Price 750 gp
To look at it, a spider thief is just a collection of eight to twelve mechanical claws around a central mechanical iris that serves as a sort of eye. The whole thing often painted black or grey. The genius of it is that it moves very silently and its claw-legs are capable of climbing any surface, even along ceilings and sometimes glass, because of a slightly stickiness at the tip of each claw. When not climbing or moving silently through a room, spider thieves can roll up into a ball and roll like a pillbug. This seems especially effective on slopes and stairs, where it allows them to “run” at rate of 160 feet per round.
Use and Powers
The spider thief is a sort of a mechanical mage hand with a kleptomanical streak. Spider thieves love to take small objects and inspect them, even when not ordered to do so, and they “worry” at stones, bits of bright cloth, coins, and the like.
A spider thief responds only to its maker and those who know its secret command word. It ignores all others. It knows really just two commands: “Bring me (X)” and “Give this to (Y)”. When ordered to, a spider thief can go out and carry away objects weighing up to 1 pound. If carefully instructed, it can also carry an object weighing up to 1 pound to a particular location.
A spider thief only fights in self-defense, and only when trapped and unable to escape.
Many attempts have been made to make a spider thief into a spy. They seem ideally suited for the role, but their animating spirits always seem entirely uninterested in the task. Spider thieves sent as observers usually return with reports of what treasures they saw at a location (from buttons to gemstones), what interesting garbage they found on their journey to and from a location, and so on.
When the container holding the tiny elements of the universal key is opened, they rush out faster than water, with an air-like whistle and begins its work: to unlock, unfasten, unbolt, unscrew, unnail, unbuckle, untie, unstopper, and unglue any objects or items held together in the area of the swarm. It cannot, however, reduce masonry into its component bricks (buildings are simply too big for it, and it seems that the universal key will misidentify them as natural terrain).
The key does not affect living matter, but does affect inert items held by a living creature (such as shields, belts, potion bottles, armor buckles, shoelaces, buttons, etc). In particular, a universal key is known for disconnecting each and every ring in a suit of chain from all other rings, a rather spectacular sight as months of smithwork are literally unraveled in a single round. Creatures in its area are entitled to a Reflex save to avoid the affect entirely. This is not a magical effect, however.
The universal key cannot open any magically sealed lock, but it can undo the physical aspect of whatever is affected by the magic. For example, if a universal key encountered a door with arcane lock cast on it, the key could not unlock the door. It would, however, remove the hinges from the door and possibly detach the lock itself from the door if that were possible.
While a universal key cannot be ordered to fight, it can be ordered to move in a certain direction. Any creature making a successful Charisma check (DC 14) can order the key to move in a particular direction, but not against a particular foe. If the check is successful, the key moves in that direction immediately and cannot be commanded again until it has spent a round unlocking or unbinding objects in the first square in that direction where it finds such things (even if that is not the square that the commander wanted the key to reach). It unbinds all objects in a total of four of its spaces, and then it seeks a small container to hibernate in, closing the stopper behind itself until released again. It can be activated once per day.
The Sorting Beast is an accountant's best friend, a clockwork device that divides coins, gems, and other treasures into neat piles, and that can detect and identify magical items. Sometimes it is a little too obsessed with counting.
Appearance
The sorting beast is a six-legged clockwork creature with eyes and antennae at both ends. It has a set of legs on both ends, and either set can manipulate and hold objects up to 30 lbs in weight. The more complex sensors are largely located in the central "thorax" of the device, and include scales, jeweler's lenses and light projecting lenses, small hammers, tuning forks, a tiny gas "puffer" for taking samples of powders, a dipole lightning generator, a filtering system for liquids, scissors for cutting samples, and a sonic thumping resonance device. Most of these are entirely inscrutable to people used to simple machines; not even an artificer is likely to be 100% familiar with all of them.
A small inkwell and metal nib are attached somewhere within the main body of the sorting beast; this scribe writes appraisal results for both gemstones and magical items on strips of paper that it drops near the sorted items.
Sorting beasts move very quickly, using their "puffer" to blow small coins and gems into piles, moving their metal claw-hands in a blur of speed to sort larger objects, and occasionally making strange noises or erupting in sparks or fire as they test various materials.
The sorting beast has AC 14, hardness 3, 10 hit points, a +7 bonus on all saving throws, and speed of 10 ft. (rolling). It has no attacks.
Use and Powers
The sorting beast is created with a +10 bonus to the Appraise skill. It sorts all non-magical objects presented to it into stacks by value: all copper, silver, gold, and platinum coins are sorted and counted (and a small paper label is printed totaling the coinage), all gems are judged by weight and quality (taking 1 minute each) and again sorted to piles worth up to 10 gp, 100 gp, 1000 gp, and more than 1000 gp, with paper labels. The various raw materials, spices, wines, works of art, jewelry, and other items are sorted next, by value in tens, hundreds, and thousands.
Finally, the magical items are dropped into a pile and the sorting beast holds up each one so that its owner can direct whether it should perform a "deeper analysis" consisting of an identify spell cast at 10th caster level. If a deeper analysis is not required, then the sorting beast uses metallic probes, tasters, small jets of fire, bending tests, and other mechanical-magical methods to perform its analysis, generally without harming the item being inspected. The results of either analysis are printed in gold and red inks on fine paper strips in a strange code. Anyone reading the slip must make a Spellcraft check (DC 15) to interpret them properly. On a roll of a natural 1, the results are completely misinterpreted with a false meaning. The sorting beast can only use its identify power 5 times per day.
The sorting beast damages a magical item rarely, but it does happen. Each item examined using mechanical-magical means must make a saving throw (DC 8). On a failure, the item suffers some cosmetic damage and the item must make a second save (DC 8). A second failure results in the item being broken.