Hammer of the Turning Gate

Aura Strong transmutation and conjuration; CL 15th
Slot — Price 118,000 gp Weight 18 lbs.

DESCRIPTION

The Hammer of the Turning Gate appears at first glance to be an unusually long warhammer of austere construction. Its haft is forged from dark ironwood reinforced with steel bands, while the hammerhead itself bears an unsettling asymmetry - one side terminating in a broad, brutal striking face, the other tapering into a wedge-like spike resembling the beak of some immense metallic bird. Tiny engraved rivets run along the length of the weapon in exacting geometric patterns, and when held beneath moonlight, faint silver lines become visible between the plates, forming arcane pathways resembling the schematic of a locked doorway.

The Hammer of the Turning Gate functions as a +3 adamantine warhammer. On a successful strike against an object, wall, door, gate, or barrier, the wielder may command the hammer to partially unmake the material structure of the target. Three times per day, the hammer may cast passwall upon a struck surface as a swift action, though the opening created always bears the appearance of a perfectly rectangular doorway carved with impossible precision.

Against constructs, fortifications, animated objects, and creatures possessing the earth subtype, the hammer deals an additional 2d6 points of force damage. This force damage ignores hardness and damage reduction entirely, as the weapon attacks the conceptual integrity of matter rather than its physical composition alone.

Once per day, the wielder may strike the ground with the hammer as a full-round action to invoke the Turning Gate itself. Upon impact, a standing doorway of pale silver light manifests within 30 feet. This doorway functions as dimension door for the wielder and up to six willing creatures, though all travelers emerge accompanied by a violent thunderclap and a shower of drifting metallic dust. Creatures transported in this fashion experience a brief sensation of falling sideways through unseen corridors.

If the wielder confirms a critical hit against a creature standing adjacent to a wall, structure, or stone surface, the target must succeed on a DC 22 Fortitude save or become partially fused with the nearby material for 1 round, rendering them entangled and unable to move from their square. This is a transmutation effect. The save DC is Strength-based.

LORE

Among siege-breakers, dimensional explorers, and certain forbidden guilds of architectural thaumaturges, the Hammer of the Turning Gate possesses a reputation bordering upon superstition. It is said that no prison fashioned by mortal hands can forever withstand its touch, nor any vault remain truly sealed once the hammer has tasted the shape of its hinges. Entire dynasties have reportedly collapsed because one unseen infiltrator carried such a weapon into the night.

The first known wielder was an artificer-monk named Vauldren Kess, a philosopher who believed walls represented humanity’s greatest collective lie. In his writings, he argued that civilization existed primarily to divide one thing from another - rich from poor, sacred from profane, life from death itself. Kess supposedly forged the hammer after years spent wandering abandoned planar ruins where doors opened into oceans, cathedrals, and impossible skies. When he returned, his students claimed he no longer understood the concept of “inside.”

During the Ash Wars of the southern principalities, the hammer became infamous after the fall of the Bastion of Crows. Historical accounts insist the fortress walls remained physically intact throughout the siege, yet enemy soldiers somehow appeared within the central keep as though the stone itself had briefly forgotten its purpose. Survivors described hearing rhythmic hammering echoing through corridors moments before entire rooms became accessible from impossible directions.

More troubling are the philosophical consequences associated with prolonged use. Those who rely too heavily upon the Hammer of the Turning Gate reportedly develop an increasing inability to perceive barriers as meaningful realities. Doors become suggestions. Locked containers inspire confusion rather than frustration. Some wielders eventually lose the instinctive understanding that one place should remain separate from another. A handful vanished entirely after attempting to “walk between rooms without opening the intervening space.”

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, passwall, dimension door, fabricate, telekinesis; Cost 59,000 gp + 4,720 XP + one intact keystone taken from a structure abandoned for no fewer than one hundred years.

Kelwyn’s Notes

There exists a particular kind of madness born not from violence, nor cruelty, but from prolonged exposure to convenience. Humanity is a creature shaped by boundaries. We understand ourselves through limitations - through walls climbed, distances crossed, and thresholds respected. Remove enough barriers from a person’s life, and eventually they cease understanding why barriers existed at all.

The Hammer of the Turning Gate disturbs me for precisely this reason. It does not merely destroy obstacles. Many enchanted tools achieve such vulgar purposes. No - this weapon undermines the philosophy of separation itself. Stone parts before it not because the hammer is stronger than the wall, but because reality briefly agrees the wall has become unnecessary. Such magic carries implications too immense for most wielders to properly contemplate.

I once observed a scholar employ this artifact to bypass the sealed archives of a drowned monastery. He spoke excitedly throughout the process, prattling endlessly about “efficiency” and “the liberation of movement.” Yet afterward, I noticed something profoundly unsettling. He no longer knocked upon doors. Not out of arrogance, you understand, but because the thought genuinely no longer occurred to him. To his altered mind, privacy had become an irrational superstition.

That is the true horror of the hammer. Not that it opens passageways, but that it slowly convinces the bearer all things should remain perpetually open. A civilization cannot survive long once its people forget the purpose of walls.