Humanbane
It’s a sword. Specifically, it’s a carp’s tongue broadsword; it has a wide blade that tapers down to a lengthened point. It’s suitable for slicing, stabbing, and/or thrusting. Human’s provenance is, based on various details, dated as being somewhere around the 12th century BC. Which is awkward, because the blade is made of something roughly equivalent to wootz steel.
Normally, something this anachronistic would be dismissed as a clumsy joke or forgery, but they pulled this sword out of a previously-undisturbed burial mound in northern France during an extremely well-documented expedition. There’s no way that Humanbane could have been inserted into the dig somehow: the cameras were operating 24/7 throughout the entire operation. In some ways, it was a relief when the nice people from the — well, they’re from a pan-European agency, and had the right officials vouching for them, and that was enough — came to collect Humanbane. And replace it with something that looked like it at first, but looked like something else entirely when cleaned. Continue reading Item Seed: Humanbane.