Item Seed: Būsai Sard.

Writing smaller stuff is good for me.

Būsai Sard

Description: a cheap, mass-produced machete made out of faintly rusted steel. The name “Būsai Sard” (Tajik for “Cold Kiss”) is inscribed on the lower part of the braid. Magical scrying of the item invariably leads to nausea and nosebleeds. The weapon does not come with a scabbard.

Būsai Sard is a sadist’s weapon. It doesn’t do any more damage than a regular machete might, but the wounds it makes are extra painful, hard to heal, easy to fester, and leave nasty scars. In the 1950s and 1960s it was carried by one mercenary or another, when it wasn’t being used by death squad commandos (or outright torturers). It’s said that Būsai Sard appeared in every civil war, revolution, and massacre in Africa and the Middle East, and that it never changed hands peacefully. That might even be the only good thing about the weapon: everybody who wielded it ended up dying in a horrible and richly-deserved fashion.

The artifact disappeared in 1975, not that it was ever very famous outside of a particular (and extremely unpleasant) class of people. Anyone who cared assumed that Būsai Sard had simply been destroyed, out of sheer moral repugnance; but it’s recently resurfaced. Worse, the group who found it is ready to sell it at an extremely private auction, the fools.

We know the date and place of the auction, then: so that’s where your team comes in. Your job is to kill every person in that auction house. Top to bottom, front to back: leave nobody alive. However you want to do it is fine, as long as you get everybody. Everybody. This is a full sanction job, no witnesses, no survivors, no exceptions. No notice will be taken of any actions you do in that auction house, just as long as everybody dies. Think of it as a vacation, of sorts.

…Oh, put your guns away. Congratulations, you’re the first team that’s managed to not succumb to — whatever vile thing or energy it is that Būsai Sard is all tangled up with. It’s been pure hell on briefing officers, too: we actually had one authorize the use of sarin gas. Obviously, you can’t just kill all of those people, down to the caterers. Oh, most of the bidders will have warrants out on them (the ones that don’t are probably the worst of the lot), but it’d be better if they were arrested by mundane police. Better for your team, that is: murdering in the presence of Būsai Sard is contraindicated.

But if Būsai Sard has enough power to affect us at a distance like that, then it has to be destroyed. Not confiscated, not analyzed, not secured. Break the damnable thing. Do it clean.