That depends if you think you’re already damned, anyway. If you think you’re already going to hell, why wouldn’t you try to get something out of it for now? Also, the gun would be very tempting, as it can make you effectively immortal - can’t go to hell if you never die, right?
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I don’t want special powers (although being able to recall stuff would be useful since I’m always struggling). I’d take the wallet because it represents a level of security for me to pursue things that interest me and also have endless fun being able to gift money to others. I am happy enough at my current lifestyle level that I don’t see myself going nuts with it outside of charity.
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Yeah, I think that’s what did it for me. Killing debt is a dream for a lot of people my age (elder Millennial)
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Take a picture of the demon, and stick it in the locket of lust.
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Flask of Gluttony gives you an extra 8 hours every day + keeps you healthy. The Watch of Sloth only gives you 8 hours if you remember to keep hitting it on the mark.
As you get older you realize that time is the most valuable thing, so it’s hard not to go for the one that lets you be a night owl without drawbacks (except of course your poor mortal soul).
Ring of Pride is definitely also a solid choice. Being good at everything makes that money wallet obsolete, you’ll have no trouble making cash unless there’s some monkey paw style demonic influence. You can never be sure with cursed artifacts, they can be real jerks.
The wallet is hella lame. Anybody with about $5M invested in the market in safe investments already has that. It’s not that life changing. Whoever made that chart doesn’t have a grasp of what kind of money someone like Jeff Bezos or Vladimir Putin actually commands. It’s chump change by 1%er standards.
My order of preference:
- Flask: 8 extra hours in a day + fitness + health + free booze
- Ring: Being smart and good at doing everything makes almost everything else obsolete.
- Watch: Having extra hours is definitely useful. This one lets you integrate them slightly better with society, but the way it is set up makes it annoying to use.
- Wallet: Kinda pointless since the Ring is likely to make you much richer, still it’s easy to use and doesn’t have any gross mind control/reading aspect. Once you qualify for an unlimited credit card it’s more fun but it feels like you’re going to monkey paw the thing by messing up the world’s monetary systems if you try to go too big.
- Gun: This one feels like a proper cursed item. Using it properly means shooting a bunch of babies so you never get old, which is the kind of thing that would definitely send you to hell except that you are already going to hell so yeah. Ideally you’d be a pediatric nurse or something and oh sorry ma’am blam blam your baby was stillborn.
- Spectacles: You eventually unlock the power to learn that everyone is thinking the same thing: “Holy crap, are those persons’s eyes glowing green?!?” Also, you mostly end up learning a lot of embarassing shit you didn’t want to know. This one is also a good and proper curse. Only really useful for people who get off on blackmail.
- Locket: The trap for teenage boys. Super rapey and honestly it’s going to be the locket of child support payments for clingy girls who think they are in love with you. Or if you are a girl the locket of unwanted sexual advances, which nobody wants.
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Alright, I’m watching the impeachment trial, and would like to change my choice to the gun of wrath.
My soul? Totally worth it.
P.s. I’d also settle for the bus ticket from the Lost Room, maybe not worth my soul but I’d trade…seasonal hangnails or something.
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I understand the reasoning for declining to accept any of the tokens, but c’mon, where’s the fun in that? You have to take an item!
Definitely would go for the watch- like UUbuntu mentioned above, it could perform the functions of the wallet, the gun, and possibly the eyeglasses.
I don’t think I would use it all the time, only when opportunities came up. What I want to know however is whether the recharge time is absolute? Like if I just need a 15 minute freeze, does it only need a half hour to recharge, or is it still two?
The Locket is kind of half baked- so others will want to sleep with me when I’m wearing it… but they will only love me if their picture is inside? And it strictly works for members of the opposite sex? Just very strange how that all works.
Well my 2nd choice would be the Flask. I think it could fulfill a lot of the promises of the Ring. Sleeping is such a time suck. And if I live as long as I want, I should hope that I could build a fortune enough to fulfill the promise of the Wallet.
ETA: The Wallet is attractive cause it means I could quit my job today. I don’t hate my job per se, but it’d be nice to just, you know, go on permanent vacation. The other options would take some time and ingenuity to transition to sustainable lifestyle.
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Really? Then I guess I’ve got nothing to lose! 
[changes previous choice]
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Huh, that already happens for me for automatic faucets. Maybe it’s just my hands that have no soul…
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…or you could just shoot one 89 year old billionaire a year to stay on an even keel?
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So many picked Wallet of Greed! Wallet of Greed is just pathetic, compared to the others, yet so many picked it! Only $1000? Perhaps it sounds like a lot, but it’s just nothing near the value of the others:
Spectacles of Envy allows you to master any business transaction (or poker game). (@ClutchLinkey: “That seemed like the most obvious negative one, to me.” – I have a solution: have the discipline to only use them in business settings and take them off after-hours!)
Ring of Pride allows you to basically be the best scholar, engineer, researcher, scientist, linguist you’d ever want to be— again, invaluable in a business context.
Flask of Gluttony allows you to live your entire life in good health. Isn’t that worth well more than $1000/day, especially as you reach your golden years?
Gun of Wrath grants you effective immortality. Assuming you didn’t want to, uh, commit murder, you could obviate the amoral implications of the object by joining the military, volunteering for active combat, and using the GoW in combat situations only. (Except, to say the least, you do have a huge conflict of interest!)
