So compelling is humankind’s desire to scavenge, I have seen acts of disturbing loot-thirst befall many who I loved dearly. This is, of course, not just common in D&D but in the real world. Never has a coworker quit without multiple employees hovering over their newly abandoned cube, quibbling over who gets the ergonomic keyboard. 

But in D&D, the urge gets even stronger. The thirst has been there for decades, but video games and their predatory loot boxes have made it even worse. Why only just this year, my friend asked hungrily what he could loot from the body of a beholder, and when I described the pocketless body in detail, he resorted to chopping off whatever he could without having to roll initiative again. Yes, this was on the Nerd Poker podcast.

So I thought, you know what resources we really need? Loot meant to take the piss out of this culture. So at the risk of being incredibly morbid (but let’s face it, if you are reading this you have probably been involved in multiple fantasy corpse robberies) I have created an obnoxiously verbose body for players to discover. It’s one that is generic enough to fit into any adventure, and if you are the narrator you could even have its loot spread over 10 different bodies. You know, if you want emotional torture you can leverage over them for a while.

Yet I don’t want this to be only for Dungeon Masters. I think this is fun, silly loot that a player could request to have for their character should they ever be arrested for causing too big a ruckus in Waterdeep... or, Bahamut forbid, in case their character bites the big one, and their partymates get a little creepy with how they mourn (they pick at your corpse).

So allow me to present you with Bottomless Bob, the dead NPC that never stops being looted. Change his name and adjust items to taste. Or, if you like, use one of the many red herrings below to give poor hollow Bob’s life some meaning. I'll give him some vague meaning in Part Two next week, but it will be deliberately unsatisfying to keep with the theme, and if you're craving closure you may want to color in Bob's meaningless madness to suit the tone of your game.

Head

1. Musty Buccaneer Hat: This hat smells of mold and has a hole in it, but also has a strange yellow feather with a magical aura stuck into a golden pin. The feather was a damp yellowed white sock temporarily transformed into a feather shortly before Bob's death. The magic quickly wears off within 24 hours, turning it back into the moist stocking. The pin turns into a dirty fishhook.
2. Bandanarama: Beneath his hat and over his wig, Bob wears a series of 10 bandanas that have been laid nearly on top of each other and worn as one bandana, now stuck together from years of sweat. Only the top bandana is modestly stained, the rest much worse, and a successful DC 5 Wisdom (Insight) check reveals there is some kind of diary page written on the middle-most layer. As players pull the bandanas apart, they realize they are destroying the never-possible-to-read diary page, but for two words that can be perceived in common: the NPC’s name, Bob, and the word “haberdashery.” This ties into Bob’s habit of leaving Memento-like notes for himself everywhere, none of them being as dramatic as one might hope.
3. Wig of Bobbies: Bob wears a ratty old white-haired wig, and much like the feather in his cap it gives off a magical aura. This is because Bob was constantly using tiny metal hair clips to keep it attached to his bandana and hat, but he kept losing the clips in his wig, so he had his wig enchanted to stay on his head. Unfortunately he had a bad habit of collecting shoddy enchantments, and this one was not easily made. So instead of clinging nicely to Bob’s head, the wig hung loose and magically absorbed the hair clips. Bob was too old to figure it out, and too poor to replace his wig. As a result, players who so much as touch the wig will cause it to immediately expel 300 of these metal clips, which will clatter loudly to the ground. The clips are too small to pick locks, and too weak for crafting (they break with very little pressure applied). The wig cannot absorb anything other than tiny hair clips, and if it is held onto it will continue to expel 10 clips a day. If dispel magic is cast on the wig, it will expel 13,356 hair clips, which creates a 2-foot-high sized mound of useless hair clips on the ground, and once again make a loud series of clacks upon any hard surface. The wig serves no other purpose.
4. Jewelry: Bob has multiple facial piercings, all made of worthless, weak metal painted to look like more valuable metal embedded with fake glass gems. His six earrings can be detected as worthless with a DC 5 Insight check. His nose ring can be identified as worthless stud with a successful DC 10 Wisdom (Insight) check, and his gold tooth, painted gold every day, can be detected as worthless with DC 18 Wisdom (Insight) check. The paint, which is not real gold, was also slowly poisoning him, and removing the tooth will reveal an exotic bacterial infection that characters within 5 feet of the corpse must succeed on a DC 15 Constitution saving throw to resist, which will cause them to be poisoned for a month. Standard healing spells remove the disease, however.

