Official Unofficial Midsummer Contest [Rules and Entries]

[limetom]

Welcome to the official unofficial CBG midsummer contest!  We haven't had one of these for a while, and I thought it would be nice to have one.

The Humble Magic Sword

One of the staples of fantasy gaming is magic weapons.  Arthur's Excalibur, Cúchulainn's Gáe Bulg, Hervor's Tyrfing.  All are weapons with histories, with renown.  Unfortunately, magic items often lack this kind of back story.  This contest will focus on fleshing out a magic weapon of your choice.

1 '" Questions to Consider and Answer
You need not answer all of these questions; they are simply here to give you a place to start.

Who created this weapon?  Were there any unusual circumstances surrounding its creation?  Is its creation and/or creator remembered today?  

What is the history of the weapon?  Has it moved a significant distance over its life, or has it stayed pretty much in the same place (passed down in a family, abandoned in a tomb, etc.)?  Are there any particularly notable wielders?  Has it performed any notable deeds?  Does someone currently possess the weapon?e  Is someone currently looking for the item (regardless of whether or not someone currently wields it)?  Is the weapon lost at present?

What does the weapon look like?  Does it gleam in the light or does it look ancient and decrepit?  Are there any engravings or notable markings?  Is its design different than standard weapons of its type (barbed, serrated, curved, etc.)?

Are there any drawbacks to using this weapon?  If so, how severe?  Does the item possess some kind of will of its own (even if its just a superstition about its wielders' fate)?


2 '" Some Things to Include
This is where I explain the catch(es).

At most, the entry should be 650 words long.
*The weapon is not to be extremely powerful.
*The weapon should be system-less; you are only working on flavor here.
*The weapon should have one notable event in its history.
*The weapon should have at least one notable wielder.
*The weapon should have some kind of description of its appearance.

3 - Necessary Disclaimer Stuff (Below in Spoiler Box)

[spoiler]Please read all these rules before entering. If you enter the contest, it is assumed that you have read and agree with all the rules presented below. Any entries/contesters found in contrast with these rules will be disqualified from the contest and will be ineligible for any prizes.
0. VERY IMPORTANT All entries must be original content, or if outside material is used, it must be used with the express written permission of the original creator. Anything that is the Product Identity (PI) of Wizards of the Coast can be used for submission, but will not be allowed to be published in the Guide, should it win.
1. No one under the age of seventeen (17) can enter a contest without the consent of a parent or a Legal Guardian.
2. Rules and guidelines will vary. Some restrictions may apply.
3. All winners will be contacted by e-mail within seven (7) days of the contest ending.
4. To claim your winning prize, simply follow the easy instructions in your e-mail notification.
5. If we do not hear from you within seven (7) days of notification, we'll select an alternate winner.
6. Read all the rules, entry requirements and deadlines of each contest before entering.
7. The Campaign Builders' Guild (the CBG) reserves sole and final judgment as to all matters concerning its contests. All decisions are final.
8. Winners are responsible for all Federal, State and Local taxes, if applicable.
9. Void where prohibited and where all Federal, State and local laws and regulations apply.
10. Prizes cannot be exchanged, substituted or transferred, without the prior written consent of the contest sponsor if applicable or the Campaign Builders' Guild (the CBG).
11. Odds of winning a prize depends on the number of eligible entries received and are determined by each contest's specific
criteria of awarding prizes.
12. If you are a contest winner you also authorize the Campaign Builders' Guild (the CBG) and its affiliates to use your name and/or screen name for promotion purposes and publicity purposes without compensation, as well as for use in the Campaign Builder's Guide.
13. These rules are subject to change without notice.
14. Unless otherwise specified, only members 17 years of age and under as stated in rule number 1 above in the general guidelines, and 18 years of age and older can enter or become eligible to win any of the prizes with respect to any contests or make any submissions of any kind to the Campaign Builders' Guild (the CBG).
15. The Campaign Builders' Guild (the CBG) is not responsible for error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operation or transmission, communications line failure, theft or destruction or unauthorized access to, or alteration of your entry.
16. You agree that the Campaign Builders' Guild (the CBG) and its respective representatives shall have no Liability, in connection with the acceptance and use of prizes awarded, including liability for personal injury and property damage.[/spoiler]

Unfortunately, I cannot provide a prize other than a 22x22 pixel badge for you to show your unwarranted self-importance off to everyone else on the site.  Nifty, no?

The contest will run through 6:00 PM EST, Wednesday, July 15, 2009.  Only one entry per member, though an entry can be edited if need be. After which, a winner will be chosen by vote, and a new contest may or may not be presented for Jugust (or perhaps either July or August).

