Blog

The Mimic Furniture Maker: What Does a Mimic Do When Adventurers Aren’t Around?

Adventurers have been opening suspicious treasure chests for as long as there have been adventurers.

They see a chest sitting in a dungeon room and immediately start asking questions. Is it trapped? Is it locked? Is there treasure inside? Is this the room where the dungeon master finally decides to punish us for all those jokes we made about mimics?

But what if the mimic isn’t waiting for them?

What if it has a career?

Welcome back to our series exploring what monsters do when they aren’t being encounters for adventurers. Last time, we discovered that dragons don’t necessarily spend their days sleeping on mountains of treasure. Some of them are busy maintaining elaborate financial empires as Dragon Accountants.

This time, we’re going somewhere considerably less dangerous.

A furniture store.

Unfortunately, the furniture is alive.

The Mimic Who Wanted More Out of Life

For generations, mimics have been known for one particular trick. They disguise themselves as ordinary objects, wait for someone to get close, and then reveal their true nature.

It’s an effective strategy.

It’s also a little limiting.

Imagine spending your entire life pretending to be a treasure chest.

Sure, there are worse things you could be.

But eventually, you might start wondering if there is more to life than waiting in a dungeon for a greedy adventurer to put their hands on you.

One particularly ambitious mimic decided there was.

It wanted to make furniture.

Not pretend to be furniture.

Actually make furniture.

And it turns out that a creature capable of perfectly imitating almost any object has some serious advantages when it comes to woodworking.

The Perfect Furniture Maker

A traditional carpenter needs tools.

A mimic is the tool.

It can shape its body into almost any form, squeeze into unusual spaces, flatten itself, stretch itself, and create convincing textures and surfaces.

This makes the mimic an incredibly talented craftsman.

It can create a chair by becoming a chair.

It can test the chair by sitting on itself.

It can adjust the chair without needing to put down a single tool.

Most importantly, it can make furniture that is completely impossible to distinguish from the real thing.

The only problem is that the furniture occasionally complains when someone sits on it.

A Very Exclusive Furniture Store

The Mimic Furniture Maker eventually opens a shop.

The sign outside simply reads “Fine Furnishings.”

Inside is a beautiful collection of tables, chairs, cabinets, bookshelves, wardrobes, desks, and beds.

Everything is exquisitely crafted.

Everything is completely stationary.

Everything is watching you.

The customers don’t know this, of course.

The mimic does.

It has learned that the secret to selling furniture is understanding what customers want.

A nervous customer approaches a chair.

The chair subtly adjusts itself.

A tall customer examines a table.

The table becomes slightly taller.

A wealthy noble sits on a couch.

The couch quietly decides that this person has excellent taste.

The furniture is not merely comfortable.

It is attentive.

The Furniture Has Opinions

This is where things start getting interesting.

After years of making furniture, the mimic develops preferences.

It doesn’t like cheap wood.

It hates badly constructed chairs.

It considers wobbly tables an insult to craftsmanship.

It has very strong opinions about drawer placement.

And it absolutely refuses to create anything with one of those tiny decorative drawers that nobody can actually use.

The mimic has standards.

It is an artist.

It also has an unusual relationship with its creations.

A normal carpenter builds a chair and sells it.

The mimic builds a chair and then watches someone carry it away.

That can be emotionally complicated.

Especially when the chair is one of its favorite pieces.

The Problem With Custom Orders

Eventually, word spreads about the incredible furniture maker.

Wealthy nobles begin placing custom orders.

Wizards want bookshelves that can hold enormous spellbooks.

Dwarves want tables that can survive a siege.

Halflings want comfortable chairs.

Adventurers want a chest that can safely store their treasure.

That last request causes some problems.

The mimic absolutely refuses to make a treasure chest.

It has principles.

It also knows exactly what adventurers do to treasure chests.

It isn’t going to contribute to the problem.

The Adventurer Discount

Naturally, adventurers eventually discover the shop.

At first, they are suspicious.

Very suspicious.

They inspect the chairs.

They tap the tables.

They poke the cabinets with ten-foot poles.

They cast detection spells.

They ask the shopkeeper if anything in the store is secretly a mimic.

The mimic smiles.

Because it is a mimic.

The entire shop is technically a mimic.

This makes customer service complicated.

The Ultimate Furniture Experience

The mimic eventually discovers that there is one type of furniture it is uniquely qualified to make.

Adventurer furniture.

A chair that automatically adjusts itself after a long day of dungeon crawling.

