Item Seed: The Unspeakable Hard Drive.

Unspeakable Hard Drive

Description: currently, a 500 gig hard drive (Windows compatible) encased in an external hard drive shell.  The hard drive itself is defective, thanks to a burnt-out motor, but can still be restored by a competent technician with the right tools.  The outer shell has been painstakingly engraved with a variety of unknown symbols; staring too long at the inscriptions seems to neutralize the viewer’s current emotional state, in a manner that does not seem either entirely safe, or even ultimately desirable.

The Unspeakable Hard Drive (UHD) reputedly first belonged to a famous and beloved author; the various legends associated with the UHD attribute ownership to a variety of writers, both living and dead (obviously, the UHD has only been around for a decade or so).  The drive reputedly holds unique ‘forbidden knowledge.’ Again, legends vary as to what’s in the damned thing*:

• An archive of Forbidden Books and Dark Tomes, digitized and linked and annotated for optimal use.  500 gigs is easily enough to store most if not all of the known Forbidden Books out there, and possibly a few of the unknown ones.
• A no-fooling demon of some sort, bound inside the UHD.  Presumably it can be induced to use its power on the user’s behalf.
• A new Forbidden Book, written for our times by the author in secret and frantically now contained before it can contaminate our reality.
• A meticulous recounting and analysis of one of the more unsavory conspiracies in your campaign.  Which the original author would have been involved with, somehow.
• Or possibly the tormented soul of the original author, whose body is now being puppeted by an inimical entity of some sort.

Whatever the answer, owning the UHD is the sort of thing that attracts unwelcome attention.  Particularly since the people trying to acquire the UHD all have different reasons for wanting it, and different plans for it afterwards.  But they’ve all still got that annoying attitude where they’re willing to kill to get their hands on the damned thing. Some won’t bother to negotiate first, and that includes some of the people who just want to destroy the UHD safely, for the good of humanity.  After all, if the current owners were virtuous they’d have already destroyed it themselves.

*‘Damned thing’ is an accurate description of the UHD: it practically radiates black magic of one sort or another.