The Blade of a Thousand Edges

When first discovered this weapon appears to be some sort of club or baton. When in its passive state the Blade resembles a shaft made from a thousand or more layers of variegated metals, iron, steel, copper, and bronze. This shaft is firmly welded to a basket-shaped steel guard and thin, leather-padded hilt. A small bloodstone decorates of the pommel of the otherwise rather plain weapon. If checked for magical properties the Blade radiates Great animation and combat magic. A Superb test of divination is required to determine the process required to activate the weapon.

The Blade is useless until its powers are activated by a brief ritual, which involves the item's owner speaking a command word and holding the weapon's bloodstone pommel against their own flesh. The Blade will drain an Average wound's worth of blood from the wielder, then spring to life. The metallic layers that form the striking portion of the blade unbind and spring apart, forming a snake-like blade of spinning, shimmering, razor-sharp blades held together by flickering threads of deep red light. From command word to fully active Blade takes a full round.

Once active the Blade can be wielded as a normal weapon, but it strikes with a will of its own, twisting, spinning, extending and contracting like an enraged serpent. The Blade has the following characteristics in battle:

• Great bonuses to accuracy and damage.
• Any blow struck by the Blade causes Fair bleeding damage.
• The swirling lash-like blade automatically parries up to two blows per round. Parried blows suffer a three rank penalty on their accuracy.
• Any mundane weapon parried by the Blade has a Good chance of being sliced apart by the contact, it's fragments and pieces incorporated into the Blade's own matrix.