Magic Item: Wayedge

A few days ago, when I posted a comment over at the “Hamsterish Hoard of Dungeons & Dragons”, the verification word that popped up was “wayedge”. I commented that it sounded like the name of a magic item I'd expect to see on that page, and Taichara agreed. So, today, we're both posting our versions of what Wayedge is. This is mine:

Wayedge appears to be a rather unremarkable, heavy-bladed, large kitchen knife. The blade is made of a dark grey, glossy material which tapers to a sharp point, is not quite a foot in length, with a triangular cross-section and only one sharp edge. The handle is fashioned of bone with odd marks carved into it that are easily mistaken as an attempt to make the grip less slippery, and the parts are joined by fittings of orichalcum.

In truth, the blade is a single piece of magically shaped diamond and the handle is fashioned from the phalanx bone of a grey slaad. The blade can, with enough force, cut through nearly anything short of adamantium. While somewhat clumsy for combat, the blade's cutting ability translates to a non-magical +3 “to hit” bonus (meaning that it doesn't count as magical for harming lycanthropes, non-corporeal foes, etc.).

Wayedge wasn't designed to be a weapon, however. It was fashioned with the ability to slice holes in Planes, allowing passage from one Plane to another. The Plane on the other side of such a cut is randomly determined, but is always a Plane which is adjacent to the one the where the cutter currently is. (If you're using the traditional multi-verse wheel, a person cutting a hole in their Prime Material Plane might open a way to a neighboring Prime Material, the Ethereal , the Astral, one the Elemental Planes, or the Planes of Positive or Negative Energy, as all of those are “adjacent” to and “touch” the Plane of the cutter.)

In order to make this cut in a Plane, the edge must be coated in the blood of a single creature. Then the cutter recites a chant three times while stabbing at the air and pulling downward with the blade. (The chant is actually carved into the handle, in the letters that make up the strange markings carved into the handle.) Whatever Plane the cut opens into, it will have everything necessary for the survival of the creature whose blood is on the edge of the blade. That means, there will be air to breath, the temperature will not be so hot or so cold as to pose a serious danger, and it won't be in the middle of rock or the bottom of the ocean, if such things would be an immediate threat to the creature whose blood is used in the ritual. The blade will not, however, insure a lack of enemies on the other side of the rift.

The cutter can usually make a rift as long as they are tall every round. These cuts heal at a rate of roughly 6 feet per turn.

The blade is assumed to be of sshian manufacture, as the runes carved into the handle are a simplified version of that race's courtly script. Legend puts it in the hands of their most famous assassin, the infamous Washak-lum, who personally saw to the deaths of three empresses and nine sorcerers, as well as murdering the dragon Grangom and severing the hand of a river titan. Washak-lum met his end, according to legend, at the hands of a yakfolk sorcerer inhabiting the body of one of the assassin's favorite hierodules.

The knife falls out of legend for thousands of years but it is shows up in the hands of Tecolotliztac, a sorcerer of great renown among the lizardfolk at the height of their second empire. He is known to have been personally slain by the Necromancer at the Battle of Atlyei. Rumor then says that the Necromancer had the knife on his person during the sack of the pleasure gardens of Amocampa. The blade is never mentioned again, and some wonder if the Necromancer used it to escape the destruction of his armies, taking it with him to some unknown Plane.

UPDATE: Here's Taichara's. It's interesting that our minds seemed to orbit the same idea.

And here's David's version over at "Tower of the Archmage". Anybody else do one?

ADDITIONAL UPDATE: Here's Oddysey's vaugely creepy version.

AND YET ANOTHER: Here's JB's bloody version.