Magic Item: Saint Iriabel's Censer of Alliance

Tabletop Terrors is hosting this month's RPG Blog Carnival, with the theme of 'Rethinking Encounters': including rethinking encounter mechanics, making them memorable, redefining encounters, and creating items associated with encounters...

And I've found that if I don't take advantage of some inspiration as it strikes, it tends to dissipate into the aether.

So here ya go - 15 minutes of inspiration and Wikipedia....

Source

Saint Iriabel's Censer of Alliance

The Way-Priest Gegar Iriabel was a missionary-explorer to the Chaos-lands that encroached on (and periodically overran) the boundaries of the tamed lands.  Rather than simply smiting Chaos as he found it, he was known to proselytize to the 'Darkness' and occasionally found some success, as evidenced by his periodic entourage of hobgoblins and orcs.

For Iriabel found it much more profitable, and less hazardous, to create small alliances, or sway factions within Chaos forces to either support him, or at least allow him passage in his greater crusading goals.  These goals often included recovering hostages, retrieval of lost or stolen artifacts and relics, and re-sanctifying desecrated places along the edges of civilization.

In this pursuit, he fortified his own faith and powers of persuasion with a chain censer blessed to magnify the powers of a wandering priest in hostile lands, such as himself...

The Censer was made of silver worked with rare examples of lapis and topaz.  Swung by a short chain while burning certain blessed charcoals and incenses, the Censer creates the following effects for a Law-aligned cleric (or class allowed use of cleric magic items):

• +2 on reaction rolls with potentially hostile or unknown parties.  Irabel blessed the device to have its greatest benefit when encountering an unknown individual or group in unfriendly territory.  While the Censer may not have the outward benefit of a charm spell, Irabel found that, along with his own powers of persuasion, such an amplifier was quite suitable to create voluntary temporary allies.

The Censer grants bonuses to the following common encounter-based spells

• An additional +1 bonus to saves (and corollary -1 penalty to chaos forces) Protection from Evil, (For Protection from Evil, 10' Radius, the radius if doubled)
• An additional +1 bonus for a character under the benefits of a Bless spell
• An additional -1 penalty to creatures affected by a Prayer spell 

Other bunuses granted by the Censer include:

• +1 on undead turning rolls
• While the Censer is burning, any ally within 10 feet is protected from contracting disease due to its protective smoke and fumes. 

Bonuses will last while the Censer is burning,  The Censer will burn for 1d2+1 hours with each charge of charcoal and incense.

After Iriabel's death and canonization, the Censer was housed in his fortress-monastery in the northwest of the kingdom,  Ironically, the monastery was overrun by Chaos warbands a decade after his death, and the Censer itself was stolen away.  Perhaps a brave and clever party will seek to recover it...