Artifact-Grade Curiosity

Verdict

One-Handed Hammer

Not a weapon so much as a lesson, delivered at high velocity.

Verdict../../images/iudex-hammer.jpg

Item Statistics

As catalogued, at great personal risk, by the Verod Antiquities Registry.

Damage

1d10 × Str modifier, bludgeoning (and briefly, fire)

Critical

Does not apply. There is only ever one hit.

Range Increment

100 ft., thrown, reforms in the wielder's hand one round after landing

Weight

~6 lb. (estimated; no one has successfully weighed it twice)

Composition

A core of raw Explodaminium bound in a haft lined with Aequorite, the same alloy as Iüdex's own armor, and the only known substance that survives contact with the core

Attunement

Not required. Also not advised.

Handling Warnings

Please read before touching. Preferably before being handed one.

Safe only when thrown and allowed to return on its own. It knows the way back; let it go.
Dropping it is fatal. Not "possibly." Fatal.
Using it in melee combat is also fatal, and, according to three separate accounts, mildly insulting to the weapon.
Must be gripped only with gauntlets of Aequorite. Any other material conducts the charge directly and enthusiastically into the wielder's arm.

What Is Explodaminium?

A highly volatile magical stone, mined sparingly and regretted often.

Even a small shard, simply spun in open air, throws off sparks equal to several lit candles. Larger quantities are, unsurprisingly, worse. The Mining Guilds of Menboko in Voir classify it under "materials we no longer discuss at dinner."

Field Report

Filed by the temple archivists, who insist this is the tame version of the story.

Squire Bevrick Thoon, against every posted warning and at least two verbal ones, decided he could "just give it a little practice swing." Historians are divided on many things, but united on this: it was, in fact, his last. Verdict, ever efficient, ever balanced, reformed itself in the training yard exactly where Bevrick had been standing, which was, by that point, occupied by considerably less of Bevrick than before.

The scorch mark behind the chapel has since been unofficially renamed "Bevrick's Corner." No one polishes it. It is, in its own small way, also a kind of monument to balance.

"Of the forty-one recorded owners of Verdict prior to its return to the Judge's own hand, thirty-eight are deceased, two are 'reportedly fine,' and one is a light mist that still answers to its old name when the wind is right." Magistrate-Historian Ovelle Dunn, "An Incomplete Study of Things That Should Not Be Thrown"

Current Whereabouts

As of the last confirmed sighting.

Verdict does not currently rest at the Judge's own hip. Both the hammer and Iüdex's armor remain in the keeping of his most trusted servant. Monitor, highest cleric of Iüdex, entrusted not merely to hold them, but to know exactly when they must never be used. He carries Witness, the god's shield, alongside it.