Book of Bone and Ebony

successes scored x 10) minutes. Some ghosts who are paranoid
about grave robbers use these pillows constantly,
unwilling to risk leaving their gravesites unattended.
Artifact Traits:
Power •, Usefulness ••, Game Impact ••, Script
Immunity ••;
Drawback •• (Component •, Notoriety •)
ROBE OF LIFE (ARTIFACT •)
This simple white robe is woven from plain linen,
rather than costly silks, and smells of spring breezes and
fresh rain rather than funeral incense and grave dust.
When donned, it causes its wearer to appear as she did
while alive and in the flush of youth, removing all evidence
of her method of death and even effacing the stains
of the Great Contagion. This effect only lasts for as long as
the wearer keeps the robe on. Once she removes it, all her
marks of death and age reappear. This robe does not affect
artificial post-death changes in the ghost’s form, nor will it
restore soulsteel.
Artifact Traits:
Power •, Usefulness ••, Game Impact •, Script
Immunity ••;
Drawback • (Notoriety •)
SCROLL OF UNENDING STORIES (ARTIFACT •)
In the silence of the Underworld, tales and legends
can be all that hold a ghost back from the final long plunge
into Oblivion. By concentrating on one of these scrolls
and spending a mote of Essence, its holder can imprint a
story on it and have it permanently recorded there, though
at the cost of losing it from his own memory — he will not
remember the events which took place, if it was a real
event that happened to him, or the facts of the tale, if it was
imaginary. The story, however, remains imprinted on the
scroll for as long as the scroll survives.
When unrolled, the scroll is a simple piece of blank,
ivory-tanned leather, detectable to aficionados as dried
human skin. The holder (who must be attuned to it) must
know the subject of the story that he wishes to call up. If
so, it will appear in dark brown lettering on the scroll, and
as the scroll is unrolled further, the story continues down
it until its end. There is no practical limit to what a scroll
of unending stories may contain, though when they include
multiple different versions of the same story, it takes
that much more time and effort to find a particular one.
While these artifacts may seem purely for entertainment,
spies have used them to carry secret messages, by
embedding such a message within a story and then recording
it in the scroll. As the messenger is then left with no
memory of what the message was, this method can be very
effective. There have also been cases where very old scrolls
contained stories that had factual accounts of First Age
devices, Charms or spells. For this reason, the Deathlords
themselves have been known to collect these scrolls for
61
CHAPTER THREE • THE WONDERS OF THE DEAD
research purposes. Their truest value, however, is to isolated
communities of ghosts, desperate for some break in
the endless monotony of eternity, for stories that will give
them some emotions to experience once again.
Artifact Traits:
Power ••, Usefulness •••, Game Impact ••, Script
Immunity ••;
Drawback •• (Component •, Notoriety •)
STALLION-THRASHING WHIP (ARTIFACT •)
This whip must be prepared with hide taken from a
dead stallion, a lash woven from his mane and a haft
reinforced with bones from the stallion’s body. When
properly prepared and ensorcelled, a single crack from the
whip will summon the stallion’s ghost to serve the owner.
The horse rises from the ground in a crack of thunder, its
mane and tail streaming and its eyes bright with rage and
bloodlust, eager to be racing into battle.
The stallion has the statistics of a noble horse (see
Exalted: The Abyssals, p. 20), though it lacks the full
intelligence of the latter. It may only be summoned by
the whip that was crafted from its body, and if that whip
is destroyed, the ghost passes into Lethe. Unlike those
ghosts who follow their masters after being sacrificed as
part of their funeral rites, the stallion has no allegiance to
anyone except the person who currently holds the whip,
and it will obey that person’s verbal commands or physical
directions unhesitatingly. If slain, it fades away into
shadows and may be resummoned by cracking the whip
at the next dark of the moon.
Artifact Traits:
Power ••, Usefulness •••, Game Impact •, Script
Immunity ••;
Drawback •• (Component •, Notoriety •)
STEEL PEN OF REFINEMENT (ARTIFACT •)
Parts of the Underworld have their bureaucratic
aspects, just as do many parts of Creation, and not every
soul learned how to express written requests politely
during life, let alone with the touch of elegance and
authority that can catch a superior’s eye. This quill is
modeled on a pyre hawk’s plume, cast in soulsteel, and it
must be fed with a drop of blood and a mote of Essence to
function. Once this is done, the owner of a steel pen of
refinement gains a bonus dice to all Bureaucracy, Performance
and Craft rolls involving writing (with the steel
pen of refinement) until the end of the scene. His
handwriting flows more beautifully, his prose is terse yet
stylish, elegant yet not overly presumptuous, and his
poetry displays a knowledgeable refinement.
Artifact Traits:
Power •, Usefulness ••, Game Impact •, Script
Immunity ••;
Drawback • (Component •)