Exchange of Realities

A lot of us have a disproportionate focus on items that could in some way be our undoing. We put most of our power into magic items, gain apparent immortality by sticking bits of our soul into something else, or just end up on the wrong end of items that were designed to destroy us. To call the presence of these items in our stories a nuisance would be a massive understatement.

But there are workarounds. Always, there are workarounds. Seal the item behind a mass of layered wards and defenses, guarded by creatures who have no name but “Ack!” because that’s all that most who run into them have time to say before their inevitable gruesome ends. Make it something completely nondescript, and hide it among other nondescript things (and for extra credit, make it small, so it’s easier to lose even after being found). Put it somewhere so obvious that nobody would think to look there. Incorporate decoys.

If you have a choice in the form the item will take, and people don’t know what it’s supposed to be, you’ve already got an advantage. Use it. Make the item as mundane as it can be while still fitting in with whatever’s going to be around it: on the one hand, a stone of significant value carved with mystic runes is going to look downright odd on a riverbank, but on the other, a nondescript pebble in a mosaic full of priceless gems is going to stick out just as badly. Short version: the item doesn’t have to be average by item standards, just average relative to its surroundings. And if it’s one of those items that require a certain site or conditions for their destruction, you may want to consider making it unwieldy, or heavy, or in some other way if not nonportable then at least hard to carry around the countryside without someone wondering what the big thing under the tarp is.

And while there’s a value to hiding your item in such plain sight that it honestly never would occur to anyone to look for it there, most of us aren’t very good at that. If you don’t think you can pull that kind of hiding place off, stick to places that people who know you wouldn’t immediately think of when trying to figure out where you’d hide something. It’s like knowing not to use your birthday for your locker combination, after all, or your favorite weapon’s name for a password. If the hiding place you’re considering was the site of one of your greatest victories, or your old childhood home—don’t use it. If you want to hide your item in the very heart of your keep, consider shifting it a couple rooms to the left. If it’s well known that you are the only one who has returned alive from a certain place, and you are considering stashing your item there, for the Dark Powers’ sakes reconsider!

Ensure there are decoys. This can just be a fact about the environment (where else would you hide a red rock but among red rocks?), but it can also be actively created similar items, that look and feel like they could be your item even to magical senses but aren’t your item. For extra credit, make those the items with the fabled improbable quests to find them (remember that last place you don’t hide your item? Sticking a decoy there instead is guaranteed hero-bait). Not only will it flush out your potential enemies, but it might even do away with a few of them in the process as they die of the natural results of going into places that should by all expectations kill them. (But only a few. These are, after all, protagonists.) For added confusion factor, make the fakes look more “authentic” than the real one does. And even if this is one of those items that you have to wield to use the full power of, decoys are still a possibility; who’s going to notice that the hand in your pocket is rubbing a stone or fingering a bauble when your other hand is holding aloft something that reeks of magic and distorts the very air around it with its wrongness?

And then there’s the most difficult part of the operation: keep your surveillance on it distant and limited. Or, in layman’s terms, don’t check on it both regularly and personally. After all, you’re probably high profile, and if you’re constantly stopping by a certain location, people will slowly get the impression that something there might be important to you. (If you must stop by regularly, at least addict yourself to a local candy or something. Please.) I’ll bet you’re already realizing how that kind of impression can go wrong—or how it can be turned to your advantage.

Last but not least, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that if an item you depend on can only be destroyed in a certain place, or even if you just want people to think that that item can only be destroyed in a certain place, keep that place properly guarded! More powerful beings than you have been defeated through neglecting those sorts of contingencies.

In sum, when it comes to item-based weaknesses, be subtle, stay canny, and know how to draw attention to something else. You never know when that will be what saves your life.

(The Generic Villain speaks out and takes questions; leave a comment, or just check out the other posts.)