Real-Life Weirdness

[SolemnGolem]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I wrote up the Brazen Head once. My version of it could do basic addition and subtraction on command but its real power was that, when the spoons hidden inside it's base were filled with dirt from five surrounding points, the head would detect the arrival of groups of men with hostile intent at the boundary sketched out by the points. It would rotate to face the direction at which they crossed the boundary and would say how large the group once it crossed.

I really like this - I was trying to do a similar "perimeter radar" style of magical defense (for a group huddling in a caravan fearing orc attacks). The best I could come up with was a quadrangle of totems that could detect creatures walking past them and cause a small warning noise on a device inside the caravan. But this problem is that the totems themselves are visible and could tip off an intruder.

(And in a nod to The Beast of War I had a herd of deer trigger the warning and the PCs all freaked out, massacring them in volleys of arrows blind-fired into the night.)