Artifex's Artifact Emporium!

[Artifex Felicis]

Welcome to Althanas, I'm Artifex. I've been around for a while, though slowed down somewhat due to real life. I'll be running this little corner of the world as a side event and getting back to some of my roots. I'm open anytime for talking, as my AIM is in my profile, and I'd be willing to help anyone with anything during the tournament.

How much do you know of Althanas' history? How much do you know of its regions and its various cultures?

I'm going to assume little, so here is a neat little place where you can get a very nice general overview, and starting point for learning about any of the regions.

Now that you've gotten an idea of the various countries, how would you like to be apart of Althanas history?

My side event is an Artifact Competition! The rules are simple, write up an artifact and give it a backstory. Is it an unimposing dagger that slew a dragon, or a cloak woven from the threads of a spider? It's all up to you, it can be anything you want, so long as the story behind it is worth it.

I will judge this event myself, based on several criteria.

1. It must involve a region, any will do. It must also fit into the region. No nukes or anything that overpowered.
2. The story behind it is more important then the artifact itself and will be judged accordingly.
3. How well it can fit into the region will also affect its score.

Simple enough. The winner will have their item be accepted into the canon of Althanas, and will receive 3 Fate Points. the runner-up will receive 1. All participants will receive a minor exp and gp bonus for taking part of this challenge.

Due Date is 3 weeks from this date. So the 29th of December. You CAN revise your artifact after you submit it, just tell me and I will take that into account. Just don't revise it at the last second and tell me with a day to spare.

[Mikeavelli]

The Doom that came to Valinatal

In the land of Raiaera, the force of magic is stronger, wilder, more uncontrolled than the rest of the world. This can be seen even in the present day, where hordes of undead freely roam the land, and it was even more true in the past, before the unknown doom that came to Valinatal.

Maerik Ren’Far was among the mightiest wizards of his day. That his name is still known despite living hundreds of years ago, in a city destroyed so long ago no living mind or written words has recorded its doom, is testament to his power. He lived in a day before the true dangers of magic were known to the population, before he knew just how terrible the things beyond were.

Maerik was also the first recorded possessor of the Light of Dawn, a relic that was ancient even in his day, said to be able to send things from beyond back where they came from. Maerik planned to invoke the name of an entity long since forgotten, calling it into this world to learn the secrets of magic no native of Althanas could ever teach him. He kept the Light of Dawn beside him in case the entity proved uncontrollable.

Maerik knew the warnings, that only a man with a good heart and a pure soul could properly use the Light of Dawn, but he chose to ignore them. He imagined himself good, calling things not meant for this world into being purely for the purposes of research – but no man willing to perform those rituals could ever hope to use the Light. It kept the lesser entities he’d summoned to test his powers in check, but when he called forth the Unnamed One, his wards shattered like glass, and the Light never came forth to save him.

That thing overwhelmed Maerik, his apprentices, his guards and servants. It’s power was such that it could rip the very souls from their bodies, and then fuse them together into an unholy monstrosity, a screaming black cloud of faces, bound forever to the lab where they’d died. It did this because, although Maerik and his servants were unable to use the Light of Dawn, the entity couldn’t destroy it either. It couldn’t even TOUCH the thing to hide it elsewhere, so it left the thing that used to be Maerik behind as a guardian.

We know all this from the brave explorer Taenethril, a priest of the Elvish Pantheon of Raiaera, and the sole survivor of an expedition into the ruined city of Valinatal. It was there that he met the black ghost, the mad <i>thing<i> that had been living there for centuries, it was powerful beyond measure when compared to Taenethril’s group, and would have been the end of him as it had been the end of so many others had not the ancient wizard Maerik taken control of the thing he’d become a part of, and spoke to the young priest.

Insane though he was, Maerik knew he wanted his torture to end more than anything, and that Taenethril was a good man, capable of using the Light of Dawn to destroy him. Maerik told the young elf where to find it, how to use it, and as much of the history as we now know.

