Herr Streiff's illusion-making pendant

Table of Contents

Artefact analysis

Herr Streiff's pendant

The magic in Herr Streiff's pendant is exceptional and I've rarely seen it's like before. Thankfully he let me examine it.

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Description

A delicate piece in white gold with a big white pearl in its centre and delicate threads of metal making a hexagon around it. On one side of the pendant, white opals are arranged around the pearl, on the other it's white beryllonite stones. Delicate runes are engraved around them.

Magic

The magic is intricate and difficult to analyse. The manner in which the runes are arranged follows the general shape of a protection ward, but the way they go about ensuring this protection is unusual. What's affected by the protection is only the light that travels through the area.

Purpose

It warps people's perception of what's in a given perimeter. It's also linked to another artefacts that its user must be wearing at the same time and that's used as a targetting device to determine who's affected by the magic. A control switch is also build in among the runes on the locket to activate it.

How it works

It control the way light is reflected off its perimeter, thus affecting what people see inside (e.g. changing the face of its wearer, or making them invisible). It needs to be programmed beforehand.

Applications

It's obviously crafted to work well with several other artefacts such as shields. However, its magic will clash with the focused energy of weapons or be messed up if magic is pushed through it too quickly.

Users

This is an artefact primarily made for a spy or assassin, to allow for infiltration. Bodyguards might also be able to use it for defence to hide their presence or the person they protect. It's useless for soldiers.

Limits in its illusions?

I'm actually not sure what are the limits of the illusions this pendant can make. Full invisibility, while possible in theory, seems very difficult to achieve in practice. Any illusions that are too different from what hides underneath them are also likely to be weak and easy to detect.
The main application really seems to be to change someone's face or the colour of their clothes. Perfect for infiltration and impersonation or to quickly disappear in a crowd.

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Given Herr Streiff's role as the master warder the Austrians sent to be in the entourage of the Chinese envoys, it makes sense that he would do double duty as a bodyguard if necessary, what with a Dark Lord lurking around and all.
And if he uses his presence in Lille to do a bit of spying, the Austrians are certainly not going to object...