Personal Revision Hourglass

A person’s past can bring many benefits: connections, knowledge, insights. This arcanotechnological hourglass’s array of glyph-engraved gears ensure that it always rotates in such a way as to keep accurate track of time by the minute. Its sands are filled with relicite planarite from Teykfa and a drop of witchoil, and they let the bearer briefly call forth a version of themselves that might have been.

As an action, you can activate this geared hourglass, causing it to oscillate rapidly. You think of a background, such as criminal or folk hero. You temporarily acquire some benefits of that background other than ability score increases. For instance, you might gain a proficiency, a criminal connection or the local fame of a folk hero. You specify the broad strokes, but the Narrator fills in any finer details.

You keep your original real background, but also exist somehow simultaneously as this other version of yourself. This benefit lasts until you sleep.

If you desire, this may also slightly alter your appearance, matching your new background. You’re still identifiable as you, but might acquire a scar or remove one, change hairstyle or become slightly more attractive.

You are instinctively aware of the alterations that were necessary to complete this change, and they are usually unobtrusive. You acquire nothing else; for instance, gaining the noble’s background does not give you any more wealth or properties than you originally had. However, people are subtly affected by this alternate reality and will treat you in keeping with your new background.

After this action, the hourglass’s clockwork screeches to a halt, but returns to its normal function at the start of the next new moon.

After an aggressive campaign by an alliance of arcanoscience scholars of Pardwight University, folk skyseers, Beran philosophers, and Drakran economists, the nations of Risur, Ber, and Drakr all banned this device, warning of perilous consequences. However, followers of the Clergy – especially Ottoplismists – see it as an ideal representation of perfecting oneself, albeit temporarily. Elsewhere they are seen as curiosities only.