A lot depends on what forms of thaumaturgy he specializes in, as well as the paradigm (for lack of a better word) he exercises it through.
Just for example, here's two different versions of a thaumaturge who has a means of resisting ambient environmental hazards (inclement weather, heat or cold, etc), a means of giving himself soak dice against physical attacks, and a means of attacking others.
- A ghost-worshiping shaman paints himself in blessed pyre ash to make his body temporarily become as indifferent to the harshness of his environment as a corpse, wears a "shirt" of scrimshaw plates bound together with woven hair (all taken from the remains of soldiers, martyrs, ascetics, and others whose lives left cadavers with strong essences of resilience and perseverance) to ward himself against the assaults of men and beasts, and carries a leaden mace that was forged in a fire fed by spare logs from funerary pyres, quenched with blood shed in battle, and then ceremonially "buried" in cold earth for five seasons, wrapped in a shroud inscribed with prayers honoring great warriors of the Underworld; the necrotic Essence within it acts as a subtle poison upon those he strikes, chilling the very blood in their veins.
Due to the fact most of his power is bound up in talismans, the bulk of his "tools" are more Essence receptacles or totemic items that reinforce his connection to the Underworld, ways of bolstering and maintaining the talismans he has, than they are things which are meant to achieve results on their own.
However, he is still a thaumaturge, and so he keeps a motley collection of simple equipments: pouches of salt, herbs, and other pure things for making temporary wards against unquiet spirits; packets of incense which can be used for rituals to lure in and bewitch weak creatures of Death; a sealed amphora of wine made from shadowland fruits as an offering should he meet an ancestral ghost or other prominent Dead figure, and a modest set of picks, mallets, knives, and charcoal sticks for minor works like preparing corpses, presiding over funerals, or authoring prayers.
Also, at the insistence of his nigh-paranoid mentor, he secrets a single lead curse tablet within a seam of his cloak, along with a black iron nail with which to affix it. Thus far, he has not been pushed to a point where it was needed, but he understands its potential utility.
- Another thaumaturge carries a wooden backpack filled with dozens of little clay jars, each sealed with beeswax. Within them is a dizzying assortment of powders, pastes, unguents, and other materials which he uses in his work. Most are necessary ingredients for rituals that invoke least elementals of the air, but others carry power in and of themselves - and one jar holds the ingredients for a noxious grey tea which he drinks every fortnight, to maintain the energies he has bound to own flesh.
Provided his jars, time, and access to a workspace under the open sky, he can coax a fair wind or quiet an ill one, read fortunes from the patterns certain powders make on the ground when blown by an eastern breeze, and do other such simple workings. Some of the jars' contents, the ones needed for his most potent feats, are stranger.
When traveling in the South, or through a rainstorm, or in other such unpleasant climes, he breaks the seal on a bottle filled with the collected breath of certain elementals and recites an old, old poem from the North, and the Essence-rich winds shape themselves into a canopy around him that cools him when it is warm, warms him when it is cool, and thus keeps him comfortable in any normal environment.
Unlike the shaman, he carries no arms or armor, for he long ago trapped a flicker of wind from the Pole of Air inside his lungs, and with it he can spit forth vicious, freezing gales that knock arrows from their course and turn men to ice-wreathed corpses.
See what I mean?
