Book of Bone and Ebony

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CHAIR OF GUILTY SORROWS (ARTIFACT ••) This throne-like chair is carved from solid black marble and ornamented with silver and white jade and starmetal. When one of the dead sits in it, the chair glues itself to him, clinging to his legs and buttocks and back with a supernatural strength and forcing him to remain there. Once it has a victim trapped, serpent heads carved on the arms of the chair open their mouths and begin to intone a list of all the victim’s crimes in life, drawing on the victim’s own feelings of guilt and shame. Once they have gone through a full list of all the victim’s wrongdoings, they begin again. These “crimes” are those for which the victim actually feels personal guilt, rather than any sort of universal moral truth. If the victim’s Essence + Willpower is 10 or more, then the chair cannot read his guilt and will not trap him. In order to remove himself from the chair, the victim either must confess to each crime as it is listed by the chair or must be forcibly torn from it. If he confesses to all the crimes, then he can simply get up and walk away. If he tries to rip himself loose or to have friends rip him loose, then all those involved in the attempt may combine their Strength + Athletics (by adding it together) and will need to score five or more successes against a difficulty of 7. For each success less than a total of 10, the victim takes a die of lethal damage due to parts of his body remaining stuck to the chair (natural soak only), and he always takes at least one level of lethal damage. Sapphire or Adamant Countermagic will also break the chair’s hold, but only for a minute. After that time, the chair attempts to reassert its hold on the victim, and if he has not been removed, it will clasp his flesh again. Artifact Traits: Power •••, Usefulness ••, Game Impact •••, Script Immunity ••; Drawback ••• (Component •, Notoriety ••) CLOAK OF VERMIN (ARTIFACT ••) This rich cloak of black fur is, in fact, composed of the ghosts of hundreds of plague rats, woven together by sorcery and still metaphysically rife with malice and hunger. With a single word, the wearer of the cloak can transform it into a seething mass of yellow-toothed rats and set the rats on his enemies. Particularly sadistic wearers of this cloak in the past have even pretended that the cloak was a gift to a friend or lover and waited till it was set around the other person’s shoulders before calling forth the rats of the cloak to devour her. The rats can be directed at a particular target, but they only know how to attack and cannot perform any complex maneuvers. Treat the swarm of rats as a single creature with the statistics of a great cat (see Exalted, p. 316) but automatically doing both biting and clawing attack every turn to a single target. Even if the rats are slain, the cloak will still 65 CHAPTER THREE • THE WONDERS OF THE DEAD reform at the owner’s wish and will be fully functional again at the next dark of the moon. Only flame, sorcery or Charms can permanently destroy it. Artifact Traits: Power ••, Usefulness •••, Game Impact ••, Script Immunity •••; Drawback •• (Component •, Notoriety •) ESSENCE DICE (ARTIFACT ••, ••• FOR HEALTH LEVELS) These dice have been carved out of bone, inlaid with ebon shadow taken directly from the pupils of the eyes of helpless ghosts and treated with Arcanoi that allow those who use them to transfer Essence between each other through a bet. This works for both the living and the dead. Wagers must be between the owner and another person or between two people with the owner standing as arbiter, and the owner must state the terms of the wager clearly before the dice are thrown. The dice absorb Essence from those who have made the wager, using a form of Filling the Precious Vial (see Exalted: The Abyssals, p. 247), and then, they restore it to the person who wins the wager. Any Essence that the winner cannot hold is lost. The dice are found in sets of two to ten, but they need not all be used at the same time. A maximum of 5 motes of Essence can be wagered on any one bet. A much rarer form of this artifact can also hold health levels of lethal damage as part of the wager, so that ghosts can bet their very existences in hopes of winning more Essence or healing their wounds. A ghost who destroys herself in this way, by gambling away all her health levels, automatically casts herself into Lethe unless restrained with soulsteel chains or otherwise destined for Oblivion. Artifact Traits: Power •••, Usefulness ••, Game Impact •••, Script Immunity •••; Drawback ••• (Component •, Notoriety ••) FINGERBONE BRACELET (ARTIFACT ••) This pale bracelet is woven from fingerbones, which are, in turn, linked together with thin dry sinew and tanned human skin. To make it work, the wearer puts the heel of her hand against a lock that she wishes to open, and spends a mote of Essence. The fingerbones pry themselves loose from the bracelet and wriggle down her hand to the lock, where they attempt to open it. The bracelet is thwarted by magical locks, but it can open any normal lock, from the complicated settings on a Guild strongbox to the simple padlock on a shed door. It takes one minute to open a lock, assuming that the artifact is not thwarted by magic, however complex the lock is. Once the lock is open, the fingerbones return to the bracelet and cling there once again. In the event there are several locks on the same door, multiple applications of the bracelet will be
EXALTED • BOOK OF BONE AND EBONY 66 necessary to open them all. The fingerbone bracelet is quite a well known type of artifact, and people who openly wear such a bracelet are often suspected of larcenous intentions automatically, whether or not such suspicions are justified. Artifact Traits: Power ••, Usefulness •••, Game Impact ••, Script Immunity •••; Drawback •• (Component •, Notoriety ••) HAIRPIN BLADE (ARTIFACT ••) This slender, white-jade hairpin is, on closer inspection, an artfully carved miniature model of a full daiklave, though a mere five inches long. If its owner commits 5 motes of Essence to it, she can use the hairpin’s full powers and, at a moment’s notice, lay her hand on it and expand it to a full daiklave — as such, it has all the normal statistics for a jade daiklave (see Exalted, pp. 340-342), though it does not have any sockets for Hearthstones. The hairpin blade remains at full size for the rest of the scene or until the owner chooses to shrink it back to hairpin size again. It may also be concealed elsewhere in the body beside the hair, if the owner so chooses, or even carried in a piercing of the flesh. Artifact Traits: Power ••, Usefulness •••, Game Impact ••, Script Immunity •••; Drawback • (Component •, Notoriety •) HILT OF THE BLOODY SWORD (ARTIFACT ••, ••• IF HEARTHSTONE SETTING) This is a hilt without a blade, a carved masterwork of white jade veined with dark crimson. To transform the hilt into a full sword, the wielder must dip the hilt into freshly spilled blood. The Hilt will suck up the blood and form a blade of dark-red, shimmering crystal. This requires a quantity of blood equal to a health level’s worth of lethal damage, which may come from the hilt’s wielder or from any other donor, willing or unwilling. The resultant sword has the statistics of a jade daiklave (see Exalted, pp. 340- 342). It returns to its normal form at the end of the scene or whenever its wielder so desires, the blade dissolving back into blood again, leaving only the hilt. Some of these hilts have a setting for a Hearthstone, but they are far rarer than the normal sort. Artifact Traits: Power ••, Usefulness •••, Game Impact ••, Script Immunity •••; Drawback •• (Component •, Notoriety •) INKBRUSH OF THE HEART’S DESIRE (ARTIFACT ••) This delicate, white-jade inkbrush contains a variant on the Arcanos Extension of the Friendly Gaze (see Exalted: The Abyssals, p. 251). To use it, its owner must have an uninterrupted line of sight toward the target — though she
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Book of Bone and Ebony

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