When I was a kid, I had a friend whose brother kept a shoe box full of fingernail and toenail clippings beneath his bed. I always found that absurd, because I thought they were his fingernail and toenail clippings. Now that I’m older, wiser, and have read a few Player’s Handbooks, I’m not so certain.

I recall he was into heavy metal, and that he played Dungeons & Dragons. This was the 80’s. So it’s obvious to me now that he was likely collecting the fingernail and toenail clippings of friends, neighbors, and rivals for a day when the game would include material components for a casting of Dream. That way, when he went all Freddy Krueger, those targeted with the spell would be subjected to disadvantage on their Wisdom saving throws vs. his phantasmal monstrosity, preventing them from receiving the benefits of a long rest. Stacey was a planner.

Sharing all of this, one might assume that today’s trinket is a glass vial filled with nail clippings, or something adjacent to that theme, such as a bag containing forty-seven teeth, one of which is rotten.

Ha ha! No. Stupid. Today’s trinket to incorporate into your Lost Mine of Phandelver / Dragon of Icespire Peak game is a glass jar containing a bit of flesh floating in pickling fluid. Or as I like to think of it, a material component for a poor man’s horcrux.

From 2000 to 2023, a bit of flesh was a spell component for the Clone spell. However, now that Wizards of the Coast has decided we’re not allowed to have nice gross things any longer by removing flesh as a component for the spell, there’s one less step necessary to create a backup body for yourself. Work smarter not harder, I guess.

However, if we’re using the fifth edition legacy version of the Clone spell, we could tie this trinket to Agatha the Banshee.

Perhaps, once upon a time, Agatha was the occupant of the Woodland Manse from Dragon of Icespire Peak. I know, I know. The occupant of the Woodland Manse was a half-elf, and the curse of the banshee is an elvish affliction. But there was a time in my life when I thought I was half-Irish. These misunderstandings happen. And besides, Wizards of the Coast took half-elves away, too.

Anyhoo, it’s canon that Agatha is a level 13 wizard. What if, prior to her untimely death in the vicinity of Conyberry, she had planned to create a Clone of herself once she attained 15th level?

What if Agatha had started to assemble the components necessary to make her horcrux at her Woodland Manse in the Neverwinter Wood? Sure, her friends likely thought it morbid when she purchased a fancy coffin for herself a few centuries before any elf could reasonable expect to pass away from natural causes. And perhaps they became increasingly concerned when she started cutting herself like a melancholic goth kid.

All she needed was the diamond component to have everything in place to create her horcrux once she attained sufficient arcane power (level 15).

So, off she went to DeBeers Blue Nile Waterdeep, only to meet her untimely demise at a rest stop in Conyberry. Or something.

Nobody knows how long Agatha has been a banshee, but her curse likely predates the settlement of Conyberry. At a minimum, she’s had a century or more to pick off unsuspecting adventurers or monsters from the Neverwinter Wood random encounter table for enough XP to ascend to level 15 by 1490’s DR.

She’s ready to cast the Clone spell, which will free her from the undeath and the curse of the banshee as her soul is drawn into a new body once. She just needs the final component for the spell (a diamond worth 1,000 gp), and for the components at the Woodland Manse (the coffin and the glass jar containing a bit of flesh floating in pickling fluid) brought to her grove, since she is sorrow bound.

Agatha is a powerful wizard. She’s described as a capable diviner. She could be so much more than a monster in your game. As a banshee, she could be the party’s gruesome Galadriel. Restored to a physical form, she could be a powerful (if evil) benefactor, or even a Dark Queen the characters unwittingly release upon the world as an existential threat.

One gross item from the d100 trinket list in the Player’s Handbook could place a seed that connects Lost Mine of Phandelver, Dragon of Icespire Peak, and a heist adventure on a journey to an epic, high-level adventure where the characters need to defeat a Dark Lady of their own creation! You just have to be willing to go down the rabbit hole.

Let’s be mutuals over on Bluesky! If you’re interested, I’m @ticklecorn.bsky.social. I always follow back.

If you’d like to support my work, please consider checking out my supplements for Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak over on Dungeon Master’s Guild! All of my titles are Free/PWYW offerings.