A bed that changes shape to accommodate armor.

A backpack that organizes itself.

A desk that remembers where you left your spellbook.

A dining table that knows exactly how much food a barbarian considers a reasonable serving.

A tavern chair that quietly shifts whenever someone attempts to pick your pocket.

The mimic has discovered something important.

Furniture doesn’t have to be passive.

Furniture can help.

Mimic Interior Design

The business expands.

Soon the mimic isn’t merely making furniture.

It’s designing entire rooms.

And nobody is better suited for interior design than a creature that can literally become part of the room.

The mimic can create hidden compartments.

Secret doors.

False walls.

Decorative statues.

Bookshelves.

Trapdoors.

Entire pieces of furniture that change configuration depending on the needs of the owner.

A wizard’s study might have a bookshelf that reorganizes itself according to the wizard’s current research.

A thieves’ guild might commission tables with hidden compartments.

A noble might purchase a dining room where every chair subtly adjusts itself to make guests feel important.

And a particularly paranoid adventurer might commission a bedroom where the furniture watches the door all night.

The mimic understands.

It is very good at security.

The Mimic Furniture Maker’s Greatest Secret

Eventually, someone notices something strange.

The furniture maker never seems to have employees.

There is only one shopkeeper.

Yet somehow the shop is always spotless.

Furniture moves around by itself.

New pieces appear overnight.

Orders are completed impossibly quickly.

Customers occasionally swear that their chair moved when they weren’t looking.

They’re right.

The truth is that the Mimic Furniture Maker has expanded.

There are mimics everywhere.

The chairs are mimics.

The tables are mimics.

The cabinets are mimics.

The bookshelves are mimics.

The entire workshop is a colony of mimics working together.

And they love their jobs.

What Happens When Adventurers Discover the Truth?

Eventually, some adventurers are going to figure it out.

Maybe they walk into the store after hearing rumors of furniture that moves on its own.

Maybe they discover that the legendary dining table they purchased has a personality.

Maybe someone attacks a chair after assuming it is a monster.

The chair takes it personally.

Now the adventurers are faced with an unusual problem.

They’ve discovered a community of mimics that aren’t interested in eating them.

They’re craftsmen.

They’re artists.

They’re merchants.

And they’re very offended that the adventurers immediately assumed they were monsters.

For once, the party might have to convince a group of mimics that they’re the good guys.

Using the Mimic Furniture Maker in Your D&D Campaign

For Dungeon Masters, the Mimic Furniture Maker is a great opportunity to challenge the assumptions players bring to the table.

The characters see a suspicious chest and expect a monster.

But what if they discover a mimic who has spent decades building a legitimate business?

What if that mimic has become respected throughout the region?

What if nobles, wizards, merchants, and adventurers all own its furniture?

What if the party discovers that the seemingly ordinary chair in the mayor’s office is actually a trusted confidant?

Suddenly, the mimic isn’t just a monster hiding in a dungeon.

It’s an NPC.

And a memorable one.

The furniture shop can become a recurring location where characters purchase unusual equipment, gather rumors, meet other monsters, or discover strange pieces of magical furniture.

It can even become an adventure location of its own.

Perhaps the mimic has been commissioned to furnish a new castle, but the entire shipment has disappeared.

Perhaps a rival furniture maker is trying to expose the mimic’s secret.

Perhaps someone has started kidnapping the mimic’s furniture and selling it to collectors who don’t realize what they’ve purchased.

Or perhaps the characters are simply hired to retrieve a particularly beloved chair that was stolen from the shop.

The chair is a mimic.

It is also extremely offended.

The Best Part About the Mimic

The Mimic Furniture Maker works because it reminds us of something important about monsters.

A mimic doesn’t have to spend its entire existence waiting for adventurers.

It can have ambitions.

It can develop skills.

It can build relationships.

It can create something instead of simply destroying something.

And maybe, after spending centuries being treated as a monster hiding inside a treasure chest, it decides that it wants to build something people actually appreciate.

The next time your players enter a dungeon and see a suspicious chair, let them wonder.

Is it a mimic?

Maybe.

Or maybe it’s just a chair.

But somewhere in the world, there is a mimic sitting inside its furniture shop, carefully crafting a beautiful oak table while muttering about how adventurers have absolutely no appreciation for fine woodworking.

And if you ever visit the shop, remember the golden rule of furniture shopping.

Don’t sit on anything without asking first.

Thanks for reading. Until Next Time, Stay Nerdy!!