Blackmoor Half-Week - Cloak of the Lily Pad

Cloak of the Lily Pad

Minor Artifact

This heavy green cloak is always faintly damp and smells of rainwater, moss, and black earth. Its clasp resembles a bronze frog, and beads of water collect upon the fabric even in dry weather.

The cloak possesses the following powers while worn.

Swamp’s Embrace: The wearer may cross bogs, mud, quicksand, marsh pools, and similar swamp terrain as though walking upon firm ground. Such terrain does not reduce the wearer’s movement.

The wearer may also walk upon the surface of water, mud, or similar liquids. When standing still upon such a surface, the cloak spreads beneath the wearer like a broad lily pad.

Breath of the Fen: The wearer may breathe freely in both air and water.

Marsh Resilience: The wearer gains a +4 bonus to saving throws against poison and disease.

If the wearer suffers damage from poison, the damage is reduced by half. If a saving throw already reduces the damage by half, a successful save instead negates the damage entirely.

Hide of the Marsh: In swamps, marshes, fens, and similar wetlands, the wearer can conceal themselves with remarkable ease.

The wearer gains a +2 bonus to surprise rolls when attempting to ambush others and may hide in reeds, mist, shallow water, hanging moss, or other natural swamp cover that would normally provide insufficient concealment.

A thief wearing the cloak gains +20% to Hide in Shadows while in such terrain instead.

Drawbacks

Swamp-Bound: The cloak draws its power directly from great wetlands.

If carried more than 10 miles from a substantial swamp, marsh, fen, or similar wetland, all of its magical powers become dormant. It then functions only as an ordinary, perpetually damp cloak.

Its powers return immediately upon coming within 10 miles of such a wetland.

Unwanted Growth: If the wearer remains in the same dwelling, campsite, or similarly confined location for 3 consecutive days, swamp life begins to take root around them.

Moss spreads across walls and furniture, standing water develops films of algae, mushrooms emerge from damp corners, and insects and frogs begin appearing in improbable numbers.

Until the wearer moves on and spends at least one full day elsewhere, reactions from ordinary civilized folk suffer a –2 penalty. Conversely, reactions from creatures that respect displays of menace, decay, or swamp magic may instead receive a +2 bonus, at the referee’s discretion.

Attention of the Marsh-Lords: Powerful spirits, faeries, witches, monsters, and forgotten gods associated with wetlands can sense the cloak when the wearer enters their domain.

The referee should occasionally make a 1-in-6 check when the wearer enters a significant new swamp or remains within one for several days. On a result of 1, a supernatural power of the wetland becomes aware of the wearer.

Such beings do not necessarily attack. They may instead demand tribute, insist upon an ancient custom, offer a dangerous bargain, request service, or test whether the wearer is worthy of carrying the cloak.

Destruction

The Cloak of the Lily Pad cannot be destroyed by ordinary means.

It may only be destroyed by carrying it to the heart of the wetland where it was created and burning it with a flame that has never touched wood, peat, coal, or any other living thing.

Notes 

• Created as a set of powerful cloaks by a Heirophant ranked Druid whose domain extended throughout the Gloomy who had granted this cloak to their acolytes to help maintain the balance long before the arrival of the Cult of the Frog and the establishment of the dreaded Temple of the Frog in the midst of the swamp. The cloaks magic allowed the Druid and their agents to dwell in the Gloomy for extended period while resisting the natural hazards of the swamp.
• The Cloak allows all classes to gain the ability to 'Hide in Shadow' as a Thief of up to 90% success. This effect wears off if the wearer ventures into a different environment, such as dungeon depths of the Temple of the Frog or roaming too far off the track from the marshland and into the surrounding woods.
•  This is one of the first main magical items that Leowyn has received as part of her journey to recover her friends and her further exploration of the Gloomy Swamp following the initial attack that had left her for dead and wandering the region. The artifact cloak was stuffed in an old trunk, overlooked by a gang of swamp dregs that were raiding the area and who were defeated by Leowyn and her new party of adventurers out of South Pim.