Gnawing Barbed Arrows

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Gnawing Barbed Arrows


Aura: Moderate Transmutation and Conjuration
Caster Level: 9th
Slot: — (Ammunition)
Price: 326 gp per arrow (see below)
Weight: —

Description

These vicious +1 arrows are crafted with segmented, inward-hooking barbs resembling jagged mandibles. Upon striking a living target, the arrowhead embeds itself deeply and animates with a disturbing, predatory motion - twisting, flexing, and biting into flesh as if alive.

A successful hit deals normal damage. In addition, the arrow lodges in the wound and continues to “gnaw” at the target for 1d4 rounds, dealing 1d6 points of damage per round at the start of the target’s turn.

Removing a gnawing barbed arrow requires a full-round action and a DC 15 Heal check. Failure causes an additional 1d6 damage as the barbs tear deeper. Magical healing that restores at least 10 hit points in a single application automatically expels the arrow harmlessly.

A creature can only be affected by one gnawing barbed arrow at a time; additional hits function as normal arrows.

Construction

Requirements: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, animate objects, summon monster III
Caster Level: 9th

Cost to Create (per 50 arrows):

  • Materials: 8,150 gp
  • XP Cost: 326 XP
  • Time: 9 days

(Market Price: 16,300 gp per batch of 50 arrows)

Lore

No one agrees on whether the first gnawing barbed arrows were inspired by nature or nightmare. Some claim they were modeled after the mandibles of deep swamp carrion insects, creatures known to burrow into prey and consume them from within. Others insist they were the result of arcane experimentation gone too far - an attempt to create self-guiding ammunition that instead developed a hunger of its own.

The most widely accepted origin traces back to a reclusive pair of artificers who worked along the fetid riverways of a trade city not unlike your setting’s river ports. They sought to create ammunition that would ensure no quarry escaped, even after a glancing blow. Their breakthrough came when they fused minor animating magic with barbed arrowheads, binding a fragment of conjured instinct into each shaft. What they created did not simply persist - it pursued, even after impact.

Hunters and assassins prize these arrows, though many refuse to carry them for long. There are persistent rumors that unused arrows twitch in their quivers at night, their barbs flexing softly against the leather as though eager for flesh. A few grim accounts even describe arrows that, once embedded, refused to be removed - continuing to gnaw long after their magic should have faded, as if something inside them had learned to linger.

Kelwyn’s Notes…

…no.

I have handled one of these - briefly - and that was more than sufficient to form a lasting opinion.

There are enchantments that imitate life, and then there are those that approximate it… poorly. Not incorrectly, you understand - differently. A well-made animated object follows instruction, however intricate. It acts, then ceases. These arrows do neither. They possess a tension that is not mechanical, not even properly arcane. It is… biological in the wrong direction. As though something has been given the idea of life without ever having belonged to it.

That is what unsettles me.

The intent bound within them is not mere persistence. It is continuation. A need to complete an action that does not quite end when it should. Not hunger, precisely - hunger implies a system, a cycle. This is more… singular. A fragment that knows only forward. Only through. And once set in motion, it resents interruption in a way that feels uncomfortably… intrinsic.

I do not believe they are alive.

But I am equally certain they are not inanimate.

There are states of being that do not conform to the tidy distinctions most minds prefer. Things that exist adjacent to life, borrowing its shape without its rules. If these arrows house anything, it is something of that nature - not a creature, not a spirit, but a sliver of… process. A continuation given form, without context or conclusion.

I have heard the stories, as you have. The subtle movement in the quiver. The resistance when one attempts to remove them. The unsettling impression that their work does not fully cease when it ought to. Most dismiss such accounts.

I do not.

If you choose to carry them, treat them not as ammunition, but as contained events. Each one a moment waiting to happen, already leaning toward its conclusion. Do not grow comfortable with them. Do not grow accustomed to their presence.

And above all…

do not allow yourself to wonder what, exactly, they are trying to become.

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