Item Seed: That Which Harvests.

That Which Harvests

Description: a sickle with a discolored, serrated metal harvester’s blade, and leather-covered wooden handle.  The handle will always (slightly) scratch the hand that holds it, no matter how much protection is worn. That Which Harvests (full name: That Which Harvests the Blasted Fields) absolutely registers as Evil, and scans as being generically demonic in origin, but has no formal spellcraft associated with it.

That Which Harvests has been the whispered subject of fearful rumors among necromancers, sorcerers, diabolists, and other avowedly Evil magicians for centuries.  It’s a punishment weapon, not a combat one: most of the time, the forces of Hell tolerate well enough humans who use magic for awful ends. The idea is to spread suffering around in the most efficient way possible; if one of the talking monkeys decides to help fill the local monthly quota on his or her own, then why get in the way?

But sometimes a human mage grows far too arrogant and cocksure in his powers, and threatens to overstep his place.  When that happens, That Which Harvests is sent for and given to a suitable human wielder (whether he wants it or not).  The wielder is then commanded to go forth and slay the offending mage — and right quickly, before That Which Harvests consumes the life energy of he who wields it.  The artifact can fortunately apparently only be ‘gifted’ to genuinely Evil magicians, although the Evil magicians wouldn’t agree with the ‘fortunately’ bit.

The bad news is, the wielder will eventually wither and die if he does not slay his target.  The good news is, should he use That Which Harvests to sacrifice said target (and the weapon is rather good at cutting through defensive magics, mystic shields, and titanium), the wielder will permanently receive a part of his target’s power, which is nice.  At any rate, once the target’s dead the wielder must then leave That Which Harvests stuck in the corpse; he’s now free to go about his day.  Of course, he’s also just ritually sacrificed a human being in the service of Hell, but the wielder was probably already damned anyway.  So, how are things worse?  

Assuming that a player isn’t evil enough to justify getting given That Which Harvests as a demented extra-credit assignment, the party will probably encounter the item in the hands of somebody else, who is currently trying to reach a target that the party probably wants dead anyway.  Unfortunately, the wielder will likely carve through a bunch of less vile people in the process, which can be a thorny ethical problem. Assuming that the party can contact the forces of Heaven, the usual advice there is: find out the wielder’s target, kill the wielder, kill the target, and then give That Which Harvests to an angel, who will soon deliver the fragments of the unholy artifact back to Hell with a demon corpse wrapped around it.  Hell will just make another artifact, though. They always do.