Living Puppet Box

Wondrous item, uncommon

The curtain on the side of a small wooden box parts, revealing two puppets. One appears to be a white-faced jester, though it holds a tiny sign marked “scorpion.” The other is clearly a wooden duck, but holds a sign marked “frog.” The two wiggle back in forth while facing one another, as if in debate.

A living puppet box is roughly a one foot cube of painted hardwood, with a curtain across one otherwise open side, and a collection of 3-5 hand-puppets inside. When a story is being told, the hand-puppets leap to live and play out the story (as best as they are able—often a jester puppet must act as the king and a horse puppet as a knight, though each has a small sign it can carry which changes to reveal the name of the character it is supposed to be). They produce tiny props and costume changes as needed, and can interact with one another and the props in surprisingly complex ways.

However, the puppets are only able to move and manipulate things within the box—as soon as they are removed from it, they are lifeless and mundane. Additionally they cannot interact with anything placed into the box, and lack the force to remove anything from the box (or pull anything in, or do any damage to anything placed with the box).

The puppets can act out their own stories as well independent of any storyteller, though soundlessly.

When asked to put on a show or tell a story they break into a story determined at random—even requesting a specific tale, the living puppet box gives the viewers whatever is randomly next on its playlist. Most living puppet boxes have about 20 stories in their repertoire, though sometimes a specific story seems to show up over and over and over. The following is a list of typical stories, each ranging from 1-5 minutes in length.