The Tooth of Ka (and the Fall of the Carnifex)
by WingofCootThe Tooth of Ka is a dagger made from a huge carnivorous dinosaur tooth. The root of the tooth is wrapped with wire and capped with a pommel made of a strange greenish-gray metal. The entire weapon, including pommel, is 16 inches long.
This item was made for mortals to combat an Immortal. While not quite an artifact (since not made by an Immortal), the Tooth still has several unusual, artifact-like properties and powers. These powers are less than those it was intended to bear, but it is still an incredibly powerful item.
Weapon Properties: The Tooth of Ka is a dagger +5, and it inflicts normal damage (not minimum damage) if used against an Immortal. If it were to be used against Ka, it would inflict double damage.
Bearer Protections: While the Tooth is wielded or worn (in a holster, etc.), the bearer is unaffected by Immortal Aura, and gains the benefits of an Amulet of Protection vs Crystal Balls and ESP.
Item Protections: The Tooth itself cannot be detected or located by mortal or Immortal magic. It is essentially indestructible.
Activated Powers: The bearer of the Tooth can use Disintegrate and Earthquake, each once per day, cast at 36th level.
(in 5E mechanical terms, the only differences are that the Tooth is a +3 dagger, acts as an Amulet of Protection from Detection and Location, and its spell effects are 20th level.)
History:
While Ka is now primarily interested in the Hollow World, ages ago he was far more involved in Outer World activities. As the Carnifex Tyranny reached the crest of its meteoric rise to power, its chief leaders saw Ka as one of their greatest foes. With their divination magic, they sought for whatever weakness a mighty Immortal might possess.
Seeking through the past, they learned of Ka's mortal life long before. When he lived as a carnivorous dinosaur, he shed many teeth (as normal for those creatures). Their spells showed them the location of one of those teeth, beginning to become fossilized.
With this link to Ka obtained, the high lords of the Carnifex - the greatest wizards and the chief leaders of the cults of the Outer Beings, the war leaders and spymasters - gathered at the Castle of Basalt Towers, the dreadful stronghold that served as the capital of the Carnifex Tyranny, rising above the steaming marshes, diseased fens, and swampy jungles of primordial Mystara in its age of reptiles. Thousands of the highest of the Carnifex elite, from across the continents, joined in the effort.
They called upon the most skilled artisans of their kind, setting the Tooth in a hilt of strange metal alien to Mystara; their wizards wielded magic lost to later ages, the servants of the Outer Ones channeled the dreadful powers of their masters, to make a weapon of awful might, then to open a Gate, summon Ka, and slay him with his own fang.
Ka resisted the call, but the archmages and cult masters of the Carnifex unleashed magic beyond the normal capacity of mortals, and the Outer Beings expended their powers to momentarily breach their prisons, granting the Carnifex magic a grip that could bind even an Immortal. The struggle intensified as other Immortals gathered to Ka's aid; the planes were bent by that terrible conflict - then were broken. A massive rift opened in place of the intended Gate, expanding far beyond the chamber where the Carnifex cast their magic, reaching into the Astral and through it to many Outer Planes.
The Immortals beyond the rift saw their chance. Rather than directly resisting, they opened the rift wider - and it swallowed the Castle of Basalt Towers and the entire hill on which it stood, ripping it from the Prime Plane. The spell went awry, and all the Immortals had to do was nudge the careening Castle into one of the many Outer Planes the rift touched as it closed; the plane later known as the Pits of Banishment. The Tooth itself vanished into a different Outer Plane, and its unique properties meant that the Immortals could not find it.
With the Carnifex leadership gone, their cruel civilization collapsed within months. Much of it had depended on great magic wielded by a relatively few individuals, most of whom were gone. Local leaders strove to gain greater power and fought wars against each other; lizardfolk, troglodytes, and other species under the dreadful rule of the Carnifex rebelled or escaped. Furthermore, the Outer Beings had expended the energy they could muster outside their prisons, and could no longer provide their vile "blessings" to their servants; servitors that had been summoned previously now rampaged uncontrolled, turning against the Carnifex.
The Carnifex species did not go extinct, but the Carnifex Tyranny as a civilization was at an end. At the fringes of the former empire, only distant and backwater Y'hog retained a semblance of Carnifex civilization; other survivors escaped underground and slowly changed into the Deep Carnifex. Elsewhere, a group of lizardmen built their own civilization, Mogreth, in the image of their former masters. The Ur-Carnifex within Matera continued their lives, undisturbed by these events.
Notes/Credits:
The idea of a relic of Ka comes from discussion in the Tangor 4000 BC thread.
The Outer Beings, Mogreth, Y'hog, and the Deep Carnifex come from Geoff Gander.
The Ur-Carnifex come from Sharon Dornhoff.
The non-detection properties of the Tooth are inspired by one of the Elder Evil properties from the 3.5E Elder Evils book.
This whole concept comes from M3's "Carnifex Castle" and the question of how one magical experiment gone wrong, indirectly warped by the Immortals, could wreck the dominant species of a whole planet. If the Castle contained the leaders from all across the civilization, gathered for a single massive effort, it makes more sense.
Havard wrote:
I wonder what other time periods this artifacts may have shown up at? Could be connected to many different stories.
Definitely!
Off the top of my head, I'd tend to think that it would have stayed on the Outer Planes for a very long time, and so probably not have been involved with the Y'hog/Lhomarr events. It probably landed in some small and unclaimed Outer Plane, and millennia later was turned up by either mortal explorers or an Immortal who did not know the history of the item ... Or a troublemaking Entropic, who wanted it back in circulation.
If Mishler's Blackmoor timeline with the Serpentines is used, that would be a good time & place to bring it back into circulation on the Prime - the Serpentine Empire might have obtained and used it, perhaps without fully understanding its properties. An Entropic might have subtly arranged for them to find it but not told them anything (Its anti-detection/divination properties would prevent an Analyze spell or Slate of Identification, etc, from providing any information; it wouldn't even glow to Detect Magic.) It might have been used as a symbol of rulership, where the anti-divination property would be useful for secrecy.
After the GRoF had taken down both Blackmoor and the Serpentines, it could have been looted from Serpentine ruins by scavengers in the chaotic period immediately afterwards; perhaps by a few centuries later it had found its way to Mogreth, so it can crop up in the BC 2300 period?
That would put it in Nithia later, which allows for all kinds of scary possibilities... What if Barimoor has it now?
(OTOH, if some Entropic Immortal is making sure it stays in circulation & got it to the Serpentines, maybe it's being kept with "reptilian" civilizations - it could have gotten to Malpheggi post-Mogreth. Its non-detection works even against Immortal magic, so it could even have been accidentally transported to the Holloe World.)