Item Seed: The Anti-Saxophone.

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The Anti-Saxophone

If there is a single magical device that is more universally hated by magicians, the name of said device has been lost to the forces of entropy.  And many magic users would love to do the same to the Anti-Saxophone (usually shortened to Anti-Sax, and invariably with a curse word serving for an adjective).  Unfortunately, the Anti-Sax is far too useful to toss away.

Superficially, an Anti-Sax resembles a regular tenor saxophone, and in fact can be used (mediocrely) as one.  However, once activated the Anti-Sax acts as a powerful magical booster to anyone within earshot.  The wielder can choose to: quadruple all bonuses to cast spells in the area of effect; cut all costs to cast magic to one-quarter of the usual; or double bonuses and cut cost to cast in half.

The catch? The Anti-Sax simply does not work if it’s being wielded by somebody who knows anything about playing the saxophone. This is not something that people can get around, either: users can know what a saxophone is, know that you have to blow through the mouthpiece and twiddle the keys in order to make sounds come out.  And that is it.  The worse the ‘player,’ in fact, the better the magic seems to work.  Certainly the louder it is, the larger the area of effect.

As noted above: magicians hate the Anti-Sax. Some research has been done into why this particular type of enchantment manifests in such a frankly obnoxious way. Their conclusion? …Something in the metaphysical power matrix was apparently having a very frustrating morning that day.  Which is kind of disquieting, in its own right.