Horseshoes of the Hollow Crossing

Aura Moderate necromancy and abjuration; CL 9th
Slot none; Price 24,000 gp; Weight 4 lbs.

DESCRIPTION

These thick blackened iron horseshoes are etched with winding patterns resembling tangled roots, funeral knots, and curling mist. Though forged for equines, they radiate an unsettling stillness when touched by living flesh. When properly affixed to a horse, warhorse, pony, mule, or similar hoofed creature, the Horseshoes of the Hollow Crossing establish a spiritual ward between the mounted beast and the unseen dead.

Any creature wearing all four horseshoes gains immunity to supernatural fear effects generated by undead creatures. In addition, incorporeal undead suffer a -2 penalty on attack rolls made against the wearer and may not initiate grapple attempts, possession effects, or energy drain attacks against the mounted creature unless they succeed on a DC 18 Will save. This is a mind-affecting fear suppression effect and a protective ward.

Three times per day, the mounted creature may strike the ground forcefully as a full-round action, causing spectral resonance to ripple outward in a 30-foot radius. All undead within the area must succeed on a DC 18 Will save or become staggered for 1d4 rounds as phantom funeral bells echo through their forms. Mindless undead instead become shaken for the same duration. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Finally, the horseshoes prevent the mounted creature from leaving tracks upon grave soil, crypt dust, marsh burial grounds, or similarly death-touched terrain. Mundane attempts to track the creature across such terrain automatically fail unless aided by magic.

LORE

The Horseshoes of the Hollow Crossing first appeared along plague roads where funeral wagons traveled longer than armies and more frequently than merchants. During those dreadful seasons, when the dead outnumbered the living in many provinces, grave-horses became creatures of terrible importance. They hauled priests, bodies, medicine, and sometimes the final survivors of isolated villages. It was quickly learned that ordinary beasts could not endure such constant proximity to death. Horses panicked. Mules refused roads entirely. Some animals simply stopped moving whenever the fog thickened around the burial fields.

The earliest known smith of these shoes was a taciturn farrier named Old Bram Veller, who worked beside a monastery whose catacombs had collapsed during a season of flooding. According to surviving accounts, Bram watched the dead claw themselves from the mud while the monastery bells rang without human hands to guide them. He forged the first Hollow Crossings not as weapons, but as comforts for exhausted animals that had seen too much death. Witnesses claimed horses wearing his shoes ceased screaming during undead assaults and instead stood firm like creatures carved from old stone.

Over the centuries, the shoes earned a grim reputation among caravan guards, battlefield scavengers, plague doctors, and crypt wardens. In many places, hearing the distinct hollow ring of these shoes upon cobblestone became an omen that death traveled nearby. Yet paradoxically, villages often welcomed riders bearing them, for they signaled that someone was still willing to travel roads others feared. Many stories tell of lone riders crossing corpse-haunted marshes without pursuit, their horses moving through pale spirits as ships move through fog.

Some priests argue the enchantment functions not by repelling undead, but by convincing restless spirits that the mounted creature already belongs among the dead. Others insist the shoes carry fragments of funerary rites hammered directly into iron. Whatever the truth, animals fitted with Hollow Crossings often display strange behavior after prolonged use. They stare into empty corners, refuse to enter cheerful places, and sometimes bow their heads toward graves without command. Veteran riders learn not to question such instincts.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, death ward, halt undead, hide from undead; Cost 12,000 gp, 960 XP, four coffin nails taken from an abandoned graveyard and ash from a sanctified funeral pyre.

Kelwyn’s Notes

There exists a peculiar cruelty in warfare and catastrophe that rarely receives proper acknowledgement - namely, that humanity drags innocent creatures alongside it into every horror it creates. Horses do not choose battlefields. Mules do not volunteer for plague duty. Yet generation after generation, mankind has fastened burdens to their backs and expected courage from creatures that possess only loyalty and fear.

I have seen cavalry mounts trembling so violently before necromantic armies that blood ran from their nostrils. I have seen burial-cart mules collapse from exhaustion while their masters prayed for miracles that never arrived. There is something profoundly shameful in the expectation that animals should endure mankind’s nightmares without understanding them. These shoes represent one of the rare instances where humanity attempted not merely to use an animal, but to spare it.

The enchantment itself feels deeply melancholic. Not hateful toward the dead, no - merely resigned to them. The shoes do not thunder with righteous fury like a paladin’s relic. They whisper. They accept. They create the spiritual equivalent of a quiet lantern carried through a cemetery at dusk. The dead notice the light, certainly, but they do not always feel compelled to extinguish it.

Most unsettling of all is the behavior of horses that wear them for many years. Such animals develop the gaze of old undertakers. They become calm in places where living men grow frightened. One mare I encountered would lower her head whenever passing unmarked graves hidden beneath roadside weeds, as though acknowledging travelers long forgotten by history. Her rider insisted she had never once stumbled while crossing burial grounds, even in total darkness.

Ah, but perhaps that is the true purpose of the Hollow Crossing. Not merely protection from death, but companionship beside it. Civilization survives because some souls continue traveling dreadful roads after others abandon them. Sometimes those souls walk on two legs. Sometimes four.