Tuesday Magic Item – Ypisaran Blades and Scales

Blade shaping in progress.

“Snakefolk wearing scale armor just seems . . . odd,” commented Esseoros the Archer, following the others into the cool shade of the inn.

“The salt they are made from is not suitable for other types of armor,” said Izzar Vek, scholar and sorcerer, taking a seat.

Kindri Diamondedge rubbed beeswax over her hands.  “Generally I like places built of stone, but everything here being made of salt.  It is not quite right.”

“You use what you have,” said the served, placing glasses of spiced ale on the table in front of the travelers.

“True,” agreed Kindri, tossing the server a half silver.  “And salt is what we are here to buy, though not salt shaped into walls, weapons or armor.”

Ypisaran Blade (Salt Sword)

These weapons are carefully crafted from salt using both magic and craftsmanship, shaped and honed to a dangerous edge.  Traditionally, the grip is wrapped in either shark or snake skin.  The magically strengthened salt is sharp and hard, but brittle.   A freshly made Ypisaran Blade is a fine weapon which takes well to some enchantments but not to others.

A Ypisarian Blade is a masterwork weapon with a base hardness of 13 but only half the hit points of a metal weapon.  It gain the following additional bonuses when enchanted with certain qualities:

• Bane, inflicts a additional point of damage against the bane target on a critical threat.
• Keen, gains a +1 bonus to confirm a critical hit.
• Wounding, inflicts 1d2 points of bleed damage on the first round of bleed.

But a Ypisaran Blade cannot be enhanced with any elemental effect as it will disrupt the matrix of salt crystals.

Any enchanted Ypisaran Blade is damaged will draw salt from a slain blood-bearing foe to repair itself, gaining back hip points equal the the hit dice of the slain foe, when it does so, the blade briefly turns blood red and then gradually returns to the usual salt crystal color.

An Ypisaran Blade costs an additional 375 for a light weapon, 750 for a standard weapon and 1,500 for a two-handed blade.

Ypisaran Scale Armor (Salt Scales)

These shirts of scale armor are made of salt crystal scales woven together with bronze wire.  The complete shirt has a shimmering appearance and has an almost musical clink when the scales strike against each other.

A newly made suit of Ypisaran Scale is masterwork,  When enchanted it adds its enhancement bonus against ray attacks as the shimmering scales act to deflect the magic.  An enchanted suit protects its wearer from bleeding wounds, inflicting one point plus the amount of bleed damage to seal the wound (with a lovely scar), those who are not used to this effect suffer a -1 pain penalty to attack and skill checks for 1d4+1 rounds.

A damaged suit can only be repaired by a salt shaper or, in emergencies, but the sacrifice of the wearer’s blood and salt.  Each point of Constitution damage the wearer suffers, repairs ten hit points of damage.

A basic suit of Ypisaran Scale Armor costs 500.

Notes: You can learn more about Ypisara, goddess of salt and serpents, here.

Photo by Dawn Endico and used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.