Illus. by W. England
ITEMS OF LEGACY
CHAPTER 3
DESERT WIND
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wastes. Rashid built his empire not on such paltry, This slender and graceful scimitar is crafted of shinmundane goods as gold and silver or exotic silks and ing steel, lustrous ivory, and polished spices, but on rare and precious spell components and magical artifacts from across the planes. Rashid gold. Its hilt is set with brilliant blue sapphires and fiery red rubies. At compensated extraplanar adventurers amply for the retrieval of body parts from exotic outsiders, material first glance, the weapon appears to from distant planar locales, and other rare sundries be nothing more than a showpiece, a for which wizards were willing to pay a high price but gaudy bit of belt-jewelry for a foppish unwilling to risk their own necks. Given the nature of noble. Closer examination, however, his business, it is unsurprising that Rashid made sevreveals the blade’s perfect balance and eral powerful enemies who would have delighted in keen edge, as well as a grip wrapped in wire—it will not slip in a hand slick with the emir’s death by slow torture. Naturally, sweat or blood. Rashid hired the finest bodyguards that money could buy and fi lled his home Nonlegacy Game Statistics: +1 scimitar; Cost 2,315 gp. On a successful attack, Desert with enough magical wards and traps to Wind deals 1 point of fire damage in protect an entire lost city. On top of these precautions, in case all his defenses failed addition to normal damage. and his person was directly threatened, Omen: When you grasp the hilt Rashid commissioned the forging of of this weapon, you feel a soft, warm Desert Wind by an efreeti weaponsmith breeze, scented with the smells of date called Haqim. With steel mined from palms and exotic spices, as though wafting from the Elemental Plane of Earth and a a desert bazaar. Only you feel this breeze, which forge flame born on the Elemental might cause an occasional ripple in your clothing or Plane of Fire, Haqim created a magthrough your hair. It has no other effect. The blade nificent scimitar, for which Rashid grows very hot when wielded in battle, glowing red paid handsomely. (DC 18; Rite of or even white. the Flame) Rashid received his sword, HISTORY The general design of Desert Wind suggests that its marveling at its razor sharpcreator hailed from one of the great, semimythical ness, perfect balance, and near cities of the southern deserts. In these metropolises, weightlessness, but still he feared all citizens know powerful magic, and genies walk the coming of his enemies. He the streets alongside mortals. The communities are then took the scimitar to a djinni presided over by powerful caliphs and emirs, who of his acquaintance, a sorcerer rule with iron fists hidden within silken gloves named Malaq, to whom Rashid of courtly intrigue and duplicity. Desert Wind was had sold many rare and valuable artifacts. Rashid asked Malaq to lay surely designed for such a wealthy noble, for no mere soldier could afford the finery of a blade such spells of protection and sureness in battle into the blade. He asked as this one. The fact that the scimitar is functional and beautiful shows that its owner was a discerning that the weapon defend him from warrior, not one who carried a sword only for show. all assault, that it ward against the The dual themes of fire and air, reflected in the presence of those from beyond this jeweled inlays and the gold embossing on the world, and that it be able to strike down his enemies, slicing through blade, hint at a possible supernatural origin them as a bird cuts the air with its wings. for the sword, perhaps tied to the stories Malaq took the sword and examined it, and of the genies that dwell in the desert though he saw from its construction that it cities. (DC 15) Desert Wind was commissioned was the work of the hated efreet, he agreed to the by the emir Rashid ben Daoud, emir’s request. With a coin made Made to defend its wielder from all enemies, a wealthy and powerful merfrom a stone, a song stolen from chant lord of the southern Desert Wind ended up bankrupting its original owner dirt, and a knife from under the