[LD]

The Pinprick of Fate

By the Pricking of my Thumbs, something wicked this way comes. -Witches

Out! Out Damn'd Spot I Say! One; two: why, then, 'tis time to do 't. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? - Lady Macbeth

Description Red, as deep in colour as the wine of the devil and ever bleeding so that when used its stain will not easily be erased, the pinprick of fate has been passed around by interested parties for thousands of years. With each pricking of one's thumbs, misfortune arrives, and insanity-- but also great rewards.

Aladdin, contrary to prior belief, discovered the pin and not a lamp when he was amidst the shroud and gloom of a well, deep below the dusty desert. Shifting hands across coarse ground, he wished for escape, for fame and wealth untold, and as he did-- groping in the dark, he pricked his thumb and brought forth the Djinni of the Pin-- who promised to grant him one wish or to serve as a weapon. Alas, although Aladdin chose the wish and became a Sultan, his once stunning looks quickly withered and his wife, the sensuous Jasmine found Majordomo Jafar's roguish sneer more to her liking. Aladdin tried to murder Jafar, but failed and the man fled with Jasmine. So he removed the pin and wished for Jasmine to return and Jafar to perish. The loss of Jasmine's love and the breaking of the pin's agreement initiated Aladdin's descent into madness and he began building a massive tower-- the Hanging Gardens-- to recover Jasmine's love. His madness in bringing greenery to the desert ended only with the coming of the palm trees. One tottered, then fell upon Aladdin and crushed the life from his wretched body.

The first known use of the versatile pin as a weapon however, occurred when Prince MacBeth of Scotland purchased it from several witches who had expended their uses of the wretched item and who only told MacBeth of its militant characteristics. MacBeth then used the pin to poison his rival, MacDuff and to ascend to the Crown. MacDuff died a long and excruciating death. MacBeth then, heeding the Witches' warning to set aside the pin once its work was done, hid it in a box. But his wife, Lady Pandora MacBeth, opened the box and removed the pin, then used it to murder her social enemies-- all who said she bore a pudgy figure, or who criticized her low birth. This over-use had grave consequences. The Lady descended into madness, then perished when, as the witches forewarned if the pin was overused-- Dunisdane Wood came to the MacBeths' Castle (in the form of besieging troops cloaked in leaves from the Wood).

History Since time began, the pin has existed, and it has tempted. Icarus used it to wish for wings, Hitler used it to wish for power. Others, noted serial killers, have used it to murder hundreds of thousands-- and have then gone mad. Who knows where the pin is today?

-509 Words.

[Kindling]

The crone stroked Tann SeTorst and whispered to it. Dull, bruised iron seemed to shiver in response. The sword lay in her cross-legged lap patiently. The wind was hot and dry, carrying the smell of the pyres - fire and corpse.

The old woman leaned forward, her white hair and black cloak streaming in that hellish breath. Her gnarled finger ran along the nicked and elderly blade, felt the chill of three feet of sinister metal.

She held her breath and locked her crushing eyes on the weapon, tried to imagine it as it once was, not inert as now, but a singing physical voice of murder. Osopho once slew two bears with Tann SeTorst, although he lost an eye and his beauty in the act. Years later he held the gates at Kaht for a day with the cruel blade, screaming defiance, until he finally succumbed to the poisoned arrows of the Rashodoc.

The crone's lips slid into an animalistic sliver-smile at the thought.

Osopho's mother, Gethet Voovul, made Tann SeTort from the re-forged metal of the spearheads that pierced her husband when she found him dead on the field at Ung. Her revenge took her twenty years and cost the sorcerer-king Kifikifi an empire. Tann SeTort took his life.

A Rashodoc poet once wrote of the blade that it was beloved of the Reaper, and that his laughter could be heard every time it took a life.

Death, though, was silent, or perhaps otherwise engaged, as the old woman curled her hand lovingly around its simple, much-worn handle. She held it erect like some war-god's phallus. It was battered and notched, but plain besides the adornments of age and use. Only a single rune betrayed its identity, tiny and easily-overlooked on the hilt.

Gethet Voovul had tried to etch the ancient Ur-Speak sign for "grief" on her terrible creation, but she was no scholar, and instead had created through error a unique mark for the weapon.

"You know, blade," muttered the crone. "You knew when she plunged you into Kifikifi's heart, and you know now. You are for ending, and your finality is brutal and wickedly wise."

Sepulchral cold seemed to reach through her veins then from Tann SeTort, and an ethereal strength turned her blood to silver. She felt, at that moment, like she herself might be Death.

Her foul, gap-toothed grin widened as she thought of the dread blade's work at the hands of the Rashodoc. First Fosshor, then Garanara, then Ghris had butchered with it and died fighting with it in their hands. All through the conquest of Yn pata Kaht, those captains of the Rashodoc crusade had shed blood with Tann SeTort.

Redwater, though, stood out in her mind then. It was he who had truly mastered the blade, she thought, after Ghris left it buried in a ruined cadaver when he staggered from the melee to die.

