Full Item Description
The Skull of Gardesh is a humanoid skull of indeterminate age that radiates a strong magical aura. The jaw bone has been fixed to the cranium by an artifice of wire.

History
The legendary and quite mad warrior-mage Gardesh is unique in the annals of myth and legend as he is among the very few heroes or even fiends who used pieces of their own body as weapons. In his quest to become the most powerful magus in existance, Gardesh learned the tricks of temporal incursions and chronomantic displacement. By executing these powerful schools of magic, Gardesh sidestepped the Skein of Time. His goal was simple, he desired to make a weapon from the remains of the most powerful magus he could find. Irony revealed that Gardesh himself was the most powerful magus. By using these magics the warrior-mage created a temporal paradox, ambushed his future self, killed his future self and harvested his own essential salts and skull.

This combination of temporal errors and concentrated potence made Gardesh the most powerful magus that could ever and will ever exist and the skull was the focus of the greatest part of his stolen power. By focusing raw magic through the skull, Gardesh tapped into his limitless resevoir of twisted temporal corruption and was able to use the incredibly chaotic blast to utterly destroy anything he desired to.

Eventually the temporal snarl caused the skull to vanish from Gardesh's person, and in this unexpected moment of weakness, the Gardesh from the past appeared and slaughtered his future self, harvested the skull and vanished back into the past. Once Gardesh was dead the skull reappeared and fell to the ground.

Magic/Cursed Properties
The power of the skull has greatly dimished following the death of Gardesh. It is still a powerful relic, but it's power to annihilate anything with naked temporal magic has since gone. Some of Gardesh's presence has remained within the skull as well as a good deal of temporal taint. As such the sentience of the skull is egomaniacal, arrogant and completely stark raving mad. However it possesses a great deal of magical knowledge, occluded history and can be used to cast spells dealing with time manipulation.

There are problems when dealing with the skull, the most common being that the skull exists partially outside the normal flow of time and it is difficult to deal with. One day the skull can know the PCs incredibly well, the next day it shouts obsenities at them since it wants to know who these strangers are. Even worse are moments when the skull reveals portents from the future, which are ALWAYS negative and destructive. It will call PCs betrayers, or pronounce the modes of their death, or some other calamity for which they will either cause or suffer from.

Plot Hooks
Wizard Looking for Head - The PCs are hired by the benevolent wizard to bring back the Skull of Gardesh for his alchemical research. The PCs find the tomb/ruins where the skull was last known to be, fight monsters, and find the skull. When they pick it up, the skull laughs and tells them that for their troubles the wizard will have them executed, one by one, as criminals.

Head and Shoulders - A magical academy has gained possession of the Skull and has been swayed to evil and idolatry of the skull for it's arcane and oracular powers. The PCs fight the organization of evil magi and their summoned hordes to find that the mastermind behind it all is a centuries old skull that seems to rattle on and on... it does seem quite ocnvincing.

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