That Support

just wanted to share a few magical items that I wrote for the campaign I’m currently running. Nothing too crazy since they are pretty low level right now. They all have a pretty strong drawback but since they are given by a hag in the story it made sense.

Biting Shield, Shield, Uncommon (requires attunement).

This leather shield has the face of a mimic on its exterior, constantly moving while it still has charge, otherwise the mimic is asleep, snoring from time to time. While holding this shield, you have a +1 bonus to AC. This bonus is in addition to the shield’s normal bonus to AC. In addition, the shield has 3 charges, and it regains 1d3 expended charges daily at dawn. When a creature misses you with a melee weapon attack, you can use your reaction to expend 1 charge to make a melee weapon attack with the shield. On a hit, the target takes 1d8 piercing damage plus 1d8 acid damage. However, if you roll a natural 1 on this attack roll, you suffer the damage instead. Curse: This shield is cursed. Attuning to it curses you until you are targeted by the remove curse spell or similar magic. Removing the shield fails to end the curse on you. When you finish a long rest while in possession of the shield, you realize that some of your belongings have been gnawed on and one of your food ration disappeared. If you have no food ration left, you instead suffer 1d8 piercing damage plus 1d8 acid damage.

Dark Shard Pendant, Uncommon (requires attunement).

Made from a jagged black rock from the Shadowfell, the size of an arrow head, this pendant weigh heavily. While casting a spell, you can choose to cut yourself on the pendant, reducing your maximum hit points by 1d4 or 1d8 (your choice). The reduction lasts until you finish a long rest. You die if this effect reduces your maximum hit points to 0. The spell casted inflicts extra necrotic damage equal to the hit point reduction you suffered and has its DC increased by 1 (or 2 for 1d8 hit points reduction). Curse. Once you wear this cursed pendant, you can’t remove it unless you are targeted by the remove curse spell or similar magic. When you finish a long rest wearing the pendant, you must succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw or gain a level of exhaustion.

Huntsman Axe, Greataxe, Uncommon (requires attunement).

This single headed greateaxe has a steel blade with silver glowing Sylvan runes carved on it. You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon. When you hit a shapechanger with this weapon, the shapechanger takes and extra 1d12 slashing damage. For the purpose of this weapon, “shapechanger” refers to the tag shapechanger in any creature’s type, including lycanthropes. Curse. This axe is cursed, and becoming attuned to it extends the curse to you. As long as you remain cursed, you are unwilling to part with the axe, keeping it within reach at all times. You also have disadvantage on attack rolls with weapons other than this one, unless no foe is within 60 feet of you that you can see or hear. The curse lasts until removed by the remove curse spell or other magic. Whenever you finish a long rest without having killed any creature of size Small or bigger, you must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or go berserk. While berserk, you must use your action each round to attack the creature nearest to you with the axe. If you can make extra attacks as part of the Attack action, you use those extra attacks, moving to attack the next nearest creature after you fell your current target. If you have multiple possible targets, you attack one at random. You are berserk until you start your turn with no creatures within 60 feet of you that you can see or hear.

Weeping Bow. Long Bow, Uncommon (requires attunement).

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The owner of the drone was so impressed by the brilliant attack that he suggested organizing a competition for bringing down “dragons” with short spears next year.

An interesting sci-fi short story from 4chan.

[Series of posts on 09/16/11]

About twelve years ago, a man died in high orbit over Tau Ceti V.

His name was Drake McDougal, and aside from a few snapshots and vague anecdotes from his drinking buddies, that’s probably all we’ll ever know about him. Another colony-born man with little records and little documentation, working whatever asteroid field the Dracs deigned to allow them. Every now and then a Drac gunship would strut on through the system, Pax Draconia and all that. But that was it.

One fine day, one of those gunships had a misjump. A bad one. It arrived only ninety clicks above atmo, with all its impellers blown out by the gravatic feedback of Tau Ceti V’s gravity well. The Dracs scraped enough power together for a good system-wide broadbeam and were already beginning the Death Chant when they hit atmo.

People laughed at the recording of sixty Dracs going from mysterious chanting to “’what-the-fuck’ing” for years after they forgot the name Drake McDougal. The deafening “CLANG” and split second of stunned silence afterwards never failed to entertain. Drake had performed a hasty re-entry seconds after the gunship and partially slagged his heatshield diving after it. Experts later calculated he suffered 11Gs when he leaned on the retro to match velocities with the Dracs long enough to engage the mag-grapples on his little mining tug.

Even the massively overpowered drive of a tug has its limits, and Drake’s little ship hit hers about one and a half minutes later. Pushed too far, the tug’s fusion plant lost containment just as he finished slingshotting the gunship into low orbit. (It was unharmed, of course; the Drac opinion of fusion power best translated as “quaint,” kind of how we view butter churns.)

It was on the local news within hours, on newsnets across human space within days. It was discussed, memorialized, marveled upon, chewed over by daytime talk-show hosts, and I think somebody even bought a plaque or some shit like that. Then there was a freighter accident, and a mass-shooting on Orbital 5, and of course, the first Vandal attacks in the periphery.

The galaxy moved on.

Twelve years is a long time, especially during war, so twelve years later, as the Vandal’s main fleet was jumping in near Jupiter and we were strapping into the crash couches of what wee enthusiastically called “warships,” I guaran-fucking-tee you not one man in the entire Defense Force could remember who Drake McDougal was.

Well, the Dracs sure as hell did.

Dracs do not fuck around. Dozens of two-kilometer long Drac supercaps jumped in barely 90K klicks away, and then we just stood around staring at our displays like the slack-jawed apes we were as we watched what a real can of galactic whoop-ass looked like. You could actually see the atmosphere of Jupiter roil occasionally when a Vandal ship happened to cross between it and the Drac fleet. There’s still lightning storms on Jupiter now, something about residual heavy ions and massive static charges or something.

Fifty-eight hours later, with every Vandal ship reduced to slagged debris and nine wounded Drac ships spinning about as they vented atmosphere, they started with the broad-band chanting again. And then the communiqué that confused the hell out of us all.

“Do you hold out debt fulfilled?”

After the sixth or seventh comms officer told them “we don’t know what the hell you’re talking about” as politely as possible, the Drac fleet commander got on the horn and asked to speak to a human Admiral in roughly the same tone as a telemarketer telling a kid to give the phone to Daddy. When the Admiral didn’t know either, the Drac went silent for a minute, and when he came back on his translator was using much smaller words, and talking slower.

“Is our blood debt to Drake McDougal’s clan now satisfied?”

The Admiral said “Who?”

What the Drac commander said next would’ve caused a major diplomatic incident had he remembered to revert to the more complex translation protocols. He thought the Admiral must be an idiot, a coward, or both. Eventually, the diplomats were called out, and we were asked why the human race has largely forgotten the sacrifice of Drake McDougal.

Humans, we explained, sacrifice themselves all the time.

We trotted out every news clip from the space-wide Nets from the last twelve years. Some freighter cook that fell on a grenade during a pirate raid on Outreach. A ship engineer who locked himself into the reactor room and kept containment until the crew evacuated. Firefighter who died shielding a child from falling debris with his body, during an earthquake. Stuff like that.

That Dracs were utterly stunned. Their diplomats wandered out of the conference room in a daze. We’d just told them that the rarest, most selfless and honorable of acts - acts that incurred generations-long blood-debts and moved entire fleets - was so routine for our species that they were bumped off the news by the latest celebrity scandal.