a round weapon.
A small pair of finely made scissors, though the edges are dull.
A gold-plated spoon shows its underlying iron through a variety of scratches.
An inkwell with a stopper yet contains a small amount of still-good blue ink.
A small leather bag filled with marbles, including a larger cat’s eye shooter.
A miniature doll, or maybe an effigy, made from bound straw and twine.
A spool of fine crimson thread tangled on a wooden bobbin. The thread is nine-foot long.
An immaculately preserved violet eye, most likely from an elf, in a tiny jar.
A loose thread has a variety of multi-coloured buttons sorted from largest to smallest sowed onto it.
A tiny painting of a beautiful woman, seemingly taken from a locket.
A small, leering face cast in brass, most likely once served as part of a charm bracelet. The face depicts a three-mouthed, three-eyed toad.
Utterly Worthless
A piece of string slightly too short to make an effective bootlace, even for a halfling.
A dried-out dead snake wrapped carefully around a gnarled branch.
A crude effigy comprising a lump of coal with two buttons glued on for eyes and floppy green leaves attached as ears.
A copper coin melted almost beyond recognition.
A crumpled piece of paper with a song written on it; currently, it is wrapped around a fish skeleton.
A well-worn copper key; its teeth have been crudely filed to the point where it will never fit its original lock.
A small potato has had a leering face carved into it.
A disturbingly soiled handkerchief, the colours splattered on it seem too vibrant to have come from a living person.
A shred of bright blue fabric splattered with a dark crimson liquid.
A dull table knife bent in three different places as if it crumpled against thick armour.
The left arm and head of a doll; one of its button eyes is missing.
A potato serves as a pin cushion to collect bent pins and needles.
This rolled-up piece of parchment is a half-scribed scroll of fireball.
A folded-up napkin contains shards of chalk.
A collection of rusted, imbalanced arrowheads, each with a letter of the alphabet scraped into it.
A half-eaten left shoe sized for a human soaked in brine and stuffed in a cloudy jar.
A severed finger bearing a tan line where a ring has been recently removed.
A ripped dog collar bearing a wooden tag with the name Bruiser clearly engraved on it.
A short tuft of red hair, seemingly sheared from a halfling’s foot.
A piece of fabric that may have once been part of a tapestry but now is simply full of pinholes where the thread would once have been stitched.
Credit
This is a short system-neutral extract from GM’s Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing. The book is available in 5e, OSR, System Neutral and Pathfinder 1 editions.
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