treasure-forger

name: treasure-forger description: Forge a D&D 5e artifact with full stat block, lore, curse, presence, and plot hooks. Use when an adventure needs a central or incidental treasure. Produces treasures/.md AND treasures/-manifest.md (cross-skill handshake listing symptoms the dungeon must show). Enforces quality gates tied to persona lenses.

treasure-forger

Create a D&D 5e magic item — usually a central artifact with curse — for the workshop. The item is the narrative anchor of the adventure. Also produces a Curse Symptoms Manifest that dungeon-smith is required to honor.

Preconditions

• Either a concept (material, era, owner archetype, curse hook) OR an artifact-seed from a premise.md.
• Access to reference/srd/attunement.md and reference/srd/magic-item-rarity.md.
• Access to reference/dragonlance/ for setting-grounded lore.

Outputs

1. treasures/<slug>.md — the artifact itself.
2. treasures/<slug>-manifest.md — the Curse Symptoms Manifest (only if the item is cursed). This is the cross-skill contract with dungeon-smith.

Procedure

1. Clarify the concept if needed

Ask yourself:

• What does the item look like? One concrete sensory line.
• What was it originally for? (Almost always different from what it ended up doing.)
• Who made it? Who last held it? What did they do wrong with it?
• What's the curse and what's the creeping cost?
• What does the item want? (New — the Presence / Desire axis.)

If any of these can't be answered from the seed + premise + Dragonlance refs, ask the user.

2. Write treasures/<slug>.md

Required sections in order:

---
<frontmatter>
---
# <Full Artifact Name>

*<Evocative one-line description — what the players see when they first behold it.>*

## Appearance
Paragraph. Concrete sensory detail. Avoid adjective pile-ups.

## Presence / Desire
**REQUIRED for any attunement-required item.** One paragraph. What does this item *want*? How does it express wanting — does it warm when held, grow heavier for some hands than others, drift toward one character's shadow, chime in a particular room, go still in another? This is not a mechanic — it is *temperament*. The DM should feel comfortable improvising the item's reactions. Example: *"The rose is drawn to the hand of whoever has lost the most. It grows colder in the hands of those who have not yet grieved, and it fits — too well — the hand of those who have."*

## Provenance
A chain of prior owners — at least 3, starting from the creator. Each entry:
- **Name, era, fate.** One line of fate. Each worse than the last.
- Optional one-sentence vignette.

## Properties (Mechanical)

### Rarity
<tier>. Attunement: <required / not required>. Attunement prerequisites: <if any>.

### Benefits (while attuned)
Clear, bulleted. Tier-appropriate per `reference/srd/magic-item-rarity.md`.

### Curse (while attuned)
One hidden mechanic. Required three:
1. A **creeping cost** (not instantaneous).
2. A **narrative symptom** (felt in fiction before seen mechanically).
3. A **mechanical expression** (what the DM rolls).
Also specify: when the curse **first reveals** (typical: third long rest).

### Ending the Curse
Required and playable. No "a wizard of sufficient level."

## Hooks
≥ 3 plot hooks seeded by this artifact:
- Hunters.
- Witnesses.
- Moral / character cost.

## GM Notes
DM-facing paragraph. How to reveal the curse, pacing, what to do if party tries to destroy early.

3. Write treasures/<slug>-manifest.md (cross-skill handshake)

For any cursed artifact, produce:

---
adventure: <slug>
artifact: <name>
author: treasure-forger
created: <today>
---
# Curse Symptoms Manifest — <Artifact Name>

The dungeon housing this artifact MUST express the curse in at least 3 of the following ways, distributed across its rooms. `dungeon-smith` reads this file and honors it.

## Required (≥3, distributed across ≥2 rooms)

- [ ] **Visual symptom:** <e.g., carvings scored rose-petal-shaped from inside>
- [ ] **Textual symptom (attribution drift):** <e.g., a quote attributed to X in one room and to no one in another>
- [ ] **Textual symptom (orthographic drift):** <e.g., Vaenor spelled Vanor on one inscription>
- [ ] **Auditory symptom:** <e.g., a phrase repeated across rooms the DM reads without commentary>
- [ ] **Sensory symptom:** <e.g., the tomb is always dry even where it should be wet>
- [ ] **Reaction moment:** when the artifact is taken, <something heals / shifts / reveals>

## Required (always)

- [ ] At least one room's architecture expresses the curse's *mechanism* (e.g., memory-erosion → walls whose carvings are being edited).
- [ ] At least one earlier room foreshadows a later reveal (e.g., a letter mentioning the creator's madness).

## Suggested (optional)

- Per-room memory fragments from prior bearers' perspectives (DM reads if party lingers).
- An NPC in the adventure's starting settlement who has met a prior bearer.
- An incidental item that the curse has touched (a secondary, non-attuning object).

4. Invariants to enforce

• Mechanical benefit real. A curse with no benefit is a curse no one falls for.
• Creeping cost, not cliff. First session upside; cost emerges across play.
• Setting-grounded provenance. Names/dates/events cite reference/dragonlance/. Flag gaps; don't silently invent.
• Curse dispellable in principle. No unbreakable curses.
• One curse, not two. Don't layer.
• Item has temperament. The Presence / Desire section is non-negotiable for attuning items.

5. Never overwrite silently

If treasures/<slug>.md or its manifest exists, write <slug>.v2.md and report.

Quality Gates

Required sections (Moldvay + Schick)

• Appearance, Presence / Desire, Provenance (≥3 owners), Properties, Benefits, Curse, Ending, Hooks, GM Notes all present.
• Presence / Desire section is prose-evocative, not mechanic-spec.

Curse design (Schick + Stuart)

• Creeping cost, narrative symptom, mechanical expression all specified.
• Ending the curse is specific and playable.
• Curse reveal timing is specified.
• Manifest file emitted for dungeon-smith.

Setting (Stuart)

• Provenance cites ≥3 Dragonlance refs (ages, factions, geography).
• Any lore gaps flagged (not hallucinated).

Player stakes (Gygax)

• Attunement has a clear benefit worth falling for.
• Hooks include ≥1 future-adventure seed.

Output to user

• Rarity + attunement summary.
• Curse one-liner.
• Manifest symptoms required of dungeon-smith (listed).
• Any reference/dragonlance/ gaps you'd like filled.
• Suggested room numbers in an existing rooms/ dir where foreshadowing belongs.

Anti-patterns (will be flagged)

• Curse is just HP loss per rest.
• Curse with no narrative symptom.
• Provenance < 3 owners.
• Appearance all adjectives, no concrete detail.
• Rarity mismatched to tier without explanation.
• Alignment-only attunement gate.
• Item named after its effect.
• No Presence / Desire section.
• No manifest emitted for a cursed item.