Unfortunately, Maerik also let slip the true name of that Unnamed thing he’d called to this world all those years ago. A name he refused to repeat, even after telling the rest of the story to his relieved comrades once he returned from the ruins of Valinatal. When Maeirk spoke that name, the thing heard too, and it tracked down the new bearer of the Light of Dawn. It came in the night, only a week after Taenethril’s return, and despite the best efforts of his friends and family, no trace of Taenethril’s fate was ever found.

The Light of Dawn is hidden away now, the evil things it was created to banish cannot stand to be near it, and so cannot guard it – but the Unnamed one is cunning and cruel, and will certainly do it’s best to see to it that the Light of Dawn never surfaces again. With the state Raiaera is in, expeditions to somewhere so dangerous might just be a waste of resources, but a successful recovery, with the powers of the Light of Dawn, could be the turning point in the War against the Undead.

As for the Unnamed one, it’s motives, abilities, and even its physical form remain mysterious. The only thing that is certain is that anyone who again recovers the Light of Dawn will have a powerful enemy hunting them from the very start.

[hr]

Mechanical description:

The Light of Dawn is a Necklace with a sun-shaped medallion at the end, inscribed with Runes of light, protection, and the forbiddance of evil. Anyone wearing it is imbued with a mild protection from evil spirits, lesser demons, ghosts, and creatures of the sort find themselves unable to even approach the wearer, though more powerful entities can ignore this.

The most powerful ability of the Light of Dawn functions only when the bearer has a good and a pure soul, a standard many believe they fit, but few truly live up to. When in the hands of such a person, the Light of Dawn can emit a bright light in all directions, one that good men find calming, but evil ones feel great pain and fear when standing in it.

When the light produced falls upon a creature not of this world, such as an Undead thing, or a Demon, they are forcibly discorporated, either banished or destroyed depending on the power of the of the entity. Such is the power of the Light of Dawn that absolutely no unnatural evil creature can survive its light, no matter how mighty.

Even the unnamed one, if it showed itself before the Bearer of the Light of Dawn, couldn’t stand against it, but such creatures have ways to stand against their enemies without direct conflict.

[Artifex Felicis]

Thank you for the entry!

[noodleguy]

Title of the Object: The Shaman's Gem
History:
It is in the dense forest of Concordia that goblin-kind has the most difficulty scraping by. This may seem strange to the casual observer, as the dense forests would appear to be ideal for goblin hideouts and raids. In most places of the world, goblins are the experts of guerrilla warfare and forest combat, emerging from the trees to attack and raid and then disappearing back just as quickly. In Coronè, however, the goblins have met their match. The Coronè Rangers train their entire lives for service in the depths of that very forest, and their patrols are antithesis to the goblin’s plans. Evenly matched in stealth and speed, the two rival groups circle each other like cats and mice, Rangers and Goblins. The endless war was terrible, to say the least, for any stability in goblin society. Every goblin tribe in the area is forced to live as nomads, fleeing the poisoned arrows of the rangers that haunt them at every turn.

Life was not always this way for the goblins of Concordia. Once, during what the commoners call the Age of Decay, goblins thrived in that forest. Too far south to concern the elves, and too far north into the forests for humans to do anything, the goblins lived right on the fringe, making a living leeching off the villages all along the southern fringe of the woods. There were Coronè rangers at that time, but under the weak leadership their expertise and equipment had been neglected and their attempts at controlling the goblins were far too spread out to make any real difference.

What’s more, the largest tribe of goblins, one sitting right on the Bradbury River had an additional advantage against the forces of humans. A powerful Shaman, by the name of Grumalth, had taken power of that sector of the forest, and working together with the other goblins of the fringe he created a powerful artifact. It was a gemstone infused with goblin magic, normally perfectly clear and invisible. When a goblin of unusual magical potency was nearby it would glow bright green. When that goblin touched the gem it gave him and all other goblins within 10 complete invisibility. Using this powerful tool, the Shaman was able to cloak boats, and with his trusted raiding party he would terrorize all villages along the river. There were even rumors that one day the Shaman would further purify the gem, allowing it to cloak an entire army, allowing an army goblins to attack the human capital at Radasanth.

