(* or **, not sure yet) Bacchanal Goblet
Origin: Many are the Tokens that are obscured by the mists of time and rumor. An easy guess when one knows what it does would be that it was a themed True Fae. Just as the Civil War seemed to excite certain Keepers into recreating the slaughter in their own realm for their own amusement, so did the coming of Prohibition give some Keepers ideas, both then and long after the fact. But in this case, to the learned Changeling scholar the origins are quite clear. In San Francisco, a city that was never even touched by Prohibition, there was a certain powerful Changeling, part of the courtless faction that was rather large at the time, after the collapse of a non-seasonal system left many stranded.
Her name was Aniseed, a flowering fairest with a love for parties and drink, but strange and occult politics. But what was most important was that in those days drink couldn't be trusted. Less so there than elsewhere, but often the hard liquor that clubs had was smuggled and then mixed and adulterated, and perhaps it was that frustration that spawned the Token, though she clearly did not choose to make it, and it eventually would cause her great harm.
From her it passed to several others, and now might be found anywhere in the continental United States, in the possession of some lucky, or unlucky, reveler.
Effect: The cup has two effects, both quite interesting. When a drink that is offered by someone else is poured into it, in a case where the other person has made a claim, explicit or implicit, as to what it is, it can tell if that person is a liar. If a person pours mixed shit and says it's Jack Daniels, the cup feels warm to the touch, and the person who spent the glamour implicitly knows that the alcohol was not what was promised.
It then converts the alcohol into what it truly should be, but only if the false drink was poured to deceive the buyer or receiver [1]. Each new drink would require a new application of glamour to prime it, but for its first owner and many afterwards, this was perfect as a way to make sure the night got off to a good start. Which was nice, since...
Drawback: The next morning, whether the user even drank the alcohol converted, and regardless (in fact unrelated) to how many drinks they took, the user has a raging hangover, the sort that can ruin an entire morning and should be accompanied by a somewhat steep penalty to all actions. It's the mother of all headaches, the kind that makes you regret all of your sins. And yet, if you're going to have the headache...why not have the fun?[2]
Catch: For each time the mortal (or Changeling low on glamour or not trusting his Wyrd) uses it, the next day he finds himself vomiting heavily, and he suffers one point of bashing damage that heals as if it were lethal. His insides come up and for days afterwards he's shaky. This stacks, and if all health boxes are filled with damage, then he has vomited until he has passed out on the floor, and is probably in for a rude awakening.
Afterlife: After Prohibition, most of its uses were done with. Some who held it in the years afterwards were wine snobs who used it to fight against the tide of alcohol that claims to be the vintage of such and such a year, but is reality watered down.
And there are historians and other figures among Changelings who think it a lovely piece of history to own...and never use, of course.
But the greatest use was one that didn't really occur to that many people at the time. Among a certain paranoid set who nonetheless had to drink with enemies, its ability to clear out poisoned drinks (if the poison was in the bottle and not added afterwards while they were looking away) of their effects was deemed worth the miserable next morning. And the fact that it told the user when this happened meant that it was perfect for uncovering assassination attempts, at least certain types of attempts.
In this guise it has seen use down to the modern day, though currently it is likely in the hands of an interested collector.
[1] This is a way so that someone can't say, "This is Thomas Jefferson's wine" and then wink and thereby let the Changeling try something like that. The syntax here is weird, I know.
[2] That's about two-thirds of the point of the drawback. It encourages absolute excess in anyone using it, and the penalty doesn't stack, so use it as many times as you want in a night. Destroy your liver, destroy your life, what does it matter, because you're getting the hangover anyways, so might as well do the 'fun' stuff too. It's designed for that sort of fatalistic, throw everything away, drinking.
*****
So, I decided to start small with a Token. I need to decide the cost, and I still need to figure out just what the penalties for a hangover are, but I hope you enjoyed reading this.
The 'Afterlife' section is something I'll do for all of these sections, explaining how they might be used or show up after the 1920s, when they are set. In the case of people (who aren't vampires) it might not go all the way until the modern day, but I'll at least try to give a view of things so that someone could tear it out from the Roaring Twenties and use it if they were so inclined.
So, thoughts? Next I'll do a character, though I need to decide which one. I have a few ideas. A vampire of the Ordo, a Hunter based off of a real person, and a Mage Bootlegger/Rum Runner who runs more than just Rum.
