1d20 Random Treasures From The Border of Reality Table For Your Old School Campaigns

Not all items from the dragon's hoard are as simple as they first appear. Many of these items are from far distant shores of reality where they've picked up more then their fair share of magick and weirdness.

Adventurers always need more loot, artifacts, and other items to generate an income for themselves. There are however items that come from the very edges of reality. These items have a fundamental residue of the dreams & nightmares of the places they've come through. How many countless hands of power & the fury of violence have been visited upon their various owners before your PC's even find them?


These items pass from one hand to another always passing into another hoard or finding their way through circumstances into the fingers of the greedy. There is a stench of destiny about them which means that there is a twenty percent chance of an NPC or even a lowly slave trying to murder a PC for possession of them. Some items have a 10% chance of being cursed with a geas about them or a blood curse upon them.


There are some items that have passed through the hands of wizards & mages that may have picked up some of their power and have a four percent chance of having 1d3 spells of first or second level attached to them. These are strictly up to the dungeon master to create or maintain. These spells may be an inherit ability or a one off such spell like effect.

1d20 Random Treasures & Items
From The Border of Reality Table

1. A silver chalice made from a giant mammal's horn wrought with alien scroll work & weirdly decorated with the leering faces of princes & demons. The thing is worth 7000 gold pieces and at night it sings with strangely haunting songs. 
2. A ring of brass, gold, and ivory with the head of a small boy wrought in it with rubies for eyes. These eyes leer at the owner & there is a feeling of an occult presence within the thing. 5000 gold pieces for this work from before the last Ice Age of Earth. 
3. A calendar made from the tusks of mammoths & volcanic gold that is warm to the touch the thing marks off strange events that do not conform the local space time continuum. Worth 7000 gold pieces because of the beautiful workmanship and characters of the piece. Sea water damage on the outer edges. 
4. Twelve statues of saints of no known religion with eyes of diamonds that stare into the owner's soul. The statues are used for some alien summoning ritual because of the weird occult diagrams on the base of the things. Worth 10,000 gold pieces to the right wizard or occult group. 
5. A gold torc of exceptional work wrought by small hands but with two exceptional emeralds on the ends. This piece has been worn thin at certain spots but there is evidence of a sword cut above one of the emeralds. There is a strange melancholy that hangs over the piece even as its worth a cool 6,000 gold to the right collector. A necromancer would highly prize the thing for strange and disturbing reasons. 
6. Green jade vase wax sealed containing the ashes of a long forgotten king, the king however is now a ghost who has advised countless adventurers in his undead existence. The vase is worth a cool 10,000 gold pieces because of its workmanship and the precious stones. The ghost is a fountain of adventuring possibilities. 
7. Ten stone tablets containing the collected erotic poems of a long forgotten people with several love enhancing spells worked in. They actually contain several alignments of stars for powerful rituals that enhance any spells with a 10% tacted onto the spell's effect's duration. They are worth 6000 gold pieces to the right collector or wizard. 
8. Thirteen gold and silver scrolls punched with the wisdom of a warrior prince of long lost Atlantis. The poems are dedicated to a long forgotten goddess of death enabling the reader to use speak with the dead two times per week. They are worth 7000 gold pieces because there are precious gems used to mark certain passages. 
9.  Two strange cut crystal gem like lens are actually the eyes of a long lost godling. These items can show the viewer their heart's desire but there is a specter of the lost godling looking for them. It will within 1d6 weeks try to murder the owner. 
10. A giant tusk of a walrus carved with hundreds of reliefs and scenes of necrotic rites and rituals. Worth 600 gold to the average collector the thing is actually a necromancer's book of ancient secrets and worth 3000 gold pieces to a grove of necromancers and shaman's. The thing whispers with the ghosts of all those who have been sacrificed upon it. 
11. Three what appear to be brass books contain 3000 plus weird astrological drawings and diagrams. These three books are actually silver so corroded that they appear to be brass because a fine coating of brass dust has settled on them. They are actually worth 8,000 gold pieces each and belonged to the Yithians. They contain the routes of ancient time tunnels throughout space. Anything placed near them will rust & decay 1d20 days as if exposed to the elements. 
12. A strangely wrought skull that looks like a child's skull but actually a bone joint of some massive animal carved into the shape of a skull. The mouth is a clever arrangement of bone hinges and carved gears. Anything placed within the mouth is devoured by a trapped hunger spirit. The thing whispers ancient curses and dread secret at night in the owner's dreams. Worth 7000 gold pieces to a necromancer or the murder of the owner by an assassin belonging to an inhuman tribe.  
13. Glass dagger containing seventy diamonds in the hilt, this dagger always points to the weakest point in local time space continuum. It can also be used to stab the shadow of anyone rooting them to the spot as if they were subject of a hold person spell. The dagger is worth 5000 gold pieces because of the diamonds but with its power's known it could be a fifty thousand gold piece treasure. But the dagger bares a curse of weird destiny about it. 
14. Carved hand of jade contains the soul of an ancient serpent men shaman of horrid aspect. His power is contained in the thing enabling its owner to shed their shape once per day. Worth 4000 gold pieces a group of assassins seeks the thing for a hideous purpose. 
15. Solid brick of fused gold that contains the wisdom of the Elder Things but its now only worth the forbidden wisdom activated by the bhole chants. Worth only 5000 gold pieces to the right collector the thing echoes with eerie energies that calls 1d4 alien ghosts to it. 
16. Box of strange nine inch pins of silver and platinum used in strange summoning rites. These pins are aligned to alien stars and worth 3000 gold pieces. They refer to a book of forbidden magick thought long lost in ancient Mu.  
17. Carved tendril bone from a dimensional shambler that enables its owner contact other plane once per week. There is a 4% chance of a dimensional shambler summoned to the owner's location to carry them off. A weird whistling seems to follow the owner just over their shoulder. The bone is worth 400 gold pieces as a curio. 
18. A giant key carved from the bone of an ancient dinosaur can be used to summon a weird Lovecraftian blob from between the stars. The key is made from bone but it enlaided with seventeen gold strips of pure gold and jet. The key can control the blob with a successful wisdom roll. Worth 5000 gold pieces there is a cult searching for this key. 
19. Giant whale bone charm is actually a ward against an aggressive and dangerous leader shoggoth from beyond our dimension. This horror was used to construct the worm hole passages through reality for the Elder Things. The charm has been dipped in pure silver and vibrates when the horror is nearby. Worth 4000 gold pieces to the right wizard.
20. Twenty weirdly wrought spheres of jet and jade control a star spawn of Cthulhu and their worth 10000 gold pieces as weapon of mass destruction.  

                                                                                      THE UNKNOWN

How strange to look upon the life beyond
Our human cognizance with so deep awe
And haunting dread; a sense as of remorse,
A looking-for of judgment, a great weight
Of things unknown to happen! We who live
Blindly from hour to hour in very midst
Of mysteries; of shapeless, changing glooms;
Of nameless terrors; issues vast and black;
Of airy whims, slight fantasies, and flights
That lead to unimaginable woe:
The unweighed word cloying the life of love;
One clod of earth outblotting all the stars;
Some secret, dark inheritance of will,
And the scared soul plunges to conscious doom!
Thou who hast wisdom, fear not Death, but Life!

HP Lovecraft