Before anything of that nature could happen, the Age of Decay in which goblins had thrived ended. The new government saw the growing goblin threat and infused massive amounts of money into the efforts of the Coronè Rangers. It boiled down to a battle in the home village of the powerful Grumalth. The Shaman gathered the women, children, and elderly of his village into a huddle of the center and used the orb to try and protect their lives. His goblin warriors went out and did valiant battle with the enemy, aided by the Shaman’s powerful magics, but the Rangers were far too powerful. They were slaughtered, every one. The Shaman was struck down by an arrow, and upon his death the orb’s effect stopped. The weak goblins who had been gathered in the center became visible. A select few, incidentally including the Shaman Grumalth’s pregnant wife, managed to escape, but those who did not were slaughtered without mercy. The town desolate, the Rangers searched for the orb for many days and nights. They brought in the most powerful human spellcasters of the land, but none could find it. The orb was entirely invisible to all eyes, arcane or otherwise. Eventually the gemstone was forgotten, and only the battle was remembered. Later on, when even the memory of the battle was gone from the memory of human society, the village would be grown over with trees. Those lucky few goblins that had escaped would never return, and instead assimilated themselves into various other tribes. Without any leader of real strength, and facing the might of the Coronè Rangers the goblins would descend into the poverty and chaos that is their state today. Those goblins that escaped would be the only ones to preserve the memory of the gemstone and the battle. Over the years, many goblins also returned to attempt to find the gem that had given them their power, but eventually the location of the village was entirely forgotten. Even the name of their brave Shaman would be lost in the annals of history, and today he is simply known to all goblins The Shaman, a sort of mythical demi-god like hero. Few today even believe in the tale, thinking that any day when goblins had real power must have been a myth.

And so, somewhere on the fringe of the forest of Concordia there lies a gem, forgotten by all. Occasionally a brave and foolish goblin or particularly knowledgeable human or elf will attempt to find the lost Shaman’s Gem, but so far all have failed. The consequences of their unearthing the location of the object could be immense, if it were to fall into the hands of a spellcaster powerful enough to expand on its power.

Mechanical Description:
The Shaman’s Gem is an entirely clear, invisible object when there are no goblins with magical abilities nearby. When it is invisible it is still possible to feel and touch, however, it is otherwise undetectable by magical or physical searches. The gem is approximately one inch by one and a half inches in size, an oblong cylinder. When a goblin of magical ability is nearby, the gem will glow bright green and become visible. When it is touched by a goblin of magical ability it will cloak a ten foot radius in any area the goblin wishes, within a range of 50 feet from the caster.
The gem is not unbreakable, and if subjected to large amounts of pressure it will shatter quite easily. The material it is made out of is comparable to a slightly stronger type of glass.

[Artifex Felicis]

Thanks for the entry Noodle!

[Ya Zhen]

Item: The Sanguine fang

Long, long, ago when the world was much different, an animal like demon roamed what is now called the Nirrakal mountains. It subsisted mostly on the animals that lived around that area, now long since extinct, or evolved. It was the size of a man, but appeared a grey, amorphous, blob. This allowed it the perfect camouflage in the rocky area when it became perfectly still. When prey was in the viscinity it would issue forth a burp of sorts. This burp was composed of a gas naturally produced by the thing to smell like rotting carrion. When the prey neared the "Rock" it would burst forth releasing a second gas that caused paralysis. The thing would then open its wide, gaping maw and absorb its unfortunate victim similarly to an amoeba. In its mouth was a single pointed tooth, a vestigial trait.

The world was changing. As the world changed the few animals that were not lured in by the creature bred their fear into the next generation, and the next generation after that. Eventually the animals around the nirrakal mountain range adapted the ability to tell the difference between the demon's gas, and actual rotting meat. Unfortunately for the creature this meant doom, as it relied on trickery to hunt. And so the blob would starve to death, and in its death throws, would let out a knell so sorrowful even its former prey weeped in the night. The blob faded into the earth leaving on the ground its singular unnecessary tooth.

