Extradimensional Safe (Magic Item)

Jon McSpereson was a wizard who was extraordinarily fond of making puzzle-boxes-plain, nonmagical puzzle-boxes. Generally, he just gave them away to friends and family, curious to see how long each box took to solve. He became known (perhaps rather infamously) for the intricate and devious nature of his puzzles.
Thus, it seemed almost natural when a proverbial tall, dark stranger appeared at McSpereson's door one day. With a flourish, he set a purse on the table and said, “There's fifty grand in cut stones here. It's yours with a catch. Design a safe I can't break into and you can keep the bag, old man. Build your safe well, ‘cause I'll be back in a year. Then we'll see if it can keep your stones safe.” With that audacious challenge, he strode out the door.
Fifty grand in untraceable gems was no small amount of money and McSpereson was determined to keep it. Finally, after several sleepless weeks, he hit upon a plan.
The safe is a decorative block of wood, the size of a small jewelry box. There is no apparent hinge or lid. On the top of the cube there is an inlaid rainbow, the different arcs formed in different colors. Below this arc is an inlaid metal disk, half black and half white.
Construction: 44,500 gp, 30 days. The extradimensional safe is composed of two parts-the door and the vault. The door is the wooden block described above. This is normally found in the dwelling of the owner. The vault is a 10-cubic-foot lead box with no openings of any kind. The door is actually a trigger device. Contained inside the wooden case are a clockwork mechanism and an ethereal transporter (this is simply an amulet of the planes). In addition, McSpereson was required to research several special spells. The first spell was the magical resetting trigger (a modified version of the contingency spell), and a permanent blanket of mystery (a modified nondetection spell). The magical resetting trigger, a 7th-level spell, uttered a single command word whenever a certain condition was met, while the blanket of mystery, a 5th-level spell, allowed a single object to be hidden from all types of detection spells. The cost of producing the door is 40,000 gp. Comparatively speaking, the vault is cheap to build. The lead sheeting (1-inch thick), even allowing for the welding and construction, only costs 1,000 gp. Enclosing it in a permanent wall of force shell costs another 3,000 gp. Moving it to the Ethereal Plane costs another 500 gp. All other materials required for the vault (paints and a continual light spell for the interior) are minor expenses.
Statistics: The door weighs approximately five pounds and is 8 by 5 by 4 inches in size. The vault is a 10' cube and weighs thousands of pounds. The weight itself discourages any attempts to steal it. It can contain up to 1,000 cubic feet of material.
The extradimensional safe operates by a combination of mechanical and magical principles. The safe is opened by activating the door. The first step is to spin the black and white disk (that turns in its mounting) counterclockwise. While this disk is spinning, every other arc of the rainbow (starting with the top one) must be pressed. Its internal mechanism activated; the rainbow design rises out of the top of the box. Now those arcs that were skipped before are pressed. This sequence triggers the magical resetting trigger (or the permanent contingency spell), which utters the command word for the ethereal transporter (or amulet of the planes).
At the instant the command word is uttered, the owner must visualize the inside of the vault on the Ethereal Plane. To aid in the visualization, a particular painting is limned on one of the inside walls of the vault. Thus, the owner need only think about the painting to reach the proper location. If the owner does not visualize the desired location, he or she is sent to a random plane. Wherever the owner is sent, the door makes the trip as well. In designing the extradimensional safe, McSpereson's great goal was to thwart any attempts to get at the materials inside. Thus, he took precautions against the following methods.
Finding the Door: Unless a thief knows about the door and what it looks like, he or she will have a very hard time finding it. First, there is no reason to suspect an innocent piece of decorative wood. Secondly, the blanket of mystery on the door hides its magical nature, making it impossible to find by detection spells.
Lockpicking: The vault of the safe cannot be picked since it has no apparent door. The door cannot be picked since it has no lock. The door is a puzzle, therefore lockpicking is of no use.
Cutting into the Vault: The vault itself is protected by a wall of force. This does not have a great effect on the Ethereal Plane, but comes into full effect if the vault is moved elsewhere.
Ethereal and Astral Visitors: The vault is made of lead, preventing access in these forms.
Commune and Contact Higher Plane: Each element of the door has been carefully consecrated to a different god, goddess, or Immortal Being. Thus, each tends to jealously guard the information. No single being knows the full operation of the door. Theoretically, the secret could be pried from those denizens of the outer planes, but each step would take careful investigation and spellcasting.
Bashing the Door: Breaking or destroying the door serves no purpose, except to make the safe unusable until it is fixed. The obvious and most persistent hazard of the safe is that the owner may incorrectly visualize the plane on which it is located. If this is done, the owner may find him or herself in a dangerous and unpleasant situation, for the door always goes to the vault (a function of the contingency spell). A would-be thief may become stranded in a very hostile environment.
The second great risk is that the owner might lose count of the number of times the door has been used. This particular amulet has a limited number of charges and when the last charge is used, it crumbles to dust. If a person is inside the vault, he or she is stranded there unless some other means of escape can be found.
Category:Encyclopedia Magica Magic Items
Category:Magic Items
Category:Magic Safe