Item Seed: Humorous Balancer.

Humorous Balancer

Description: a small handheld device made of bone, metal, and wood.  On one side there is an inset trackball; inset at the top is a crystal that magically glows red, amber, or green.  The whole thing is intensely magical, but in a distinctly impersonal sort of way, to the point where magical attempts to determine the creator of a Humorous Balancer will get back contradictory information.

Powers: it balances humors.  Push up for yellow bile, down for phlegm, left for blood, right for black bile.  The glow at the top shows the subject’s current humor balance: red means problems, amber means it could be better but it’s all right, and green means that everything is balanced nicely. Note that there are subtle restrictions on the item that prevents a drastic humor imbalance.

The single weirdest — or alarming, or wondrous, or whatever — thing about the Humorous Balancer is that it works.  That is to say, it really does balance people’s humors, and balancing their humors really does help them recover more quickly from injury, not come down with diseases, and receive general mental and emotional relief.  This despite the fact that the four humors are an exploded medical theory with no therapeutic benefits; apparently, nobody told whoever it was that made the Humorous Balancer.

Not that the actual creator of this magic item is immediately obvious; even scrying spells will find it impossible to pin down the enchanter.  That’s because it was made on an assembly line, by a culture that has developed magic to the level that we have developed technology, so there isn’t a sole enchanter.  In its home dimension the Humorous Balancer is a fashionable gadget among non-magical commoners; people fiddle with them the way people from this dimension mess around with smartphones.  Of course, in this dimension there’s currently a six-sided quiet battle to secure the Humorous Balancer, then take it apart to look at the spell work, but isn’t there always a battle going on, somewhere?

But the team isn’t involved with that.  No, the team will be involved in doing favors for all the factions trying to get their hands on the Humorous Balancer.  That way, our faction will be in a good position, no matter who ends up in possession of the artifact.  It’s like our great-grandmasters used to say: When the gold rush starts, be the guy selling the shovels.  Less chance of people throwing things at us that way, yes?
Yes, yes, it can get hairy in the field.  That’s why you’re doing it.  And being compensated accordingly, might I add.