Item Seed: Emotional Woundsword.

Emotional Woundsword

Description: a bastard sword. The blade is steel, curiously red-tinted; and the hilt is made out of a grey wood, with green leather wrappings.  The Emotional Woundsword is remarkably well-balanced, in a way that is clearly magical. The item is warded against being damaged itself, but no more than usual.  Aesthetically? It’s rather creepy, really.

Powers: The Emotional Woundsword inflicts emotional damage on its target; the harder the swing, the worse the damage.  It does not cause physical damage, even if the pommel is used as a club.  Also note that even the weakest attack from this item is an excellent way to break somebody’s concentration.

When the first Emotional Woundsword was accidentally created, there were artificers who actually thought that this magic item was useless.  That was before they saw what a full-strength swing with one could do.  In rules systems where such things as SAN or Mind Hits or Stability or Willpower exists and can be damaged, take the damage usually done by a bastard sword in-game and translate it, one-for-one. Otherwise; assume that a glancing blow will startle people, a good shot will make them pretty unhappy, and a critical hit will leave them shaken and not really functional right now.

Emotional Woundswords are thus very good for messing up people’s heads while leaving their bodies intact, and there are plenty of situations where that would be actually very useful.  Of course, regularly wielding an Emotional Woundsword is bad for one’s personal reputation. It’s not that the Emotional Woundsword itself causes the people who wield it to become emotionally distant and callous; it’s just that only the emotionally distant and callous are capable of wielding it for any length of time before they get rid of the item somehow.  Or at least only use it when they absolutely, positively have to.

One last note: all attempts to adapt this weapon enchantment so that it could be used on daggers or knives ended unpleasantly. It’s rare enough for a technically botched spell like this one to work so well in the first place; the enchantment’s internal architecture is still only vaguely understood, and impossible to deliberately alter effectively.  Although some enchanters think that the spell isn’t really a botch at all. After all, it makes people miserable and encourages other people to make them that way; it could be a subtly diabolical plot, and it’s up to the listener to decide whether or not to capitalize the ‘d.’