Tuesday Magic Item – Serpent Tail Blade
19 July, 2011Vellan let the sword unwrap itself from around her forearm and slide into her hand. “Shall we fight then?” she asked of the trio of men blocking her path in the alley.
Their eyes followed the arc her sword traced. “We did not know you were armed,” muttered one.
“You prefer prey that cannot fight back?” she said, eyeing them carefully, shifting to be ready to lunge.
“We don’t want trouble,” said another.
“Then you should not have followed me,” she smiled but there was no mirth in it.
Serpent Tail Blade
These weapons come in all sizes from daggers to great swords, the metal of the blades usually has a faint green tinge but other colors of snake are occasionally found (one great sword has a pale red blade with a blade stripe, for example). The blades are usually curved or wavy in design. The grips are carved in snake-scale patterns or, or rarely, wrapped in snakeskin.
Until it is bound, a Serpent Tail Blade is just a +1 weapon. Binding a blade requires using it to ritually draw the wielder’s blood, this takes one hour and inflicts 1 point of Constitution damage. Once it is bound to a wielder it becomes for them a +1 keen weapon that the wielder can reshape a number of time pers day equal to the wielder’s level plus Wisdom modifier (if positive). The effect it can gain from this are:
- Bend away from an attack against it, gaining a +4 bonus to CMD against disarm or sunder attacks (free action).
- Reshaping the blade to make it easier to conceal (such as having a dagger or short sword wrap around their arm as a bracelet) (move action).
- Twist the blade to around impediments to strike, gaining a +1 attack bonus, +2 against an opponent with a shield (swift action).
- Warp to deliver additional venom on a strike, increasing the DC of any poison on the blade by 1 (free action).
Aura moderate transmutation; CL 7th
Slot none; Price 10,000 + cost of the weapon; Weight by weapon
Construction
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, align weapon, cat’s grace, poison, stone shape; Cost 5,000 +cost of the weapon (+400 xp for D&D)
Notes: Inspired by a dream I had last week.
Photo by Marshall Astor and used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Shiny, I like how this sounds and works.
Very well done. I really like the detail of this magic item.