Hey Veeky Forums, would need some help or inspiration with strange, mysterious or exotic artefacts...

Hey Veeky Forums, would need some help or inspiration with strange, mysterious or exotic artefacts, with purpose obscure, somewhat convoluted or at least not obvious. My players have been complaining the items I've presented them so far were "too d&dish, with blatant and obviously very useful, straightforward powers", and not weird enough.

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> Stone of Mysterious Shine
All it does is shines mysteriously. It's also always cold to the touch. Other than that, it does not have any use. It's an ancient magic lamp.
> Medallion of randomness
Gives a random effect every hour. Make a table of them and roll on it.
> Dwarven Ring
Dwarves made this ring to remind their travellers of their misty mountainous homeland. They have imbued it with magic that helps convey the feelings.
Gives +1 on all Charisma rolls against dwarves.
1/day cast illusion - it alwaus looks as if the target is in the mountains covered with fog.
> Fire pearl
A single use item. When hit with anything large and strong enough, it cracks open and starts burning like a small candle for 1d10 rounds. Good for starting a fire.
> Wendigo mask
This is a mask cut from a single piece of wendigo skull. It lets you cast all spells relatrd to frost as if you were 1 caster level higher.

> Medallion of randomness
Actually, scratch this. A better idea is to give it a theme. Broken medallion of love, that's what it is.
Roll randomly to determine effect, they all should be beauty-, love- or charm- related
> Moon amulet
The wearer is being healed from all wounds as under spell "cure minor wounds" when under the moonlight.

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Look up Maerlyn's Rainbow from the dark tower series.

Ring of the (Untrue) Fae
A ring with a small door in it leading to a garden. This garden is of the wizard who enchanted the ring, a real place in the world. If one were to find this doorway and walk through it, they would leave the other end shrunk to match the proportions of the door on the ring. Inversely, items small enough to fit into the ring's doorway are upscaled when they enter the wizard's garden.

Pilgrim's Compass: When held by a man of strong faith in a god, it points to the nearest source of holy magic attuned to the god. This allows travelers to find their way to friendly temples and holy men when travelling in unfamiliar lands.
In the hands of a man who worships no god, it points only to the nearest empty grave.

Audience Rings: A linked pair of magic rings, with speficic pairs identifiable by each having half a gemstone that fits back together when you gave both.
When both rings are worn by seperate people at the same time, wearers temporarily swap bodies until such a time as one of the rings is removed. These rings are meant as a form of long distance communication to relay commands across great distances, but they fell out of favor when a ring was capture by enemy forces and used to enact an assassination attempt.

>Goggles of Detect Traps
You're players will assume this works by revealing hidden pitfalls, switches, and the like but actually only reveals the true form of a male character wearing the Girdle of Femininity

This egg can be ground into fine powder. Blowing on the powder creates a perfectly realistic-looking rainbow in the sky. (Optional: The egg comes with a set of special lenses. If you whisper a message when blowing on the powder, anyone wearing the lense can see the message written on the rainbow.)

Bathing this medaillon in blood under the moonlight every week slows down the wearer's aging, and causes their nails to lengthen and sharpen to a deadly degree.

Wearing this mask allows you to hear the voices of the soon-to-be dead in a quarter-mile radius. It's fairly difficult to make sense of what they say, especially when you consider all the screaming.

Optional: If you manage to meditate for long enough while wearing the mask (it's quite a feat, you need a significant amount of willpower) you become increasingly able to isolate the voices in your mind and understand them.

When wearing this ring inside a cavern, you can always locate an exit to the surface.
Optional: Wear it long enough, and you'll gain the ability to perceive your position in the dark through echolocation... but your vision might suffer.

This oven-sized stone grants useful visions of the future. The fire is hungry and seems to have a mind of its own. To benefit from these visions, you must write down some of your memories on a piece of parchment and feed it to the flame oracle -- you immediately forget the memories in question.

The more important and positive the memories, the longer and more precise the visions will get. If you throw in the diary you've kept since you were 10, you'll know nearly everything that'll happen to you in the next decades, at the cost of forgetting who you are.

If you look at the night sky while wearing this necklace, you may speak to the moon herself. She is ancient and knowledgeable, but tired and slow to answer. Optional: You're not actually talking to the moon, but to the ghost/soul/simulated personality of a long-dead sorcerer's loved one, who lost her in a tragic accident and perhaps wanted to save her soul from a terrible afterlife. Said loved one may or may not believe herself to be the moon, after all this time stuck in a necklace.

These heels were given to a priestess of truth and law by her divinity. It was meant as both a gift and a test of faith. They surround you in radiant light if you so desire, let you walk through great heat or fire unscathed, and let you discern truths and lies.
When you knowingly speak a harmful or self-interested lie of your own, you suffer painful burns. This happens even if you've taken the heels off. The heels no longer have any effects on you, until you either confess the truth or spend a day in repentant pilgrimage and prayer.

A gift to a dwarven noble. It talks in a smooth voice and helpfully reminds you about today's agenda. That's it.

A ceremonial mask worn by high-ranked cultists of the Simurgh, the great ancient bird, and bearing its blessing. The mask can be submerged into water or buried into the earth to purify it. The wearer may divine the past of an object it touches, specifically how it was created and by whom.

This ball of roughly carved jade can be set down on the corpse of a recently dead warrior. It will help guide the warrior's soul to the afterlife. If the warrior so wishes, he may impart a particular skill he had in life onto the piece of carved jade, such as a signature technique of theirs. A companion of the warrior who holds this item close to their heart can imitate this technique perfectly, guided by the warrior's spirit.

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>a rusty spoon
Once touched, the user cannot be rid of the spoon. It will randomly appear on the person or amongst their belongings, even after attempts at destroying it. Once attached to someone, it must be touched by another willing person three different times. Each time it's touched, it is 1 points of necrotic damage and appears to vanish for a day. After the third touch, it's seemingly vanishes forever. This curse cannot be undone with a remove curse spell or ability. If the user tries to attack with the spoon, it deals minor damage. If the user gets a killing blow, they attempted gouge their opponents eyes out. The spoon can and will randomly appear in the user's hand instead of their traditional weapon. They will not notice until damage is dealt.

A strange geode, formed as a cocoon for a bizarre extraterrestrial insect. The metals and crystals within it are often used when crafting arms & armor that will resist lightning; alternatively, a lightning-based enchantment may be cast upon the materials while they are superheated, to ensure that the effects are particularly potent.