All the sadness of the mountains, its creatures, and the demon itself manifested itself in the tooth giving it a semi sentience. It stewed in both sadness of the area, and anger over what it was; A purposeless tool, made even more unnecessary by its user's death. For one hundred years it stewed, sadness turning totally to anger, anger turning to rage, rage turning to hatred, and finally, when it had forgotten what it was so hostile too, to sheer malevolence.

It was then that civilized man first came to the mountains. A single man, member of the subterrainian race the Mi'sheteri, would wander from his home in curiosity. None of their people had ever made it this far, at least not without being horribly maimed and never seen again. The man's name was Na'primoris. Na'primoris traveled, and eventually reached the center of the mountain range. He wandered aimlessly until a glimmer caught his eye. Being one of the Mi'sheteri, or glasswalkers, he took great interest in shiny objects. He meandered towards it, and picked it up examining it. At first glance it appeared to be a ruddy redish brown, but upon further inspection it began to become deeper and far more beautiful. He opened his mouth where he previously had a canine tooth, knocked out in a fight, and replaced it with the sanguine fang, a fitting false tooth.

Na'primoris returned to his village as proud as a peacock. He showed everyone his "spoil" of adventure. The tooth was temporarily sated, its great malevolence held back by it's belonging. This would not last long. Na'primoris bragged just a bit too much, which prompted an old childhood enemy to murder him in a jealous fit of rage. This man, Ko'penuriosus, caused the final hope of the tooth's redemption to be despoiled. With the death of its host it gained also its host's curiosity. Ko'penuriosus took the tooth for himself hiding it in his trader's satchel. When he took some of his people's famous glass to the market of R'uuya he passed by a cage filled with cattle. The fang exerted its malice towards the cattle, in it's purest form causing them to break out of their cage and trample Ko'penuriosus dead.

The tooth was found by a local noble's daughter and strung on a necklace that she wore. After this she exhibited many odd behavior's. She was out all night, she flocked with commoners, and her father began to notice that many small animals were found strangled on his property. Of course he never would have thought the problem would lay in his daughter's latest fashion choice. One day he confronted his daughter while they went to view the great Attireyi river. The fang began manipulating her actions in total and, while in the climax of her fathers lecture, she threw herself into the river. Her father plunged in after her, but arrived too late. She had drowned in the cold river's depths. He took her body ashore gazing at it in horror before screaming to the heavens, and weeping. He never noticed that her necklace had gone missing in the event. The fang took from the noble lady vanity, hoping to climb up the scale of victims to royalty.

And so the Sanguine Fang found many more hosts taking from them all of the worst of mankind. It had not yet truly found anyone of a more noble origin as it had been lost yet again to the Attireyi river. Would it ever find another host? Only time can tell.


Mechanical description: The sanguine fang is about the size of an average man's canine tooth, perhaps a bit larger. The shape is more rounded than a human's tooth, but would serve as a good replacement. It is ageless, because of the demonic energies, and the sheer malevolent feelings harbored by its semi sentience. When worn it negatively affects the wearer's personality with it's assembled emotions, more so the more time has passed. When it leaves a host, usually in the form of the host having a horrid "Accident" it takes on one of the host's more natural negative traits.

[Mabus]

Title of the Object: The Ouroboros Egg

History: Hailing from an era beyond known space and time, when technology and the classical sciences ruled the world in place of Magic, the Ouroboros Egg is a symbol of infinity and infinite power, and a product of a peculiar phenomenon of research and development known as 'singularity', to which it is the last and only known testament to slip through the fabric of space and time, and the only one known to do it time and again, with no evident affect in its use upon such venerable forces.

Stumbled upon in its time by countless individuals, the Egg has been underestimated by nearly all that have laid eyes upon it, and been used for a mix of good and ill. Thousands of years ago, its properties served as the basis for a gentleman known as Velrith Katan to pull his inbred and outdated dynasty into an era of unrivaled power, propelling his people into great wealth at the cost of the usual shortcomings of necromantic glory reaching fevered pitch, eventually resulting in Kasan-Tan reaching out towards the world in countless acts of war and aggression, before the nation consumed itself, in a fit of desperate infighting and betrayal. Nothing remains of Kasan-Tan but some enigmatic tombs and spectacular monuments forgotten under the colossal mountains of sediment and countless towns built upon these in the long, long ages since the last betrayal of Katan left the dynasty ended, it's last sovereign immortal but trapped, never to be heard again, in the lofty ruins of Kasan-Tan, known to this day only by his family's name, and as a story told to children by some parents and Priors on the dangers of inequity.

Other stories are known of the Egg of Ages, though admittedly not so fantastic as those of the rise and ruin of Katan. A priestess in far western deserts of this world is credited with inheriting the Egg from her parents, and using it to conduct a number of miracles that no Wizard or Soothsayer of history since has any explanation for, curing hideous wasting illnesses, many of them hereditary, and even apparently resurrecting a young boy from the dead, prior tragically crushed in a mining accident, and mending his bones to better condition then they'd been prior, and in little more time then three days, culminating in the boy waking normally, per the account of a local scribe of good repute. A similar story has the Egg passed on to the same boy, whom moved to the lands of Raiaera, only to be tragically slain by raiders in transit. Some scholars speculate that one reason for development of a rather infamous reputation for malign necromancy in this area may be due to the theft of the Egg, if factual, allowing it to fall into the hands of an individual that was able and willing to use it to evil ends, and thus influenced, was lead to a similar set of circumstances as befell those of the fabulous city of Kasan-tan and its dynasty of Katan, on a distant world, in a long forgotten age...

Mechanical Description: The Ouroboros Egg appears as little more then an enigmatic egg formed out of a milky, silvery metal more so a precise sculpture then anything else, to the experienced trader, fetching perhaps 20 gold-pieces, if the gentleman or gentlewoman does not know the age and history of it before selling it. It can be encountered as such in some lands, at some times, but quite often it is discovered in distant and long forgotten ruins, in chambers full of traps and other ominous dangers. At other times, it can be found in the remains of beasts and eldritch juggernauts that had seemed animated solely by strange puppet-string fibers of a milky, silvery filament, riddled throughout its body in some strange, fanciful necromantic mischief.

A person with a sense of magic or the related power may recognize the faint presence of a disturbingly...blank lifeforce, within the Egg. A more skilled user or more experienced sensor will recognize what appears to be a blank lifeforce 'template', and a personality of distinct apathy that cares only for its own survival, but seems to be storing a vast repository of knowledge. Those in whose blood lies a history of meddlings in forbidden and secret techniques of necromancy and other manipulations of the forces of life and death will be influenced by the Egg with strange ideas presented in the form of dreams and day-dreams, growing more specific with time. Some, the story is told, are driven from mundane life to stark-raving madness by this influence. Others are driven to fits of peculiar insight and genius. Those with a preexisting training in resurrection, healing, and/or necromancy will find in the Egg an indispensable and reliable tool of quick resuscitation and control.

The Egg can be used a number of ways. As a subliminal teaching and learning aid. As a directly applied method for resurrecting a multi-cellular corpse of nearly any size, and controlling it. In this method of use, it unravels, while inexplicably retaining its base volume, lancing its subject body through and through with strange filaments of milky silver, healing and moving whatever creature it has been instructed to restore. It can even be used as a perpetual-energy machine to power numerous varieties of mechanical and magical engines, though only if one is seeking a modest power output from it. There is one shortcoming to using the Egg in any capacity, however.

The Egg is sensitive to attacks directed at it, and seeks primarily to guarantee its own survival. If provoked while serving as the kernel of a resurrected body, it will retaliate with un-relinquishing fury wielding that body. If attacked by a student or teacher using it, it will retaliate with thoughts so provoking that the aggressor may be driven to seek suicide from the sheer mental agony. The Egg has been known to be found with its prior owner inexplicably stricken comatose, or worse, deceased and irreparable. If successfully destroyed, however, the Ouroboros Egg seeks another time and another world, seeking, it is said, some strand in possibility where it has not been destroyed, a safer place...

[Artifex Felicis]

Thanks for the entries!

Also, I am moving the deadline back to the 31st to cover for the downtime. You may edit your Artifact until that point in time, at that point all entries are final.

[Jericho]

((A thousand apologies; I got caught up with New Years festivities and forgot to get this posted!))



The Tale of Nda'ku

In times of great peril, men have oft cried out to heaven for deliverance--pleading with whatever powers may heed them for some boon to grant them victory over their adversaries. Countless times throughout history, these pleas have gone unheeded, and perhaps, in this, the Fates are wise.

Among the clans of Fallien, a tale is told of a time nearly 400 years ago when the Essekers and the Deklans went to war. It was an age of dunes stained scarlet, a time when bones lay thick beneath the shifting sands of Suravani's scorn. The conflict brought a stop to the horse trade, which had until that time flowed life into those barren wastes. Those not killed swiftly by enemy steel died slowly, starved for want of caravans and food. And so it was that Esseker and Deklan alike lifted their cries to the heavens, begging the moon and stars for relief, for some blessing to turn the tide.

One man's prayers were answered.

He was called Kavaiyal, a captain of the Deklan horde. While tracking a band of marauding Essekers into the Blight, his summoned clan hounds picked up a new scent. Surrounded by the searing waste of the Nirrakal, starved for water by the long hunt, Kavaiyal and his men stumbled upon a hovel forged from glass beneath the sand, inhabited by a most peculiar hermit of the Mi'sheteri.

The crazy old man scarcely spoke, aside from odd gibberish and the occasional nonsensical Fallien word. The men managed to gather that his name was Nda'ku, though he seemed to call everything else in his home by that name as well. The crystalline burrow was filled with trinkets--small glass figurines in the shape of various desert animals. Besides a small glass forge which the lunatic fiercely guarded, the hovel housed little else, and Kavaiyal wondered for a time how the old man managed to survive the brutality of the Blight.

Then he witnessed the hermit creep from his home and return with a jar of sand. Muttering to himself, Nda'ku retrieved one of his figurines from a niche in the wall--some manner of small Fish--and set it atop the container. Kavaiyal's men offered up all manner of prayers to Suravani when they beheld the sand in the jar turn at once to water.

And there the wonders did not cease. The Deklan scouts found that every figurine in the burrow held some kind of power, though some were more difficult to discover than others. A sculpted Hare infused whomever touched it with a sudden rush of adrenaline, and any man who touched the glass Scorpion was instantly paralyzed by agonizing pain. Nda'ku tended a number of small, shrivelled weeds in his home, but with the figure of a Honeybee he could coax the ripest fruit from them. The men stayed there for some time, drinking sand and eating fruit grown from twigs, revelling in their find.

Then a desert viper wriggled it's way into the cave. While the scouts kept their distance, Nda'ku took up the glass Lion and spoke his gibberish to the snake in a firm, solemn voice. When the viper nodded and retreated the way it had come, Kavaiyal realized in full what he had found.

In his mind he saw hordes of harpies and jackals bound by the Lion figure to his will, laying siege to the Esseker clanlands while he turned the dunes to rivers to water his own armies. These were no mere trinkets--in this hovel, he had discovered the key to the Essekers' demise.

The change in their captain was not lost on the band of scouts. He began brutally interrogating the glasswalker, trying to pry from the hermit's dimensia-ridden mind the functions of the other figurines and the methods by which the enchantments had been made. He even tried to order Nda'ku to make more of them, but if the old man understood, he never showed any sign of it. Eventually, he perished under Kavaiyal's questioning, muttering with his final breath the most coherent sentence he had spoken since the Deklans' arrival:

"Hungry man not know to be full...hungry man will starve!"

Kavaiyal then turned to experimentation, and the more he learned, the more his visions of grandeur blossomed. His subordinates urged him to take the figurines back to the Deklan clanlands, that they might be used against the Esseker threat. But the captain was not about to share his newfound power with the clan mother. Rather, he sought to discover the full extent of the glass figures' magic. The men under his command suffered greatly under his "tests." One was turned into a living statue by the Tortoise until his companions learned they could use the Snake to free him. Another vanished without a trace upon touching the Horse, only to come stumbling across the dunes two days later, nearly dead. Kavaiyal refused him water until he gave his report: in one moment, he had been in the cave, and in the next, the Horse had taken him far into the Blight, to a place where two old trade routes met. Because of the war, no caravans came that way, and the poor soul had struggled his way back on foot, unable to will the Horse to take him back the way he had come.

The power of the figurines seemed to grow, even as they were studied. The scouts found that by touching different figures together, they could achieve entirely new results. When the Mockingbird and the Tortoise touched, the whole world stopped but for the holder, who could move about while all else remained suspended in time. The Hare and Fish together caused water to boil.

One by one, Kavaiyal's men paid the price for his lust. One scout's mind was completely erased when he touched the Jackal and the Mockingbird; he could not remember his own name, where he had come from, any of his childhood, or anything else save how to speak. Another, upon touching the Scorpion to the Hare, went completely mad, tearing at his face, destroying one eye, and nearly killing some of his comrades before fleeing into the desert, never to return.

And that is when the Fates had had enough.

Kavaiyal's final experiment was to touch the Horse, Jackal, and Lion all together at once. With a great crack of thunder, all the figurines vanished, and the Deklan scouts were left stranded in the Blight, their stores of food and water long since depleted. Kavaiyal and all his men died in the desert save one, who managed to make his way through the sands and back to the Oasis. There, he told the story of Kavaiyal's folly, and how the Deklans might have turned the tide of war if not for one man's greed.

Years later, after the war had run its course, the Honeybee was found in an alleyway in Irrakam. Thus was the true nature of Nda'ku's enchantments revealed--the figurines had not been destroyed, but hidden, tucked away in safe places all across the world. Only the Fates can know if those who discover them will suffer the same doom as Kavaiyal.

[hr]

Each Nda'ku figurine possesses a unique enchantment. They are crafted from cillu and thus are somewhat translucent in appearance (though the magic upon them has rendered them indestructible, and more transparent than typical shard glass). Each is small enough to be held in one palm. Some are activated by contact with the skin, while others require the will of the holder to work their magic.

- The Horse instantly transports its wielder to any place where two roads cross. (Activated by contact.) Currently possessed by a stableboy in Corone.
- The Snake cancels the effect of any other figurine. (Activated by will.) Currently possessed by the Entadaa noble family in Scara Brae.
- The Scorpion paralyzes its victim with intense, unrelenting pain. (Contact.) Currently possessed by an Inquisitioner of the Etherial Sway.
- The Mouse unlocks any door. (Will.) Whereabouts currently unknown.
- The Honeybee brings forth fruit from any plant. (Will.) Currently possessed by the Jya in Fallien.
- The Fish turns sand into water. (Contact.) Whereabouts currently unknown.
- The Tortoise freezes the holder in time. (Contact.) Currently possessed by the Valeena noble family of Scara Brae. (Note: once frozen, the wielder cannot be unfrozen except by the Snake.)
- The Hare induces an adrenaline rush in the holder. (Contact.) Currently possessed by a knight in Corone.
- The Mockingbird enables the wielder to reverse the momentum of a target. For instance, it might be used to cause an arrow to reverse direction in mid-flight, as though it had bounced off the very air. (Will.) Currently possessed by a merchant in Salvar.
- The Lion commands the will of animals. (Will.) Currently possessed by a nomad child in Fallien.
- The Jackal reveals to the holder the whereabouts of a target person or object. (Will.) Whereabouts unknown.

When two or more figures touch, they produce a new power entirely. Only a few of these combined powers have as yet been discovered--most of them by Kavaiyal, before the figures were scattered across the world. Some of the known effects are:

- Jackal / Horse / Lion: Scatters all of Nda'ku's creations across the world.
- Mockingbird / Tortoise: Freezes time, but for the wielder.
- Hare / Fish: Boils water.
- Hare / Scorpion: Drives the wielder instantly insane.
- Mockingbird / Jackal: Erases the wielder's memory.
- Mockingbird / Mouse: Seals a door so that only the Mouse can open it again.
- Jackal / Horse: Transports the wielder to a target person or object.
- Lion / Fish: Transforms the wielder into a target animal.

[Artifex Felicis]

All entrees are no considered official, and this is closed for judgement. Expect me to be done with it in a day or so. Thank for participating!