more flip weapons

Three more flip weapons, in order from least to most cursed.

1. The SAW // BILL
• SAW. A circular saw-blade, fixed to a length of chain that can be whipped as a thrown axe, out to spear range, and pulled back at the end of your action. When you deal minimum damage, the chain locks into a bar, flipping the weapon to BILL.
• BILL. A polearm with a surprising light, hollow steel haft, ending in a cruelly serrated blade. As pike. When a foe misses you with a hand-to-hand attack that does not have a long reach, you may immediately make a backstab attack against them and flip the weapon to SAW.
2. The PIPE // WRENCH
• PIPE. A large, silver musician's pipe (only an awkward weapon). When you play it, any creature that can hear the music but does not understand speech must save or fall into a sleep. If any creature makes its save, flip the weapon to WRENCH.
• WRENCH. A silver wrench, as a silver mace. When you next walk in the moonlight with the weapon, flip it to PIPE.
3. The BLADE // WRAITH 
• BLADE. A long, thin thrusting sword. As a rapier, but those wounded roll a d6 for every wound at the end of their actions. On 5-6, the wound stops bleeding, but otherwise each bleeding wound deals an additional point of damage. When you kill a living person with it they and the weapon are consumed in a crimson flash, flipping the weapon to WRAITH.
• WRAITH. An indistinct pale figure, cloaked in a once-fine pall, now faded and stained. They obey any command you give, and otherwise follow you, lurking nearby. The WRAITH will not do violence, but anyone who locks eyes with it must save against fear. When you reach beneath the cloak, seize the hilt and pull the BLADE free, all that is left of the menacing figure are some burnt bones.

some game economics for the ancient world

Before launching into a long post about economics of the ancient world, let's put the exciting part at the top, the random treasure hoard generator. These are going to be significantly smaller than typical fantasy adventure hoards, but I've tried to callibrate them to generate the kidns of hoards people actually find from the bronze and iron ages:

d4 d6 d8 d10 d12 d20

Now, for the less flashy stuff. Before we can really talk about economics, let's establish some units of measurement. These are going to be largely based on historical units of mesopotamia and the eastern mediterannean in antiquity. My sources are kind of all over the place on these so I'm not going to be citing much, but the system I'm giving here hews pretty close to the coins and measures used in Talmudic literature.

A talent (kikar, if you prefer) weighs sixty pounds (maneh), each of which is fifty weights (shekel) of about eight and a half grams; this makes a pound of about 425 grams rather than the 453.59 of the avoirdupois pound, but that's close enough to use the familiar word in my book. A wet measure or dry measure are both a unit of capacity approximately equal to 144 medium-sized eggs (about nine quarts).

goods and their prices

The basic unit of money is a weight of silver. Although actual prices vary by place and season, most people will say that a silverweight should buy: