Greetings, patrons! Today, I am featuring another guest post from my good friend, Jupe Rantalainen. Jupe loves gaming and has been supporting this patreon for a long time, and he wanted to contribute an item inspired by the Chest of Heartache.

Cursed Beercase of Longing

by Jupe Rantalainen

(This item is heavily based on the lyrics of song “Marraskuu” by the Finnish band “Miljoonasade”)

Background: A god or goddess (of DM’s choice) was once spurned by a beautiful mortal. As the deity in question recognized the danger of divine being longing for a mortal’s love, the deity asked a Trickster god (of DM’s choice) to help them and remove the terrible longing from their soul. The Trickster did as was asked and ended up with some intense emotion. So, what to do with it? Make it the bane of mortals, of course. And so, the Trickster brewed the emotion into a beverage, which was then bottled. A basked was woven to contain the bottles. And then, next time when a mortal longed for another romantically, the Trickster unleashed the horrid creation upon the realm of living. It has been the curse of lovers for ages untold.  

Physical description: The Beercase is a square-shaped wicker basket with one handle in the center, going over the basket. It’s apparently very old, the color of the wood is close to ash grey. The basket contains twenty four small (around 0.7 pints) brown glass bottles which are dusty and covered with cobwebs. The bottles are full of brown liquid, that smells like beer. The beer, when tasted, seems to be mild lager. For some reason it’s still cold, but not particularly good. Refreshing taste, though.

Appearance: The Cursed Beercase of Longing appears when a loved one leaves physically and the one who loves them verbally acknowledges the longing. “I’ll miss you / I miss you already” when the beloved is leaving is enough. At the dusk, the one who spoke the words, will hear a clinking sound from nearby, just like few glass bottles hitting each other. The clinking sound repeats itself until the target goes to look for it’s cause and discovers the beercase. If the target never looks for the cause and the cause of their longing returns, the Beercase will disappear and haunt someone else. It can not be found by anyone else, just by the one who said the words. After the case is found, it will appear next to targets bed or any other place of rest each evening, even when left somewhere, locked in a chest, emptied, whatever. It will be there, and all the bottles will be full of beer.

The Curse: The beer wants to be consumed. For every evening that the target resists drinking, there will be Charisma save of DC 10 + 1 per evening resisted (if you are using DD 5). After the first beer is consumed, the save to resist drinking continues to go up by 2 per evening spent drinking. Remove Curse works, but the Beercase will begin the clinking again unless all the bottles are emptied to hallowed or unhallowed ground after the spell. Drinking the beer will cause terrible feelings of melancholy and longing, and of course, it will cause intoxication as usual. It will also cause strange hallucinations which will haunt the character every waking hour.

D&D 5e Effects

After someone drinks the beer, they will drink all the bottles during the following night. Then they will pass out. If they wish to benefit from Long Rest, they need to commit twice the hours to it. If the DM is kind, they may allow characters to recover half of their hit points (or hit points lost) and half the used spell slots. The character suffers from melancholy and longing, so any social interaction is rolled with Disadvantage. Character is immune to joy and positive emotions, so bard song, Heroism and anything that would give them Inspiration simply do not work.

As stated earlier, character will also suffer from bizarre hallucinations. They will include the following :

• Nearby trees will sprout mandolins

• a Murder of Crows will fly around really slowly, sometimes outdoors, sometimes indoors

• a character suddenly appears to be holding a very large bone (of a dinosaur)

• an intelligent rat will appear to chat with the character; the rat is really really thirsty for alcohol

• any normal social interaction seems to be a game of tic-tac-toe or any other suitable simple game

• a strange window-like thing appears nearby; flaming logs fly from the window and hit the character’s abdomen (no damage is done)

• everything around the character turns into a giant wasteyard, where every item is somehow related to the object of character’s longing

• the character has a feeling of studying something really difficult … and there’s someone’s finger in her/his mouth

The illusions are resisted with a Charisma save, use the current Curse DC. Failure gains the character a Disadvantage to the rest of the scene as the illusion saps their mental strength and they are tortured with the feeling of longing and being all alone in the world. 

The character will also have a horrifying fear of November or the month that replaces it in the game world. November is the month of everything dying, including love. The character will fear that their loved one is leaving them and that their love is dying. The character will believe that the November will just grasp them and take them away, forever, and that they will never see their beloved again. Any mention of November will require a Charisma save of DC 16 or the character is Frightened. Abilities that make character immune to being Frightened WILL NOT WORK. If the character would somehow meet something that would register as November (illusion, a spirit of autumn, unseelie fey playing tricks, you name it), the DC of the save is 20 and they will be incapacitated instead of frightened.

Removing the Curse

Other than casting Remove Curse and emptying the bottles while on un/hallowed ground, only easy way to defeat the Beercase is the return of the beloved one, who must then say the words “I know that November may take a lonely man away”. There will be finally clinking sound and the Beercase is gone. A Murder of Crows will be seen flying away.

Of course, delivering the beer to the original deity whose yearning it is, and getting the deity to drink it, would destroy the curse permanently. This would naturally end up with a lovesick deity trying to find their beloved mortal. You all know the story of Wilhelmina “Mina” Harker (née Murray) and Count Dracula? Yes, just like that, but with a full-powered deity instead of Dracula.