Scrimshaw

Scrimshaw is such a lovely word, conjuring up images of 18th-century whalers and explorers crossing the oceans in their quest for loot.  For those unaware, Scrimshaw is not just a lovely pilsner from North Coast Brewing Company, but also an artform in its own right.

Scrimshanders craft their art on bone.  Whale bone and walrus tusks are what immediately spring to mind, but any bone or ivory will do.  This being a gaming blog means magical creatures and their magical bones are eligible, as well.

Dragon bones, in particular, but also the tusks, teeth, skulls, and other large bones of fiends, giants, unicorns, wizards, and anything else in your favorite monster manual.  Giant beetle carapaces, even. 

Artwork - and many examples of scrimshaw are artwork - in DnD games is just fragile gp in an encumbrancing form.  Generally speaking, the more gp a piece of art is worth, the more fragile and/or awkward it is to bring back to civilization to cash it in.  So it goes with scrimshaw, but it doesn't have to stop with being interesting gp.

Maps are always a desirable treasure in a DnDish game, but a scrimshawed map on a dragon's fang is somehow even better - if the map leads to the dragon's lair and the rest of the dragon the fang is from, all the better!

Wizard skulls might have spell formulae scrimshawed onto them, for fragile and interesting scrolls - or spellbooks, even, if the skulls are kept in mineral oils.

Seriously, based on my extensive 5 minutes of research on the wiki page linked up above, bone and ivory deteriorate with time, and organic oils, like those found in skin, accelerate the process.  So, keeping the scrimshawed skulls in jars of mineral oil means Mr. Wizard doesn't travel far from home, and also means that enterprising PC wizards have quite the challenge looting Mr. Wizard's sanctum.

Because every solution to a problem should be the beginning of a new problem.

In addition to scrolls and maps, scrimshawed bones could be alternate forms of potions or even tattoos.  Just find your favorite magic tattoo ruleset and go from there - the rules from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is a good start, but Cottage of Everything, an old Reddit thread, Electric Rain, and Blood and Ink provide other options to work with.

Maybe mixing both tattoos and scrimshaw, with tusked and horned beings getting their tusks and horns scrimshawed with magical markings, allowing for the interesting choice of desecrating a corpse to get the kewl magik bits or leaving it whole and going without.  

Decisions, decisions.  

Maybe the beings scrimshawed on these teeth can be called forth to perform a service?  

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Yes, I am overly impressed and inspired by the beer.  But any inspiration is good inspiration, right?