Lamp of the Shroud
by Karl David BrownLegendary Wondrous Item (requires attunement)
“This disgusting lamp has several powers, depending on the level of the character employing it and the fuel used to feed it. …” Top Ballista Adventure Book.
The Lamp as written is powerful but the amount of time required to manifest its powers limits its usefulness. Here is a version in line with 5th edition rules and guidance for creating magic items.
Lighting, extinguishing, or changing the lamp’s oil all require an action.
The lamp is dedicated to sinister Immortals of death and its use is an evil prayer to those entities.
• Once per day you can burn the lamp with regular lamp oil for 15 rounds. At the end of the character’s turn on each of these rounds the lamp casts the spell animate dead creating one undead each round with no further action from the character. None of a character’s spell slots are consumed
• If a half-pint of humanoid corpse fat is used as fuel then the ability above does not need to have corpses present. The oily smoke of the lamp coalesces to magically create the bodies.
• Once a day, burning the lamp for seven minutes requiring a pint of oil rendered from humanoid corpse fat. At the end of each minute the lamp summons a shadow which remains for 24 hours then vanish. Any undead summoned will automatically be loyal to their creator and controlled as per the animate dead spell.
• Once a day, burning the lamp for ten minutes requiring a pint of oil rendered from humanoid corpse fat summons 1 wraith which remain for 24 hours then vanish. Any undead summoned will automatically be loyal to their creator and controlled as per the animate dead spell.
• Twice a week fuelling the lamp with a mix of a pint of humanoid corpse oil, purified from three times as much fat, and a fetid incense blessed by a cleric of an evil god (worth 1000gp) and burning the lamp for an hour will cause it to cast the Create Undead spell at 9th level. No corpses are required. The oily smoke of the lamp coalesces to magically create the bodies.
Really though the lamp is not really designed for player use and is more of a macguffin to enable the villain’s plan.
I’ll be solo play testing this soon.