Lyre-shoes
Appearance: a pair of expensive black leather men’s dress shoes with laces. Lyre-shoes register as magical on a deep scan, but not a superficial one.
No, not ‘Liar Shoes.’ Lyre-shoes. As in, a pair of them can be converted into a small lyre, or stringed, harp-like musical instrument. The left shoe serves as the soundbox; the heel of the right shoe can be detached and separated into two raised arms that are attached to the soundbox. The tongue of the right shoe is also detached, folded several times, and used as the bridge, while the rest of the shoe serves as the yoke (crossbar connecting the raised arms). The strings, of course, act as shoelaces; each lace can be broken down into four strings. There is an enchantment on the shoes to allow them to be put back together later, as well as one to make the improvised musical instrument sound, well, not-horrible. There’s finally one last enchantment that heavily encourages people to ignore the shoelaces.
In other words, Lyre-shoes are clandestine musical instruments. They’re designed both magically and mundanely to make it past a basic security inspection, thus allowing the wearer to potentially smuggle a working lyre into a secure area. And what is the reason that they were designed for this purpose?
Why, we have no idea.
I’m sure most RPG bards – with their array of musically based magic – could suggest a number of reasons why smuggling musical instruments into secure areas might be useful.