Secret Chest

Secret Chest

CL 17 Slotless Item • Moderate Conjuration

Cost: 195,000 gp

Weight: 1 lbs.

Family: Portable Hole

Portable Holes are massively useful devices despite their considerable drawbacks, and come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Most portable holes look like pieces of cloth, ranging from 3 feet across when unfolded, to 10 feet across. At the very highest levels of usefulness, they look like little boxes, finely decorated and often with keys or sigils or other means of securing them.

All portable holes open into an extradimensional space, of varying sizes. A given hole always opens into the same extradimensional space. Portable holes are slow and cumbersome to access, and can thus never be used during combat. The chaos and fuss of battle makes them impossible to activate during a fight. Even more difficulty comes from the fact that they require a smooth, flat surface to be laid down upon or pressed up against. This restriction means these portable holes can't be used in many dungeons or out in the wilderness, as a sufficiently flat, smooth surface can be nearly impossible to find.

Despite these many limitations, portable holes are eagerly sought after, because the space they access is considerably more stable and larger than most other magical storage devices. All portable holes will hold an unlimited amount of weight, being only restricted by the volume of the material within them. A portable hole could be filled to the brim with a thousand tons of Dural stone, then folded up and tucked away into your pocket. This amazing ability is extremely valuable for most adventurous sorts, as most adventurers collect 'stuff' like a velvet shirt attracts cat hairs.

Each variant of the portable hole has different limitations on how much stuff can be stored inside of it. Attempting to put more volume into a hole than it is capable of storing causes the item to become fixed in place, unable to be picked up and stored away because stuff is literally spilling out of the opening. If the surface upon which a portable hole is deployed is Sundered while the hole is deployed upon it, then the hole becomes Broken, and the items within cannot be retrieved until it is repaired. If a hole has its substrate surface sundered while it is over-full, it is again Broken but 20-50 percent of the value of the items within is lost. The details are left to the GM, but this is extremely unpleasant, so don't leave your portable hole open while a siege weapon is being used.

Important Note: A portable hole can be stored in a Bag of Holding, although why you'd bother is a bit of a mystery. Getting your portable hole back out of a Bag of Holding can be a bit of a chore. If you try to put a portable hole in a Magic Haversack it breaks the haversack, so don't do that. Portable holes can be taken into other planes of existence, including demiplanes, without issue. A portable hole of any sort can never be stored inside another portable hole. No matter how cool it might seem to have an Inception-like nested array of Ghost Rooms ten holes deep, no, it just doesn't work like that.

...unless the GM decides that sounds cool, and sets up a whole dungeon that way. The GM always has the final say!

A Secret Chest is designed for the adventurer who wants to avoid prying eyes. These tiny devices can be made to look like nearly any mundane object, like a shoe buckle, pipe, comb, lockpick, writing pen, glass vial, goblet, table knife, etc, etc. If anyone except the owner attempts to discern the true nature of a Secret Chest, they must make a Perception check against either a Stealth or Sleight of Hand roll made by the owner of the device, with a +3 Circumstance Bonus to the owner's roll. (It is recommended that the GM inform the player to make such a check and then write the result down for future use as required.)

When unfolded and carefully smoothed flat against a firm, smooth surface, a Secret Chest activates to reveal an intricate space five feet on a side, with a myriad of cubbyholes to hold various goodies. Any sturdy table or vanity works well for this purpose, but a smooth wall or floor or other large flat stone surface is also workable. In an unimproved location, it is likely that a Secret Chest can't be opened successfully. No creature may enter or hide within a Secret Chest when it is closed.

A Secret Chest is capable of carrying up to 125 cubic feet of material, with no weight limit. When folded up, it weighs only a pound. Picking up and folding the device takes a minute or so out of combat, but the only way to quickly disable one is to Sunder the surface its deployed against. For this reason, tables are less desirable than heavy stone surfaces.

The owner of this magic item must wear it continuously for 24 hours to attune it to their aura, and until that time has passed, it provides no benefits to the wearer.

Creation: Creator (Feat), Bailiwick Check (DC 44 (10 + double CL)), Bright (tier 3) remnant, An item symbolic of the enchantment, 97,500 gp (minus cost of symbolic item).