Tardach/BladesOfTheSky

Back to Artifacts

Blades of the Sky *** each, ***** together

Sword Breaker: Speed: + 3 Acc: +1 Dam: +3L Def: +1

The Blades of the Sky are the personal weapons of the General of the First Army of Heaven, the assembled host of Exalted that threw the Primordials into Malfeas at the beginning of the First Age. Nobody knows who the General was beyond a Zenith caste Solar, because he concealed his identity (and possibly gender), using charms out of humility. The blades are an orichalcum daiklaive and starmetal sword-breaker. The daiklaive has a slim, straight blade, and is suited equally well to cutting and thrusting. The cross-guards sweep towards the point and the knuckle guard towards the pommel. The sword-breaker is made from starmetal and resembles a large knife with a notched back and elaborate crossguards, both of which are used to trap and break sword blades. Both are inscribed with flowing runes of First Age script. In this state, each takes 5 motes to attune to and has normal stats, with the attunement cost being doubled as usual for the incorrect type of Exalted. In the hands of the General, however, the runic inscriptions were reservoirs that were filled with moonsilver, which guided the daiklaive to its mark and aided the swordbreaker in parrying, trapping, and disarming. The daiklaive grants both the orichalcum and moonsilver material bonus, for a total of +1 to both speed and defense, and a +3 to accuracy. The swordbreaker grants a further 3 dice to the parry pool of the character, one inherently and another 2 from the moonsilver. The starmetal subtracts one from rolled damage successes, like starmetal armor or a thunderbolt shield. Disarm attempts are at no penalty rather than the usual -3, and parries that fully deflect the blow penalize the next action of the attacking character by the number of extra successes on the parry roll if he does not drop his weapon, as moonsilver tendrils wrap around the offending weapon and give the defender some control over it. In this ideal state, both weapons must be attuned at the same time by any Celestial Exalted with a commitment of 10 motes. Furthermore, both blades received the blessing of ALL the Celestial Incarna. The bearer gains 2 dice to all social pools to interact with Celestial Exalted. Nobody knows what happened to the blades. They could be together or apart, kept under lock and key by the Bronze Faction, buried in a long dead Solar’s manse-tomb, encased in an amorphous blob of moonsilver that has been passed from No Moon to No Moon with cryptic instructions regarding its disposal, or they could be trapped in a city out of time, such as Crystal or Rathess.

Comments

Blades of the Sky maybe should be rated NTardach/BladesOfTheSky/A if together. Basically, I paid an extra dot of Artifact to get daiklaive that had powers that could be revealed later. I submitted this to my ST late in the campaign, he dug it, worked the sword-breaker in, and they were beasty for Steel Devil Style. - Tardach

Yikes! Powerful indeed, but I don't think they go beyond 5. They're not much worse than the daiklave of conquest, and I can't see how you'd manage to attune them both for less than 15 motes (one or the other's always going to be the wrong metal, right?). Definitely up there, however. Nice work. -- Hapushet

Tweaked the stats on the sword breaker. I'd accidentally included the material defense bonus in the numbers. Actually, part of the idea was the power inherent in the ability to get the different material bonuses. I took Flying Silver Dream (only four dots) as the inspiration there. Although maybe it should be only that a Solar could attune to it for 10 motes. Is this lowered attunement cost unbalancing? Is the description unclear on the attunement rules? - Tardach