A small millstone, as far as millstones go, made by a wizard for his clerical friend to ensure he was always able to make fresh bread, wherever his travels took him.
Hanetta's Millstone is indeed a magical item crafted by a wizard, Stovilmer by name, for a clerical friend of his named Dinalla. She always made her first priority on returning from adventuring making herself some fresh bread. She simply could not stand the hardtack of travel rations and actual bread would rarely survive two days of traveling given the overstuffed packs and surprising wet, dusty or flammable encounters adventurers have. Dinalla was a priestess of Hanetta, a hearth goddess, and Dinalla was most adept and comfortable demonstrating her piety by baking bread, especially challenging while traveling. Even taking sacks of flour were challenging, as it would get wet, spill, or have to be left behind in a chase.
Hanetta’s Millstone is no lightweight object either. The stone is about as wide as a person chest, as thick as their hand on the sides with a trough ground out of the center part open on one end. A smaller stone about as big around as someone’s forearm and wide enough to fill the trough from side to side is used to grind the grain placed inside the trough into safe, edible flour. The magic of this millstone is that it doesn’t have to be traditional grains.
Hanetta’s Millstone has the ability to grind any solid object into safe, edible, tasty flour suitable for baking, frying or cooking on a griddle. Aside from grains, the millstone has been used on bones, stones, dirt, shoes, wood, bark, insects, and small animals. Whatever is ground up by the millstone turns into flour. This flour was made by magic, however, so it may not look or taste the same as conventional bread when cooked. For example, Stonebread often does not rise much, producing a loaf that is only a couple of fingers high with a grey, floury dusting on the top.
No matter the substance, the bread created from the resulting flour is safe, edible and tasty.
Nefarious individuals have attempted to make poisoned bread by grinding poisonous substances or creatures up with the millstone, but the resulting bread was in no way dangerous.
Hanetta’s Millstone is best used in a semi-permanent camp or similar encampment, as it’s overall bulkiness makes it prohibitive to use on a nightly basis.
An original item, provisions are often a forgotten part of adventuring. I would have like some more details in the description, this can not to just plain stone, and maybe some unique recipes that can only be made with this magical mill. Gold bread for the king, bone cookies for the necromancer?
Nice and safe and tasty.
I like it. Simple, useful, sentimental, and not at all overpowering. How big an object will fit into it? If someone's hand is caught in it, will the millstone magically keep grinding and pull them in or does it require manual turning of a crank? If gold is ground up, will the resulting bread be a sparkling glitter-gold bread?
As strange as it sounds, I could see this item as a way to "destroy" an indestructible evil artifact. The artifact wouldn't be destroyed; it would just change forms to flour and thereafter baked into safe, edible, and tasty bread. "Give us the Conqueror's evil Medallion of Malice, or we will kill you and take it anyway!" "I ground it into flour to make my bread! What now, punk?"
Nice item. Items like this are more common in the mytho-historical record than the uber-swords. I read once a myth about a viking Grotte (I think) who had mill stone that would turn anything into anything. Eventually the stone was captured and the naive new owner asked for salt. Of course things went wrong and now the oceans are salty. Then there was the Strega Nona's pasta pot. You stone here will be a nice item for players because it doesn't have a down side or relgious trappings. I can see the players messing with it.
Excitable Player: 'If we hook this up to a wind mill and maybe a sand chute, we could make a kiling selling grain.'
Roleplaying Player: 'By the Gods dear sir, you would take Hannetta's blessings to all men and use it for such base self-advancement.'
Meta-player Number 1: 'Yeah, if we do that the GM will have us drown in grain or something.'
This is why we can't have nice things
I want this to be the focus of a save-the-town quest. Everyone is starving, quickly! Find and lug the heavy stone object through the dungeon, across the rickety canyon bridge (WHUMP!), over the lake in the leaky boat (*gurgle*), up the hill, up the hill again, (Damn you Sisyphus!) et cetera. It makes me snigger with evil DM delight.
A really nice utility item. Quite worthy of being the object of a mission to retrieve it.
Good stuff!