RoninKitty/SilkAndShadowFan
Silk And Shadow Fan
Spd +0 Acc +3 Dam +2L Def +3 Rate 5 Commitment: 6 motes
The fan was designed by a Black Dust Silhouette, Night Caste of the First Age, who was a student of the Ebon Shadow style martial art, but for whom the signature weapons seemed ill-suited to her usual facade as a dancer or courtesan. With the aid of her Twilight circle-mate, she designed a weapon to function with the moves and charms of the style but also be unnoticeable among the regalia of the disguises she usually chose to adopt whilst spying and the like.
The fans consist of many orichalcum blades anchored together at one end by a sphere of blue jade set in to a collar of dark steel, with black silk obtained from spider-demons woven around them so just the golden tips of metal show. The fans were stitched together using threads from a chameleon's skin, and the fans construction was completed by bathing them in the tears of a fair folk who cried due to stolen memories of lost love.
The fan has several abilities as follows: As a reflexive action and with the temporary commitment of another 2 motes, the fan will wrap itself in the mists of glamour, changing appearance dramatically. It will look exactly like a normal paper or silk fan of any desired pattern or design, and will appear as such to even the most stringent mundane examination. Investigation carried out with charm-based or otherwise essence-enhanced techniques will reveal its true nature however (standard Per + relevant skill Diff 1 to determine its nature as a 5MM weapon), although the fan's true appearance will only show to the character investigating.
Whilst in its normal form, the materials used in the construction of the fan distract and confuse attackers when used in combat, inflicting a +1 difficulty modifier on all attacks upon the wielder. This counts as a cover bonus and is negated by effects that bypass such, in addition attacks made using senses other than sight are similarly unaffected by this power.
The fan may also be thrown as an attack (range is essence x 5 yards) using a standard Dex + MA attack roll, at a cost of 1 mote of essence. Whether the fan hits or misses, it dips and flows through the air back to its owners hand at the end of the turn in which it is thrown. Whilst this is a useful aspect of the fan, it is usually only used as a last ditch attack at a fleeing opponent, as whilst the fan is being thrown it cannot be used to defend with, and does not grant the +1 difficulty modifier to attack the user as detailed above.
The fan may explicitly be used with Ebon Shadow martial arts, and counts as a signature weapon for that style for all purposes.
Comments Welcome
In particular, cleaning up the flavour text regarding the components of the weapon...the name for spider demons and a better alternative to 'chameleon skin' would be most appreciated :) Also, I haven't run the numbers through any official artifact creation system, just applied what I felt were the correct number of abilities for the cost of the artifact and based stats on similar items. Let me know if I'm way off etc. Thanks - RoninKitty