Left-hand Coat Pockets

1. Map to The Ascendant’s Paradise: Stuck in one of his trenchcoat’s many pockets is a map of the inside of Bob’s home, a small shack, but exaggerated to look like an exotic tropical island, each nook of his home re-imagined as a thrilling getaway. The map is fantastically titled “The Ascendant’s Paradise.” Made as a novelty gift for himself, it will look unfamiliar to any history check, and only be resolvable if one finds Bob’s body inside Bob’s small, almost featureless shack. Perhaps you would like to send players on an extended, wild goose chase to find his shack instead (if this is the case, see the next item, "Password" for one way to manage this). Regardless, once inside, a successful DC 20 Wisdom (Insight) check causes characters to look around and realize the map is just a cute thing he had made so being stuck on a staycation would be fun. The island is rectangular with its edges smoothed to appear organic in nature, his kitchenette is labeled “The Bountiful Bank,” his bed “The Slumbering Cliffs,” his front door “The Port of Many Returns,” and his outhouse a smaller island labeled “The Isle of Regret.”
2. Password: A neatly folded bit of paper with directions to a local tavern, and a note at the bottom instructing the reader that, should they ever get lost, give Clive the password, "Sleepytimes." Players can locate the tavern easily. Clive is a bouncer who works the late shift. The password will mean nothing to him, but if players make a DC 15 Persuasion or Intimidation check, Clive will relate that he remembers Bob and always had to tell him to go home when he drank too much. He will also remember where Bob lives. This password note, then, is nothing but an extremely convoluted reminder in Bob's pocket that if he was "lost," as in "drunk," he could ask Clive how to get home. 
3. Wooden Knives: Terrified of actual violence but committed to looking like a nautical assassin, Bob has a set of flashy-looking knives strapped to the inside of his jacket. Flashy from a minimum of 10 feet away. They are unsharpened and do as much damage, either in melee or ranged combat, as wooden kitchenware would.
4. Mysterious Warning: A hand written note in abyssal that reads: "231! Do not forget!" It is in Bob's handwriting, and can only be explained in connection with the next item.
5. Handmade Toothpick Collection: In a small pouch in the inside left-breast pocket is a whole lot of handmade toothpicks. Bob believed his lucky number was 231, so he always carried 231 toothpicks and replaced each one he used. Players can figure this out by either reading the Mysterious Warning and making a DC 28 Insight check, or by counting the toothpicks and figuring it out for themselves. However, due to the tediousness of counting the toothpicks, they need to make a DC 20 Perception check to concentrate and feel that they've counted them all correctly.

At this point you’re probably thinking, good lord Dan, that is waaaaaaay too much trash you’ve mashed into one body, and who is Bob? What is his deal? And does this mean there is more in his coat’s RIGHT-hand pockets? Honestly you could be thinking a lot of things, because my writing this article proves that I'm a rather strange person.

While I fully intend to leave Bob frustratingly vague for thematic purposes, I can promise we will get to what is in the other side of his coat, as well as in his downstairs hideyplaces, in Part Two! And whatever you might think about the Infinite Corpse of Nonsense, at least I have gifted you the phrase "downstairs hideyplaces."

 Dan Telfer is the Dungeons Humorist aka Comedy Archmage for D&D Beyond (a fun way they are letting him say "writer"), dungeon master for the Nerd Poker podcast, a stand-up comedian, a TV writer who also helped win some Emmys over at Comedy Central, and a former editor of MAD Magazine and The Onion. He can be found riding his bike around Los Angeles from gig to gig to gaming store, though the best way to find out what he's up to is to follow him on Twitter via @dantelfer.