Watch of Sloth seems interesting (but it’s not clear if time stops for you personally and allows you to maneuver in a “stopped” world) which obviously allows immense power, even if used ethically (and not, say, robbing banks).
EDIT: I just read the last line of the Wallet of Greed description, regarding the credit card: this is effectively an infinite amount of money. So, uh, the $1000 is just a (worthless, in comparison) red herring. So, really, the choice boils down to: Infinite amount of money or Infinite health/life.
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Those seemed like the most obvious negative one, to me. Like the whole “power of invisibility” thing.
Do you really want to know what everyone thinks about you? Or what their inner demons are?
Seems fraught.
Give me $1k/day and unlimited credit, though, and I could have a really nice time.
But you make a great point about the gun of wrath! Way to get around the moral implications. Or a great superhero origin story.
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Most soldiers barely ever see combat. You’d be better off signing up with some mercenary outfit and shooting people protesting against Nestle stealing their water or DeBeers employees trying to form a union or whatnot.
The worst part is that you’ll be in dangerous situations. A person with a 10,000 year or more lifespan needs to be much more conservative about avoiding danger. You might live 10,000 years with serious TBI from IEDs or only 1 leg and on dialysis from internal organ damage. That extended lifespan means nothing if you get shot by a sniper in some no-name town in the middle of the desert.
I get the impression that the way it works is you age at a rate proportional to your current age vs. your new lifespan, so you really need to rack up a lot of years quick early on to slow the aging process down to close to 0. Adding 1 year a year just means you’ll be an old codger forever.
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The Ring of Pride might turn you into someone who can use it responsibly, though.
In addition it is the only one that can give you the advantages of some of the others. With preternatural creativity and learning skills acquiring money is no problem and you might even find ways to prolong your life.
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According the the blurb they “see a person’s deepest, darkest secret”. So assuming you can leverage “likes underage children sexually” or “cheats on his wife” or “drinks because his daddy beat him when he was a child” to make your business transaction/gamble work it’s useless. It’s only good for blackmail purposes.
The last part ends up being “seems nice enough” or “is a jerk”. Mostly useless in a business setting, but does help you spot phonys. Still, many people master this skill without magical doodads.
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If Dungeons and Dragons has taught me anything it’s that any sufficiently powerful item can be deadly to you in the hands of a sufficiently clever dungeon master.
- Wallet: the obvious question / curse is where the money comes from. If it gets teleported into the wallet from say a Federal Reserve bank, does someone notice one day and flag the missing bills’ serial numbers? If the debt is cleared without the credit card company receiving a payment, how long does it take them to realize and investigate you?
- Watch: how far from your body does the effect insulating you from being stopped reach? You may be able to type on a keyboard but will those signals reach the computer? If you have a laptop you may be able to work locally, but Google’s servers (for example) are well outside your area of influence. Need to cook some food to eat? Hope you have a camping stove.
- Spectacles: knowing someone’s deepest darkest secret is very likely to influence how you respond to them, consciously or unconsciously. I also wonder what effect looking at yourself in the mirror would have. Any time in your life you’ve done something of which you’re ashamed might come rushing back in on you at once.
- Ring: there’s a thin line between “confident and driven” and “unlikeable asshole who has driven away all their friends.” Who wants to hang around a know-it-all? Too there’s the possibility that with your exponentially increased creativity, you could become obsessed with one or more of your creative endeavors to the absence of all other concerns much like Narcissus from mythology.
- Flask: the word “most” in “most diseases” seems relevant here. Maybe the flask keeps all of you healthy except your liver? Word of someone who miraculously recovered from an ailment (or who never gets sick) could also spread and lead others who are suffering from ailments to come to you hoping to be healed in the same way. Desperation among those patients could lead to violence and/or attempts to steal the flask.
- Gun: “within view of the shooter” means that someone who sees you with the gun and sneaks up behind you could take you out (and take the gun from you.) An ambush in a dark alley might also end badly. Finally, there’s no mention of how fast the gun can fire. In a one-on-one fight you’re probably good. Two-on-one is a little more dicey. “An entire police department”-on-one means you might take some with you, but you’ll also go down.
- Locket: besides the ethical issues there’s also the probability of partners becoming obsessed with you. Dealing with someone who feels “If I can’t have you, no one can!” (or multiple people who feel that way all at once) could get really tricky. Think Stephen King’s Misery
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Fuck. No.
I get enough facepalm from the ones they choose to tell me about.
One thing I appreciated about Babylon 5 was that it presented telepathy as a monumental PITA for the telepaths as much as anyone.
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One thing to remember is that none of these offer much protection. The closest in the flask, which prevents you from dying of Covid, say, but not one of them stops you from being immediately smashed under a tree as you walk your newfound magical artifact to your car.
This is an issue of superpowers generally, sub-Superman. The more they draw attention to yourself (and as I said, how exactly is your credit card balance being zeroed out?), the more likely you are to learn their limits.
Here’s an idea: maybe the Gun of Wrath is the best one: especially if I can throw in another soul for a list of the other artifact recipients. About a month later I’ll have Pokemoned the lot…
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