Entity #: 29299
Codename: Last Crown, King for a Day
Known Abilities: E-29299 is a small golden crown with white fur-based padding, pinned to the gold by black iron dots. Structural analysis indicates advanced runic arrays in the golden component. Arbitrary jewels form and disperse in the gold section of the crown, occasionally altering its structure. The crown will expand or contract to fit the wearer, but alternates between traditional headwear and an askew miniature form to secure itself against environmental interference (though it still can be removed willingly). The words 'Last Crown, King for a Day' are inscribed on the inner side of the gold segment.
When worn, E-29299 emits a high-power curse-based mental interference field. The field is directly effective for a randomly variant approximately-dozen kilometers sufficient to encompass most settlements directly. It additionally functions as haze-manipulative anti-questioning for hundreds of kilometers to mitigate side effects in surrounding communities or outlying areas of large ones. The wearer undergoes a temporary personality fusion with the king within the crown. Ethical limitations are strongly weakened. The wearer's restrained personality traits become somewhat more apparent, and habitual or instinctive preferences may become slightly stronger. The wearer and some of those affected instinctively refer to this process as 'adopting the mantle of kingship'. Female wearers tend to still refer to themselves as kings and refer to partners as kings consort or queens consort.
People around the king feel strong urges to be deferential and compliant towards the wearer. This includes tolerating generally absurd instructions. If a request is more than mildly inconvenient or would require long-term structural changes to be plausible, persons of which anything requested will demand the king 'grant them the magic to do so'.
The wearer is in turn strongly inclined to create and bestow various transformative treasures on them, often paired with frivolous titles of nobility or other royal service. Thorough knowledge and memory of a complex curse-based magecraft system and semi-historical feudal leadership is provided to the wearer. While centered on the creation of equippable transformations, a number of infrastructural options and basic utilities in other arts have been recorded. Various magic rings, bracelets, necklaces, and crowns can be created, including those with area effects of their own or fairly controllable ones. The wearer may themselves take on a few pieces of magic jewelry or render clothing transformative, but most are out of aesthetic preference rather than any real need. Magic jewelry that temporarily transforms anyone in proximity of dozens of meters to a preferred ideal and not be bothered by it is common (such as to be surrounded by attractive people of the wearer's preferred presenting genders and aesthetics without long-term disruption once they leave). These equipment-bestowed transformations are generally low-priority, unless some need to make them more powerful at time of casting was involved. Transformations can be redeclared repeatedly by the wielder to override effects other items are not continuously enforcing, and the king may modify them if they see fit.
When sufficient time wearing E-29299 has passed and some contextual pressure to fall asleep persists, the wearer will take off the crown and leave it somewhere nearby (typically a bedside table, or outside a sleeping bag in a tent). Those who do not otherwise need sleep tend towards timing out after 24 hours plus the remainder of the day of initially equipping the crown. The crown can also be removed by a sufficiently resistant outside party, though the wearer will generally resist this. Removal of the crown unfuses the wearer from the personality within. Knowledge utilized while active is retained, along with some contextual information about prerequisites and countermeasures. However, memories and knowledge not subjectively recalled by the king during possession are generally not accessible. Other transformative jewelry may or may not be removed or deactivated depending on the user's preference.
Removal of the crown causes 'the king's day to end' according to mentally affected subjects. Most people affected will revert form and mentality by discarding order-enforcing equipment unless supported by outside effects or subjectively preferring their modification equipment. These will generally not mind and otherwise seamlessly address side effects without comment. Others may attempt to capture the crown for themselves, particularly those given advisor roles or meaningful administrative nobility. The previous wearer is usually not an immediate contender to resume wearing the crown for a few days, during which they make security mistakes about the crown caused by the mental interference of E-29299 itself (e.g. allowing other people to enter their sleeping place unsupervised or explicitly leaving it somewhere publicly accessible). Exceptions typically have an independent desire for kingship or access to transformative manufacturing. Escape incidents indicate this results in an uncontained E-29299 changing hosts for several days as different people attempt and potentially succeed at claiming the crown and becoming king.
Containment: E-29299 is to be actively secured within a lead-lined container to contain the mental interference field (the default model is steel finish to prevent lead toxicity and with an external do-not-open indicator). The containment box is also to be contained in a steel-finished lead-lined container built into the containment chamber, preventing or reducing field projection in the event of other breaches. Physical keycard processes contained on the opposite ends of the facility in lead-lined containment rooms are required to remotely unlock the box and container separately, preventing an individual having entered the chamber under false premises from manipulating their escape without forcible piercing of the shielding. In the event of physical-strength transformation or external containment breach, mentally protected agents with appropriate continuously-enforced physical transformation equipment will be deployed to retrieve E-29299 from the wearer. This allows for experimentation of E-29299 while keeping it in a secure location.
Other: E-29299 was recovered from the remains of an alchemically-reinforced curse workshop in the output of what is believed to be a destroyed or malfunctioned sacrificial array. Notes recovered from the process are believed to be from guerilla warfare and feudal infighting in the wake of the E-0047 tiaras or a similar magic system.