Redwater had made Tann SeTort his own, and sheathed it in Rashodoc flesh until they were forced back beyond the Alha, and he stood victorious in the ruins of holy Kaht itself.

The crone then moved her mind from imagination to memory, as the image of that great beast of a warrior flashed into her mind, looming grimly over her seven-year-old self, and handing her that terrible blade, still dripping with her father's vital fluids.

"Here child," he had panted, exhausted from the fighting, "your witch of a father loved killing so much, maybe you should inherit a tool for it."
His laughter had come in ragged pants that horrible, rain-lashed day, and it had haunted her nightmares ever since.

The crone stood, infused with Tann SeTorst's gift of weird strength, and strode off towards the victorious army in the valley below, to slaughter and die with that dreadful sword in her hand, as so many had before her.

[Nomadic]

The Tome of the Talesifter

[note]Not sure if this classifies officially as a weapon (it does turn people into weapons of a sort) but I figured I would put it up anyhow.[/note]A book of unknown yet great age, the tome of the talesifter seems at once ready to fall apart, yet when held feels sturdy as a rock. Its binding is of an unknown silver metal and it's outer pages of much worn leather. Opening it reveals pages yellowed and wrinkled with from time, yet oddly as sturdy the rest of the book. The runes upon each page however are written in some unknown language and seemingly shift about, with entire pages moving forwards and backwards within the tome at will.

The Tome of the Talesifter was created by the legendary loremaster, Master Artimus Feilae. A wizened man with a thirst for knowledge, Master Feilae was obsessed with uncovering new stories and legends and crafted an artifact that would help him uncover just that. Creating and enchanting the book he slipped it into the library of a local lord before disappearing. The book sat there for years before its discovery. However, since that time it has steadily passed from one master to another. Unfortunately the enchantments that rest upon it have become intermingled and twisted and the book has taken on a will of its own.

Originally it was intended to be a quiet collector of stories it saw or heard. To keep owners interested in holding onto it, Feilae gave it the ability to talk, and to tell the stories written within it. For a time it did this, and its owners spent many nights fascinated by tales of far off places and heroes of renown. Yet the magic within it has now long since gone awry. The magic power that Artimus Feilae imbued it with was great, so as to maximize its potential for gathering stories and it has since used this power in its own form.

Should it find an owner it will promise to help them overcome a task in return for a small payment. They must tell it a story that it has never seen or heard before. In this way it has both brought men and women to new heights, and others ruined. For the tome can do many things. It has made people invisible and untraceable, and thus assassinated great persons. Others have gained incredible strength of mind and body, and overthrown entire armies. Yet regardless of the person, after their request has been fulfilled the book has always asked for the payment of a tale it has never seen nor heard. Those that have told their tales successfully are allowed to let the book pass onto another, or request something else in return for another story (though the risk increases of not knowing a fresh story the more they tell them). As to the people who have been unable to tell their story, the book places upon them a curse. They must find it a story, and until then they are denied rest of any form. Some have completed their task, and henceforth cast the book away in anger and fear. Of the others have come tormented wraiths. Gone mad from the lack of rest they languished until finally death took them, Yet even then the books curse binds them to this world. And so until they find a new story for it they are forbidden entry into the afterlife, cursed to wander in anguish.

[Drizztrocks]

Zar the Bloodseeker
       Zar is a shortbow, and why many may laugh or wonder why a weapon would have a name, any rightful wielder would know why. Zar has the ability to telepathicly communicate with a rightful wielder, after the wielder willingly cut his wrist with one of Zar's arrows. However, telepathy is not the limit to this bow's power. Black as night, Zar the Bloodseeker has gems imbedded within its dark wood. Cut into these gems are magical runes from ages past, runes that give the bow sentience and power. Each of the gems are list below by color, explaining the certain power each one grants.

 Yellow-This gem has a rune of creation carved into it. This rune carved gem is found in both Zar and the bow's quiver. Arrows appear in the quiver at the wielder's will, allowing him to never run out of arrows.

 Red-This blood red gem cut in the figure of a fang has a rune of bloodseeking carved into it. This magical rune allows the arrows shot by Zar to follow their target until it hits or is deflected by some sort of solid object. This is one of Zar's most famous powers.

 Blue-A gem the color of the sky when looked at one way, and the darkest of blues when looked at the other way, the valuable rock has a rune of mind sharing carved into it. This allows the wielder of Zar to communicate with the weapon telepathicly. The wielder and Zar are the only one's aware of this telepathic connection.

 Green-This gem is the color of the grass in the heart of spring, and also holds one of the bows most useful powers. It's rune is that of the spell of many places, allowing the bow to teleport to its user's hands at any given moment (along with the quiver), or the user to teleport to the bows location.

