Ambisinister/CurioofEnthusiasticEncouragement
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Curio of Enthusiastic Encouragement
Artifact Level ~ 2
Commitment ~ 4 motes
The Curio of Enthusiastic Encouragement is a small bauble designed by genius, although incredibly naïve and absent-minded artificer Alfonz Elmo. Elmo was a firm believer that sincere praise and encouragement was a strong balm for the troubled mind and a crucial ingredient for daily wellbeing. Towards that end he devised the Curio. The Curio itself is a rough sphere about five inches in diameter. A parti-color swirl of Jade encases a tiny Orichalcum core. It can easily be worn around the neck or hung from a belt. What the Curio does is simple: In a strong clear voice (which can be male or female at the bearer’s preference) it offers encouragement, praise, and helpful tips and advice to the bearer and all those around him. The Curio is irrepressibly cheerful and as the name implies extremely enthusiastic. Alfonz was immediately enamored with the artifact and proceeded to produce dozens which he promptly gave out to friends and acquaintances as gifts on feast days, name days, or any other occasion he felt he could get away with it.
At the heart of the device is an adaptive, symbiotic intelligence. Each Curio is considered to have a rating of 1 in all abilities thus enabling it to offer rudimentary commentary on any topic. After attuning to an exalt, however, it automatically gains identical ratings to all of its bearer’s favored or cast abilities (in cases where the bearer has less than 7 favored abilities, it will make up the difference by copying its highest ranked abilities with ties being determined randomly or by the Game Master). Assume that the Curio will always succeed with 4 successes on any copied trait and a single success on all the rest. Curios can speak and comprehend any language their bearer knows. When offering encouragement or advice about a copied ability, its target receives a single bonus die to that action (in combat time the Curio can effectively offer advice every 3 ticks). Each Curio is designed to be perceptive. It has a sensory range of 10 yards and is assumed to receive 7 success on any roll to notice things. Curios will cheerfully and loudly announce if someone is sneaking up on its bearer or if someone nearby is lying and will gladly offer commentary on what it perceives to be the emotional states or motivations of those around it if nothing better is going on for it to talk about. If obfuscation effects require magical detection to thwart them the Curio only receives 3 successes to perceive them.
It is said that many of Elmo’s peers simply shook their heads that such a marvelous technology as the symbiotic intelligence would be put to such a mundane use. Such implementations of his designs, however, were a hallmark of Elmo’s portfolio.
