Invidian Eye

Aura strong abjuration and divination; CL 20th Slot neck; Weight 1 lb.

DESCRIPTION

A dazzling diamond glitters within this amulet's dark metal setting, its designs reminiscent of fangs and chains.

The Invidian Eye rewards devotion and punishes betrayal. When first given to a creature, the necklace recognizes members of the creature's race and gender—but not a specific individual—as its owner. The owner automatically fails any saving throw made to resist the effects of divination magic, but the necklace seeks to protect the owner against danger, reactively casting spells to defend its wearer against effects that compromise her control. The spells the amulet can cast (and when it does so) include freedom (in response to imprisonment, petrification, paralysis, and similar effects described by this spell), greater dispel magic (in response to any fear or mind-affecting effect), remove curse (in response to curses), protection from chaos (in response to any form of possession or similar control). The wearer has no control over when these spells are cast and the target of these spells is always the wearer. The Invidian Eye can cast each spell 3 times per day.

If the Invidian Eye is worn by a creature not of the race and gender it recognizes as its owner, it ceases to use its defensive properties. In addition, once every 1d6 days, the gem makes a self-destructive suggestion. The wearer must succeed at a DC 20 Will saving throw or make a casual attempt to harm herself during the course of the day. This suggestion does not dominate the wearer's actions, but she might be compelled to cut herself if she's wielding a weapon or jump if she passes a high window. If the wearer resists this compulsion three times in a row, the Invidian Eye takes more serious measures, conjuring a miniature prismatic sphere into the wearer's throat, which causes the wearer to begin suffocating. The sphere can only be removed by targeting the wearer with the same spells that normally remove a full size prismatic wall.

The race and gender the Invidian Eye perceives as its owner can be reset by casting mage's disjunction upon the artifact, though this carries the normal risk of destroying the artifact. Whoever the necklace is next given to determines the artifact's new owner.

The Invidian Eye is under the effects of a permanent nondetection spell. This affects only the artifact, not the wearer.

DESTRUCTION

The Invidian Eye must be offered to 100 free-willed mortals who know nothing of its powers and be rejected by each.

HISTORY

Envy shaped the Thassilonian realm of Edasseril into a land of suspicion and hollow vanities. The desires and obsessions of the last mistress of that land, Runelord Belimarius, drove her to burden even the least of her possessions with protections on par with fantastic treasures. This revealed a particular talent of the final Runelord of Envy, a skill for crafting wards for those favored people she considered her “belongings” who needed to be defended from others who would covet their status. Thus, every one of Belimarius's consorts wore tokens of her desire and possession, emblems of honored slavery. Edasseril fell along with all of Thassilon, and most of its jealous wonders were lost—but not all.

Long thought to be little more than a stack of rock within sight of Peridot Island in northern Varisia, a ruined spire of one of Belimarius's pleasure palaces, Lusbraid, still juts from the waves. When the disgraced nobleman Marcel Moulot explored the unnatural island in 4618 ar, his primary discovery was a small fortune in ancient trophies, the most impressive of these being a gigantic diamond set within an ominous necklace. Upon Moulot's return to his native Ustalav, his new wealth reestablished his place in noble society and the diamond served as a lavish gift marking his betrothal to his second cousin Iesmein. Within a month, however, the newly married Iesmein lay dead, murdered in the Moulot home, yet mysteriously the diamond necklace remained. Three years later the gem passed to Moulot's new wife, and within a month, she too lay dead. This pattern repeated four times more, with the treasure passing through the hands of three generations of male Moulot heirs, along the way gaining a haunted reputation and ominous name, the Invidian Eye.

RAMIFICATIONS

Anyone who seeks out the Invidian Eye will likely face one or more of the following dangers.

• • Jealous Artifact: The Invidian Eye currently perceives a male human as its owner—specifically the long dead Marcel Moulot—accounting for its morbid reputation and why it has not harmed any male owner of the Moulot family. This raises the question of what Marcel Moulot encountered in Lusbraid that granted him the jewel.

  • National Treasure: The Invidian Eye currently rests at the Quarterfaux Archives, Ustalav's national museum in Caliphas. Anyone who seeks to possess the gem must wrest it from the famed institution, where it is guarded by varied defenses, along with other treasures that don't wish to be stolen.