Crumenorix

The Crumenorix is an old and often overlooked magical item. This is exactly as its creators intended it. These shoulder bags or purses, as the common ilk refer to them as, are repositories of the detritus and arcana that magic users often carry. But do not be decieved, these are not junk sacks of spell components and moldy sandwiches. These are as intimately bonded to their creator as any grimoire of spells.

Halajaes, Director of the Royal Mageum

The Crumenorix appears to be a large shoulder bag or purse made of a durable if unattractive material. The most base and common are made of coarsely woven burlap, or canvas in coastal areas. The should strap is an integral part of the construction, as it provides strength to the sides and bottom of the crumenorix. These bags are most often natural colors, either undyed fabrics, or their color comes from inexpensive dies.

The main purpose of the Crumenorix is to carry special things. The magic of the purse protects its contents from all but the most determined of damage. Its contents would easily survive a wild horse chase, or mad flight through a crowded bazaar, but if used as a shield, things are going to be damaged.

• Magic Components - The original creators of the crumenorices had this as their main purpose. The purses could hold often volatile spell reagents or contraband spell components. The bag is easily overlooked, but this is also an inherent part of it's magic. This isn't the bag you are looking for, move along. The ingredients are well protected inside the bag, and unless placed under severe duress, they will not mix or interact with each other.

• Living Creatures - An aspiring sorceress-assassin used a crumenorix as a carrier for a large number of small but highly venomous serpents. Once released, the snakes caused no small amount of alarm, deaths, and royal terror. A creature, small sized, placed in the crumenorix will be reduced to a passive almost trance like state until it is removed. Once removed, it is restored to its normal vitality in a matter of minutes. A wizard could ferry his familiar around safely in such a bag should he find himself in a region unfriendly to magi.

• Incorporeal Entities - Just as living things can be placed in a crumenorix, bodiless creatures such as ghosts, demons, spirits, and other ephemeral things can be placed in the bag. This is a short term method of storage, and while a willing spirit can be contained indefinately, a hostile spirit can attempt to escape regularly, contesting wills with the cruminorix bearer. Some famous sorceress and wise women have kept things ranging from needle-bound demons to hearth spirits (house elf/boggans etc).

• Wee Folk - humanoids, such as fairies, pixies, brownies, littles, and the like (smurfs, lol) can turn the bag into a mobile home of sorts. While the population will be small, no more than 3 to 8 members, these weelings can do the bidding of the crumenorix bearer. This is a mutual relationship, the bearer takes care to not place them in undo danger, and they will scout, sneak, steal and otherwise do things that very small humanoids, often with wings, can do.

Plot Hooks and Purse Straps

The Courier - The PCs have been tasked with discovering how illegal Noggle Cap mushrooms keep showing up in the town market. The local constables havent been able to find out how the hallucinogenic aphrodesiac fungi keep showing up. The PCs get to track down a dodgy old witch who picks and sells the mushrooms on the sly.

The Courier II - The PCs are given a crumenorix to deliver to Mageus the Descriptive. If they look inside they find a back fills with glass ampuoles, sealed vessels, and other very fragile looking things. They now get to escort the relatively safe cargo through a goblin infested trade town and Falling Rocks Ravine.

A Missing Treasure - The PCs have been contracted to recover something of great value to the local Lady of the land. It seems that her Miniature Cerberian three headed dog has gone missing. The culprit is a local witch who posed as a scullery maid to 'rescue' the three headed toy dog.

The Six-Demon Bag - Mother Hecate carries a leather crumenorix bound with brass buckles. Inside she carries six demons, each bound to her will. These demons, ranging from a floating torso and head with its arms and legs reduced to sewn up stumps to a classical bat-winged pit fiend, do her bidding. Most of the time they are quiet, until someone makes a fuss, or the leathery old bag opens her leathery old bag to start some trouble.