The Burglar’s Final Grasp

Aura Moderate necromancy and transmutation; CL 9th
Slot —; Price 21,500 gp; Weight 1 lb.

DESCRIPTION

This withered humanoid hand is preserved through foul alchemical salts and dark funerary lacquers, though preservation has done little to conceal the slow inevitability of decay. Its flesh has collapsed tightly against the bone in places, exposing yellowed tendons and fragments of blackened ligament. The fingernails remain unnaturally intact and polished smooth from repeated use, while the fingertips bear countless tiny scars and abrasions accumulated over decades of lockpicks, razor wires, hidden latches, and poisoned catches. A faint scent of old grave soil, mildew, lamp oil, and cold iron perpetually clings to the hand no matter how thoroughly it is cleaned.

The Burglar’s Final Grasp possesses five charges represented by its thumb and four fingers. When the hand is pressed against a locked or trapped object such as a chest, vault, cabinet, door, manacle, or similar mechanism, one finger immediately stiffens and blackens permanently as a charge is expended. At that moment, all nonmagical traps attached to the target are instantly disabled as though successfully disarmed by a master rogue with a Disable Device check result of 40. Simultaneously, all mundane locks upon the object unlock themselves with audible clicks and snapping internal tumblers.

Magical traps are not destroyed, but are suppressed for 1 minute as though successfully bypassed. Arcane lock effects are immediately dispelled if their caster level is equal to or lower than the item’s caster level. Higher-level magical locking effects instead become dormant for 1 round, allowing the object to be opened normally during that time.

The hand functions regardless of the user’s training and requires no skill checks whatsoever. The item may not be used more than once upon the same object.

Each time a charge is used, the owner becomes haunted by vivid dreams of the hand’s original owner - an infamous master thief whose corpse was denied proper burial after execution. During sleep, the thief appears increasingly decomposed and furious, screaming accusations, demanding cremation or burial rites, and clawing desperately at coffins, gallows, chains, and crypt walls. The dreams worsen with each expended finger.

After each use of the hand, the owner suffers a cumulative -1 penalty to all skill checks except Disable Device, Open Lock, Sleight of Hand, Hide, Move Silently, Search, and Tumble checks. This penalty represents mounting exhaustion, agitation, paranoia, and deteriorating sleep quality. The penalty persists until the hand is either completely expended, destroyed, cremated, or properly buried beneath consecrated earth. Once this occurs, the dreams immediately cease and all accumulated penalties vanish after the next full night’s rest.

When the fifth and final finger is expended, the entire hand violently blackens, softens, and collapses into foul-smelling slurry within seconds. Tiny metallic sounds resembling distant lock tumblers clicking can be heard within the dissolving mass for several moments afterward.

LORE

Among thieves’ guilds, grave robbers, and executioners, stories persist regarding the final days of Varric Hale, known in whispered criminal histories as “The Locksmith Saint.” Though wanted in seven principalities and blamed for dozens of impossible thefts, Hale possessed a reputation that bordered upon religious obsession among professional burglars. Entire generations of thieves claimed that no lock forged by mortal hands could deny him entry for longer than a few seconds. Some even insisted he could hear mechanisms breathing through walls.

His eventual capture proved less triumphant than authorities had hoped. Hale reportedly laughed throughout the trial, mocked every witness called against him, and calmly described hidden valuables inside the magistrates’ own homes while chained in court. According to surviving accounts, the execution itself became infamous after three separate locking mechanisms upon his restraints inexplicably opened moments before the hanging platform was released. The officials overseeing the execution severed one of Hale’s hands afterward and sealed it in preservation salts specifically to prevent rumors of resurrection.

What followed proved considerably worse.

Within months, guards assigned to the evidence vault began suffering identical nightmares of Hale screaming from beneath wet soil. Locks throughout the prison spontaneously opened during the night. Cells previously considered secure were discovered standing ajar by morning. One jailer reportedly awoke to find dozens of keys arranged carefully around his bed in the shape of a skeletal hand. Eventually the preserved relic disappeared entirely, stolen by persons unknown, though many suspect the artifact simply unlocked its own containment.

Modern criminal circles treat possession of the Burglar’s Final Grasp with deeply mixed emotions. Some regard it as the greatest burglary tool ever created. Others refuse even to touch it, claiming the dreams worsen over time regardless of use. Certain thieves insist that the hand does not truly resent being used, but rather resents remaining unburied - trapped eternally between utility and death like the criminal life it once served.

There are also disturbing rumors that individuals who continue using the hand despite mounting exhaustion begin unconsciously mimicking the dead thief’s habits. Sleep-deprived owners have reportedly been caught absentmindedly checking locks they pass, cataloguing valuables without realizing it, or awakening with mud beneath their fingernails despite never leaving bed. Whether these stories are genuine supernatural influence or merely psychological deterioration remains uncertain.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, knock, dispel magic, disable device 12 ranks, creator must possess at least 5 ranks in Open Lock; Cost 10,750 gp, 860 XP, preserved hand of an executed thief of at least 10th level, grave salts worth 1,500 gp, and funerary oils distilled beneath a new moon

Kelwyn’s Notes

There exists a particular category of object which civilization pretends not to understand despite manufacturing it repeatedly throughout history - the tool forged from unresolved death. Entire cultures will recoil theatrically from necromancy while simultaneously preserving the bones of saints, hanging criminals in iron cages as warnings, or transforming the remains of the infamous into symbols, relics, and cautionary mythology. Humanity does not merely fear its dead. It recruits them. The Burglar’s Final Grasp is simply more honest about the arrangement than most.

The truly distressing aspect of the hand is not its supernatural efficacy. One could argue that opening locks is among the least morally offensive abilities an enchanted relic might possess. No, what unsettles me is the emotional geometry of the thing. The thief is not trapped within the hand because he was evil, nor because the artifact delights in torment. He is trapped because utility has outlived dignity. His body ceased being a person and became equipment. Even after death, society found one final labor to extract from him. There is something profoundly cruel in the notion that a man so obsessed with freedom became eternally reduced to a key.

The dreams are especially revealing. The dead thief does not bargain. He does not seduce the wielder toward criminal greatness. He does not whisper forbidden secrets or promise hidden treasure like so many theatrical curses described in dreadful penny novels. He simply screams to be buried. Again and again. Night after night. Beneath all the necromancy, beneath the utility, beneath the clever mechanics and supernatural convenience, the artifact contains an astonishingly human plea - exhaustion. The hand does not crave power. It craves conclusion.

One begins to understand why the penalties afflict all skills unrelated to thievery. The item slowly narrows the soul toward the only purpose remaining within it. Fatigue strips away patience, creativity, scholarship, diplomacy, joy, and concentration until only intrusion remains. It is the occupational hazard of obsession made supernatural. There are thieves who spend so long learning how to enter places that they eventually forget how to belong anywhere themselves.

I suspect many owners never bury the hand because doing so would force them to acknowledge an uncomfortable truth - that even the greatest talents eventually become pathetic if denied rest. The hand opens every lock placed before it, yet remains incapable of escaping the smallest coffin imaginable: the refusal of the living to let usefulness die with dignity.