Item Seed: The Blade of Aureate Frost.

Blade of Aureate Frost

Description: a shortsword with a yellow-orange blade made out of iron-rich ice.  The blade constantly smokes in any temperature above the freezing point of water, but is magically enchanted to never melt or shatter (although it can chip; see below).  The hilt is wrapped in leather, plastic, twine, and a variety of other non-conductive materials, but is still almost painfully cold to touch. The Blade smells, highly unpleasantly, of rust and blood.

Powers: wounds inflicted by the Blade of Aureate Frost take extra-long to heal naturally, although magical healing will work normally.  The wounds are also more likely to get infected, and typically scar. In some cases a piece of the Blade will chip off and embed itself in the wound; if this happens, the victim will gradually lose his sense of touch, become uncomfortable in any temperature above 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and will likely come back as an ice-themed zombie after his death.  All of this can be treated by healing magic, theurgic intervention, or modern, cutting-edge medicine.

Whoever assembled the Blade of Aureate Frost was probably a highly unpleasant person; it’s a nasty weapon that only lives up to its full potential when in the hands of a thoroughgoing sadist.  According to legend, the blade itself was carved out of an evil iceberg (what made the iceberg ‘evil’ originally is not specified) and then — well, it was not exactly ‘enchanted.’ It was supposedly more like the enchanter simply removed everything that wasn’t a horrible ice blade. Spontaneously-generating evil artifacts are rare, thankfully, and the ones that do exist typically get specially targeted by the forces of Good; this one seems to have survived by being fairly limited in scope.  As well as being able to regenerate itself if broken, even after it’s been thrown into a furnace. Or volcano.

Honestly, the Blade of Aureate Frost is mostly a fashion accessory for a certain type of villain; the kind who even other villains find unpleasant.  Brandishing it in public tends to attract a swift and armed response, as more than one Good-aligned group has discovered that people who own the Blade tend to be the sort of people that should be stymied on general principles.  Heck, more than one villain has preemptively taken down a Blade-wielder, simply because the damned fool was threatening to attract too much attention. Some bad guys aren’t in it just to look cool, understand? They actually want to, you know, do stuff and not get caught at it just because some idiot who wasn’t even an ally or anything was making a scene. There’s more to villainy than drama.