The Interrogator’s Reliquary

Aura overwhelming necromancy; CL 17th
Slot —; Price 74,000 gp; Weight 3 lbs.

DESCRIPTION

This soot-blackened human skull has been pierced by thirteen iron nails driven primarily through the crown, forehead, and eye sockets at unnatural angles. Several spikes descend directly through the orbital cavities into the hollow interior of the skull, while others protrude from the upper cranium like ritual pins hammered into a funerary effigy. The jaw remains mostly untouched, its yellowed teeth still intact beneath the ruined brow. Cold whispers drift constantly from the empty sockets like breath escaping a crypt.

The Interrogator’s Reliquary is fashioned from the genuine skull of a sentient humanoid creature whose soul was bound into the remains during a prolonged necromantic execution rite. Before the item may ever be used, its possessor must perform the Rite of Recollection - a grisly seven-day ritual conducted over seven uninterrupted nights. During this process, the wielder lights funerary candles around the skull, anoints each nail with grave oils, burns funerary incense, and repeatedly recites the true name of the deceased until the trapped soul is successfully dragged back into awareness.

The ritual requires at least one uninterrupted hour each night. If even a single night is missed, the entire process fails and must begin again from the beginning.

At the conclusion of the seventh night, the skull awakens. Pale corpse-light begins leaking from the eye sockets and nasal cavity, while faint whispers become audible in forgotten tongues. A translucent image of the deceased manifests within the darkness of the skull itself, visible only through the empty sockets and mouth. The soul is fully conscious, remembers its death, and understands precisely what has been done to it.

Once awakened, the Reliquary may be questioned. However, only one question may be asked each day, and the soul may answer no more than thirteen questions in total over the lifetime of the item. Each question must be spoken directly to the skull while it is illuminated by candlelight between sunset and sunrise.

The bound spirit is compelled to answer truthfully to the best of its knowledge, functioning as though continuously affected by zone of truth and discern lies. The spirit cannot intentionally deceive through omission, technical wording, or evasive interpretation. It may speak emotionally, bitterly, or reluctantly, but it cannot knowingly provide false information.

The asking of each question visibly damages the Reliquary. Immediately after an answer is given, one of the thirteen iron nails blackens, corrodes, and disintegrates into reddish-black rust that spills across the skull and surrounding surface. The skull audibly cracks as fragments of necromantic force unravel within it, while the imprisoned soul becomes increasingly unstable and distressed.

When the thirteenth question is answered and the final nail decays away, the soul emits a silent scream visible only as violent distortion within the skull’s eye sockets. The trapped spirit is permanently released from bondage, and the skull itself immediately collapses into ash, rust flakes, and splintered fragments of blackened bone. Nothing short of direct divine intervention can prevent this destruction.

Any creature holding the skull during an interrogation gains a +4 profane bonus on Intimidate checks and Sense Motive checks made against the manifested spirit.

LORE

The Interrogator’s Reliquary is not believed to originate from any single culture or kingdom. Rather, historians have observed that civilizations eventually reinvent some variation of the artifact whenever fear becomes sufficiently organized. Witch hunters, inquisitorial courts, paranoid monarchies, revolutionary tribunals, and collapsing empires all appear drawn toward the same terrible conclusion - if the dead could simply be forced to answer questions, uncertainty itself might finally be conquered.

The placement of the nails is deeply symbolic within necromantic theology. Ancient mortuary texts describe the spikes as “anchors of denial,” each driven through portions of the skull associated with memory, identity, confession, guilt, or perception. The eye sockets are especially important, as many soul-binding traditions believed the eyes to be the final pathways through which consciousness departs the body. By sealing them with iron, the ritual attempts to pin fragments of awareness inside the remains permanently.

The Rite of Recollection is widely considered the most psychologically dangerous portion of the artifact’s operation. Necromantic journals recovered from abandoned crypts describe practitioners gradually hearing the bound soul grow more coherent over the course of the seven nights. At first the whispers resemble meaningless static or distant weeping. By the final evening, the spirit often begins recognizing names, recalling memories, and pleading not to be awakened completely. Several documented wielders abandoned the ritual before completion after hearing the skull softly speak to them in the voice of someone they had lost.

The destruction of a nail after each question is believed to represent the progressive collapse of the soul’s confinement. Each spike functions simultaneously as prison, tether, and wound. With every answer, one restraint fails, bringing the spirit incrementally closer to release. Certain theologians consider this the sole act of mercy built into the Reliquary’s design - the dead are not trapped forever, only until knowledge has consumed the prison holding them.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, speak with dead, trap the soul, zone of truth, discern lies, contact other plane; creator must possess at least 13 ranks in Knowledge (religion); Cost 37,000 gp, 2,960 XP, the intact skull of a sentient humanoid creature, thirteen iron coffin nails soaked in grave soil for one year, funerary incense worth 2,500 gp, grave oils distilled from corpse-fat, and a flawless black diamond worth 5,000 gp consumed during the binding ritual.

Kelwyn’s Notes

The gradual destruction of the nails transforms the Reliquary from a mere necromantic instrument into something far more emotionally unbearable. One does not simply interrogate the dead all at once. One lives with them. One waits beside them night after night, knowing another question may be asked tomorrow, and another after that, while the skull itself visibly approaches annihilation like a diseased clock counting down toward mercy.

That pacing alters people.

The first nail falls with theatrical horror - smoke, rust, cracking bone, all the expected pageantry necromancers so dearly adore. By the sixth or seventh, however, the ritual begins feeling domestic in the most dreadful possible sense. Candles are lit. The skull is placed upon the table. Questions are prepared. Answers are endured. Another nail collapses softly into powder. One begins to understand how entire inquisitorial orders could normalize this process until spiritual torture became merely another evening responsibility performed before supper.

The skull’s whispers during the initial week are perhaps the cruelest component of all. The soul awakens gradually, like someone surfacing from beneath black water only to discover hands waiting to force them back under. I have read accounts of practitioners hearing apologies spoken from the sockets before the ritual fully concluded. Others reported fragmented prayers, childhood songs, or pleas directed toward long-dead relatives. One particularly unfortunate archivist abandoned the Rite entirely after the skull began quietly thanking him for “coming back.”

The nails themselves fascinate me philosophically. Each one is both restraint and countdown simultaneously. Humanity so often constructs prisons without exits. The Reliquary, at least, possesses the decency to acknowledge that even torment should eventually terminate. Every answer destroys a portion of the mechanism sustaining the suffering. Knowledge literally consumes the artifact that extracts it.

There is something almost embarrassingly human about that. We destroy what we need most simply by using it.