Clockwork Inkbeetle
This minuscule, mechanical beetle is 1 inch long and quietly whirs with a mix of magical and mechanical forces. Placing the beetle on a piece of parchment you hold or carry causes it to spring to life and begin tracking your travels. As you move, so does the beetle: leaving behind a small line of ink. The ink immediately dries and doesn’t dissolve in water. In addition, the beetle’s small frame allows it to move even while enclosed in a book or similar enclosure without losing its sense of movement or direction.
The beetle mirrors your movement to create a to-scale map of your journey, drawing 1 inch of ink in your choice of the following scales: 20 feet/inch, 200 feet/inch, 2 miles/inch, or 20 miles/inch. You can rotate the dial on the beetle’s underside to change the scale as an action. The beetle is immune to magical effects that would otherwise alter its sense of direction.
The beetle always knows which direction is north. When placed on a piece of parchment for the first time, it crouches down to stamp a small compass rose on the sheet before it begins to move. If the beetle runs out of space on the parchment to travel, it stops moving in that direction and emits a clicking sound that can be heard by creatures within 5 feet of it.
Attaching one band of the found and lost to the beetle while you wear the other allows the beetle to move and trace your movements in this way from afar so long as you are both on the same plane of existence.
The Cartographer's Guild of Antronec would hire small bands of adventurers to test their mettle on new and exciting expeditions provided they wear a single band of the found and lost. "To make sure you're alright!" they would say, with a smile. They always had the best smiles. Besides, the gold was always worth the request. In an enclosed room, well-guarded and hidden in the basement of the guild, the Cartographers would watch in earnest as these beetles would scurry across sheets of labeled parchment as bands of expendable mercenaries would plot the best—and worst—routes through the most dangerous places in the realm. Some maps were sold to the highest bidder. Others were used by Cartographers themselves to ransack the remains of their fallen hires and finish the job themselves.