Voidheart Reliquary

Aura Strong necromancy and conjuration; CL 15th
Slot none; Price 96,000 gp; Weight 8 lbs.

DESCRIPTION

This grotesque artifact resembles a human ribcage torn free from some colossal corpse and forcibly reshaped into the form of a lantern. Blackened iron clasps bind the ribs together, while wet-looking crimson sinew endlessly twitches between the bones as though attempting to regrow missing flesh. Suspended within the center of the cage is a floating sphere of pulsating darkness that appears to absorb nearby light rather than emit it. The object constantly radiates the odor of fresh graves, stagnant water, and opened bodies left too long beneath humid summer heat. Faint whispers in forgotten languages leak from the reliquary during moments of silence, though listeners cannot remember the words afterward.

Despite its horrifying appearance, the Voidheart Reliquary exists as an engine of impossible preservation. The negative appearance is merely the vessel through which overwhelming positive energy is contained safely without violently annihilating nearby living creatures. When held or carried by a living creature, the reliquary projects a constant 30-foot-radius aura of stabilizing life force. Living creatures within the aura gain fast healing 2 so long as they are below half their maximum hit points. Creatures dying within the aura automatically stabilize. Mundane diseases are suppressed while within the aura, and natural healing recovers at three times the normal rate.

Three times per day, the bearer may command the reliquary to release a Pulse of Defiant Dawn as a standard action. All living creatures within 40 feet are affected as though by heal, restoring up to 150 hit points and removing blindness, deafness, disease, poison, confusion, and similar debilitating conditions. Undead within the area instead suffer 150 points of damage with a successful DC 23 Will save reducing this damage by half. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Whenever the reliquary restores a creature from fewer than 0 hit points to positive hit points, the target witnesses a brief vision of countless dead hands gently pushing them back toward the world of the living. Many survivors report overwhelming feelings of grief, gratitude, terror, or renewed purpose afterward.

The Voidheart Reliquary possesses one final and terrible function. Once per month, if a living creature has died within the past minute, the bearer may force the reliquary open fully as a full-round action. The darkness within unfolds into a screaming vortex of inverted shadow and radiant white fire visible for miles. The deceased creature is immediately restored to life as though by true resurrection with no level loss or material component cost. However, every creature witnessing the event must succeed on a DC 20 Will save or become shaken for 1d6 rounds from the horrifying revelation that the boundary between life and death is far thinner - and far less merciful - than mortal minds prefer to believe.

LORE

Most assume the Voidheart Reliquary to be an artifact of liches, grave cults, or necromantic tyrants. Entire kingdoms have launched crusades to destroy examples of similar devices, believing them to be soul prisons or engines for manufacturing undead horrors. In nearly every documented case, those crusades collapsed when plague, famine, or war followed the destruction of the object in question. The reliquaries were never created to spread death. They were created because some healers eventually learn that life itself is too enormous, too violent, and too sacred to appear beautiful when stripped of comforting lies.

The first Voidheart Reliquary was allegedly forged during a civilization-ending epidemic in which priests exhausted entire temples attempting to save the dying. Conventional healing magic became increasingly ineffective as despair itself spread faster than disease. According to surviving fragments, an unnamed physician-priest ventured into the mass burial trenches and concluded that the gods of life had been misunderstood for centuries. Life was not gentle. It was not clean. It was not morally comforting. True life clawed, screamed, consumed, adapted, and persisted no matter how mutilated the world became around it. The reliquary was born from this revelation - an object designed not to resemble hope, but to resemble survival itself.

Scholars argue endlessly over why positive energy contained within the reliquary manifests with such grotesque imagery. Some theorize that mortal minds instinctively interpret unconstrained life force as monstrous because endless growth without restraint resembles cancer, mutation, infestation, or uncontrolled evolution. Others believe the reliquary intentionally terrifies observers in order to force them into philosophical honesty. The living adore pretending that life and beauty are synonymous concepts. The Voidheart Reliquary disagrees.

Many who travel with the reliquary report gradual psychological changes over time. Fear of death often diminishes, replaced instead by a deeper and more complicated fear - the realization that existence continues demanding endurance even after unimaginable suffering. Yet paradoxically, most bearers also become more compassionate, patient, and emotionally present. To witness such hideous machinery dedicated entirely toward preserving life tends to alter one's understanding of what mercy truly looks like beneath civilization's polished language.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, heal, mass cure critical wounds, true resurrection, death ward, creator must have survived a near-death experience; Cost 48,000 gp + 3,840 XP

Kelwyn’s Notes

There exists a childish assumption among many civilized peoples that goodness must always present itself attractively in order to remain morally comprehensible. One notices this particularly among the wealthy, whose temples are filled with polished marble, fragrant incense, soft choirs, and carefully curated depictions of divinity that resemble attractive nobles with clean robes and symmetrical faces. Such people often possess the luxury of never witnessing survival in its rawest forms. They mistake comfort for virtue because suffering has remained sufficiently distant from their dining tables.

Yet one need only spend a single evening beside plague trenches, battlefield surgeons, famine camps, or flood rescues to understand that life itself is not a delicate phenomenon. Life is vulgar. It is invasive. It clings to broken ribs and infected wounds with astonishing stubbornness. It drags itself screaming through mud and smoke while insisting upon tomorrow even after dignity has long since drowned. The Voidheart Reliquary understands this better than most priests ever shall. Its appearance does not celebrate death. Rather, it reveals the terrible anatomy of survival once illusion has been peeled away.

I confess there is something emotionally overwhelming about observing a device so outwardly abhorrent devote itself entirely toward mercy. The contradiction unsettles the mind because humanity prefers its moral lessons neatly organized. We desire villains who look monstrous and heroes who resemble stained glass windows illuminated by gentle dawns. The reliquary instead suggests that salvation may occasionally emerge wearing the face of a nightmare because existence itself is under no obligation to comfort our aesthetic sensibilities.

One survivor restored by the reliquary described the experience to me while trembling uncontrollably beside a rain-soaked cemetery wall. She stated that during the moment between death and return, she felt innumerable unseen hands forcing her upward again - not cruelly, but firmly, with exhausted determination. "They would not let me rest," she whispered. I have reflected upon those words often since hearing them, particularly during long evenings when the swamp fog grows thick enough to resemble the breath of sleeping giants beyond the lantern light. Civilization survives largely because countless unseen hands continue dragging one another back toward morning whether we feel prepared for another dawn or not.