Mug of the Last Call

Aura faint transmutation and evocation; CL 5th
Slot —; Price 9,800 gp; Weight 2 lbs.

DESCRIPTION

This broad wooden tankard is fashioned from ancient dark-oak staves bound together by tarnished brass rings green with age and old moisture. Deep gouges, scorch marks, and knife scratches cover its exterior, while the handle bears the subtle impression of finger grooves worn into the wood by countless unseen hands. Despite appearing crude at first glance, the mug is unnaturally durable. No amount of ordinary force seems capable of cracking its body, and the smell of stale ale permanently lingers within its grain no matter how thoroughly it is cleaned.

The Mug of the Last Call functions as a +1 light mace when wielded in combat. It may be used by any creature proficient with simple weapons without penalty. While held, the mug always feels comfortably balanced regardless of how full or empty it appears.

Three times per day, when the wielder successfully strikes an opponent with the mug, the wielder may command the tankard to erupt outward with explosive force. The struck creature suffers an additional 2d6 points of sonic damage as the mug emits a thunderous tavern-crack resembling dozens of mugs slamming against wooden tables simultaneously. All creatures adjacent to the target must succeed on a DC 14 Fortitude save or become deafened for 1d4 rounds. The save DC is Constitution-based.

In addition, whenever the wielder confirms a critical hit with the Mug of the Last Call, frothing spectral ale spills impossibly from the mug’s interior and splashes across nearby enemies. All hostile creatures within 10 feet must succeed on a DC 14 Reflex save or fall prone as the floor beneath them becomes slick with magically conjured alcohol for 1 round. Creatures immune to being tripped are unaffected. The liquid vanishes immediately afterward, leaving behind only the smell of old taverns and wet wood.

The mug is considered magically full of weak ale at all times. The liquid is safe to drink, mildly bitter, and perpetually lukewarm.

LORE

Stories concerning the Mug of the Last Call are unusually widespread among dockworkers, caravan guards, mercenaries, and retired adventurers. Most taverns located near dangerous roads seem to possess at least one elderly patron willing to swear that they once saw the mug firsthand during a brawl that escalated catastrophically beyond all reason. Curiously, no two accounts entirely agree on the mug’s appearance, though all describe the same terrible impact sound when it strikes flesh.

According to popular rumor, the first Mug of the Last Call belonged to a massive caravan guard named Brannik Voss, who supposedly defended an isolated roadside inn against a gang of raiders armed with axes and hunting bows. Having been disarmed during the fighting, Brannik allegedly seized the nearest available object - his own ale mug - and continued fighting with such ferocious desperation that the terrified raiders fled believing the inn itself had become haunted. Whether the story is true remains uncertain, though many surviving versions claim the original mug absorbed years of violence, laughter, spilled drink, and dying breath until it developed its own strange enchantment.

Among professional adventurers, the mug possesses a strangely affectionate reputation despite its brutality. Veterans often describe it as “honest.” Unlike ornate enchanted blades forged for kings or jeweled staffs crafted by archmages, the Mug of the Last Call feels profoundly ordinary. It is a common object transformed by accumulated desperation, survival, exhaustion, and stubborn refusal to lose one more fight. Some scholars of sympathetic magic argue this emotional saturation is precisely what gives the item its power.

There are darker tavern tales as well. A handful of innkeepers insist the mug occasionally refills itself with beverages that reflect nearby tragedy. Before riots, murders, or disastrous storms, the ale within supposedly darkens into the color of dried blood and tastes faintly of saltwater and ash. Most dismiss these stories as drunken embellishment, though experienced barkeepers often grow visibly uncomfortable whenever the subject arises.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, bull’s strength, shatter, grease; Cost 4,900 gp, 392 XP

Kelwyn’s Notes

Civilization is held together far less by grand monuments than by ordinary objects that survive alongside ordinary people. Scholars prefer to imagine history carried by crowns, sacred swords, and jeweled relics displayed beneath cathedral light, but this is vanity speaking. Most of humanity’s actual endurance occurs beside rough tables stained by spilled drink, inside overcrowded taverns where frightened laborers pretend bravery for one more evening, or along muddy roads where exhausted guards pray merely to survive until dawn. The Mug of the Last Call belongs to that quieter category of artifact - not glorious, but stubborn.

There is something deeply revealing about an enchanted object born not from ambition, but from refusal. One senses no hunger for conquest within this mug. No grand prophecy coils beneath its brass rings. It carries instead the emotional residue of desperate people forced to continue standing after reaching the point where collapse would have seemed reasonable. Such objects often become more emotionally dangerous than openly malevolent relics because they encourage a very human illusion - that endurance itself is always virtuous regardless of cost.

Taverns possess a peculiar spiritual gravity in nearly every civilization I have studied. They are places where grief briefly removes its boots and sits among the living pretending not to be noticed. Soldiers laugh too loudly there because silence would allow memory to speak more clearly. Laborers drink because exhaustion demands ritual. Wanderers gather because loneliness becomes easier to survive when shared beside candlelight and poor music. A mug such as this absorbs those emotions over decades the same way old wood absorbs smoke.

One cannot help but admire the object while simultaneously fearing what it says about humanity. We are a species capable of converting even our fatigue into weaponry. Given sufficient hardship, people will eventually raise whatever rests nearest to hand and continue fighting anyway. Sometimes that stubbornness preserves civilization. Sometimes it merely prolongs suffering long enough for future tragedies to inherit the survivors. The mug does not distinguish between these outcomes. It merely waits patiently beside the next warm fire, eternally prepared for another last call.