This post belongs to the #AtoZchallenge 2024, where I attempt to turn a word a day into something that can be used in Role Playing Games.

A Pyxis can be many different things, originally, a shape of vessel – usually a beautifully adorned cylindrical box with a separate lid. It usually contained valuable small goods like medicine or (in Christian times) sanctified items. In astronomy, it can describe a modern constelllation or antique Chinese constellation, both connected to compasses. In zoology, it describes the genus of the spider tortoises. It botany, it can describe a lid capsule that contains the seeds.

So it is mostly connected to finding a direction and keeping things safe.

How to integrate it into your typical fantasy RPG?

• It could be a vessel that protects spell ingredients and formulas.
• It could be a transporter that transports your from one star constellation to another star constellation, where the angles of the constellation have to align with the ground identically in both cases.
• Having spider tortoises be … well your typical web spinning spiders but also tortoises followes the good old owlbear formula of monster creation.
• It could turn into a compass that leads you to a specific source of material if you put a sample of that material in.