                            Imperfections of Zar  
      Although at first Zar the Bloodseeker seems like the perfect weapon, the wielder soon becomes more and more inclined towards bloodshed. If he does not attack and kill frequently, Zar drives him to attack those he does not mean to. Zar slowly also makes the user lose all empathy for those he kills.

                             History of Zar  
      Zar was first wielded by an Illithid in the bowels of the Underdark, but was taken from the creature's dead body after a drow killed the Illithid. The drow kept the bow for many years until being captured during a surface raid, and executed. Then the King of a small feifdom wielded the bow until he died of old age (some say poison). His son inherited it, and got himself killed when randomly attacking the militia. The shortbow was put with him in his grave. A decade later the tomb was dug up by grave robbers. They gave the bow to the leader of their bandit group. The bandit performed a daring raid on a dwarf mine, and all the dwarves were killed, but unfortunatly so were all but three of the bandits, who fled from the seen. Weather and avalanches sealed the mine after a hundred years, and it still rests in that dwarven mine to this day, begging for a wielder.

[Superfluous Crow]

Madman's Requiem (the Cackleblade)
The myth behind this cursed sword is as tragic as it is old. It begins with the love affair between the Smith and the Soldier, their names now lost to history, and how the Soldier went to war for his long-forgotten kingdom and never returned. A fellow soldier, who knew of the Smith, brought back the hilt of the Soldier's blade, and a bag full of the hundreds of shards the blade had been shattered into. The sword had been a gift from the Smith, and he cried as he saw how this last link to his lover was ruined. So he toiled day and night for 13 days in an attempt to repair the sword, but to no avail. At night on the 13th day a woman came to him while he was asleep and she offered to help him remake the sword in return for his soul. The Smith, crushed by sorrow, agreed. So together they worked throughout the night, and the Smith poured his heart and his soul into the blade, and when the weapon was finished he died. The woman who had helped him, who was really Pandemonia, the demon-queen of the Mad and the Moon, sought to reclaim her reward, but found it encased in the remade steel. It would forever be her soul, but stuck in this world.
Next day when the Smith's father came to visit the troubled man, he found only his emaciated corpse, with a twisted grin on his face, and he heard his son's echoing laughter echo in the empty smithy. In his arms the corpse held the remade sword as if it were a beloved child. The father ran away in panic, and when he returned, the sword was gone.

The hilt of the demonic weapon resembles that of a well-made and sturdy, but otherwise unexceptional, longsword of dark iron with a grip wrapped in rugged leather, but the blade itself appears to be composed of hundreds of metallic shards only barely kept together by smithcraft and sorcery, the thin cracks between them visible to the naked eye. The blade feels fragile and soft to the touch, but is in truth impossible to destroy. Those who are hurt by the blade touch the very soul of the Madqueen and are forever cursed by insanity.
 
The weapon only emerged again many centuries later in the hands of Prince Limbo, self-proclaimed consort and warlord of the Madqueen, who haunted the Kingdom of Danas with his undead army. Wielding the weapon himself, he razed villages to the ground, and played sick and twisted jokes on his prisoners; mutilating them for fun or turning them into monstrous creatures. The king sent his most trusted knight Amidos to defeat the man, and Amidos met Prince Limbo in an awe-inspiring duel on the Verdant Fields, where he ultimately defeated the murderous warmonger, but the knight was hurt in the process and was condemned to a life locked in a private room in the asylum, as his belief that his most trusted friends were evil spiders in disguise led him to become potentially dangerous. The dead victims of the cursed sword who were spread across the battlefield were said to cackle with malicious glee and distorted faces for 13 days even though they had no life within them anymore. No one journeys close to this cursed field.    

The blade was kept in a locked armory until Prince Kora ascended the throne. He had always had an unhealthy appetite for the supernatural, and went to see the weapon and accidentally cut his finger on the edge. What had been rumored to become a new golden age for Danas instead turned into the Twisted Reign, which ultimately led to the collapse of the ancient empire at the hands of King Kora the Lunatic and his perveted appetites and humor.  
Where the blade is now is unknown.

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Vote in the Poll Section for the Winner!

[sparkletwist]

Light Dragon's entry isn't in the poll for some reason?

[limetom]

Light Dragon's entry isn't in the poll for some reason?

My fault.  I accidentally left it out of the first PM I sent Ishy.  Sent him another about it.

[Ishmayl-Retired]

fixed

[limetom]

Congratulations to our winner Cataclysmic Crow!  I apologize for not getting on this sooner, but I've been quite sick for the past week.

[Superfluous Crow]

:D
Awesome. I don't think I've won one of these before. So thanks to all who voted for my small creation, hope you enjoyed it :)
I'm not going to be using it myself, so feel free to grab the cursed blade if you want to.

[limetom]

Here's an award-type badge for you, Cataclysmic Crow:

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Yay Catacrow!

[LD]

Congratulations again, CC.