Shards of the Storm

Many aeons ago, when the Gods were young and the world was new, the Storm Queen and the Mad Lord of Avarice met in battle in the heavens. The battle between the two raged not for hours, but for decades, with no quarter asked, and none recieved in their madness. Beneath them, the lands were shredded by mighty winds and shattered with the force of the Mad Lord's blade, while the soil was soaked and charged by the very blood of the gods. In the end, both of the gods had been weakened enough in their battle that for precious moments, each was no longer immortal. In the beginning of their moment, the golden steel sword of the Lord of Greed crashed into the crackling blades of wind and thunder the Storm Queen called her own, and in one shimmering moment, each shattered as if they were made of fine glass. Reduced at last to biting and clawing, the Gods withdrew from their battle, concerned far more with survival than with vanquishing their foe, each drained of their fury, and indeed, much of their divine power. Swiftly forgotten by each was the remnants of their weapons.

Rejected by the earth, and forgotten by their creator, the shards of the Blade of Greed were soon subsumed by the chaotic forces that coursed through the shattered lands, dispersing into the magic of the madlands where the fought, later named the Desert of Divine Despair. The shards of Typhoon and Monsoon, however, were recognized by the Wind and Sky, and so the lands beneath them permitted them to exist, and thus remembered, so they continue to exist.

Twenty-six in all, thirteen from the Blade of Monsoon and thirteen from the Blade of Typhoon, the Shards of the Storm are thin, jagged shards of a translucent metal with a strange, silvery sheen. Each pulses with a blue crackling of thunder and keens with the howling of a vast wind forced through a narrow gap.

Magical Properties:

In their raw form, the Shards of the Storm are uncontrollable by mortal man. The eddies and currents of the power they express are far too chaotic for mortals to comprehend even the smallest portion, and there is little he can do besides let theme exist. They will draw chaotic, random events to themselves, and one will find that rain clouds and thunderstorms seem to be attempting to have a love affair with the bearer.

However, if they are taken and forged into an item, the act of forging will give pattern to the chaos, and allow the most willful the ability to control them. Further, the type of forging will determine what the shard grants to the wielder. In all cases, the inclusion of multiple shards causes the power of the artifact created to rise exponentially.

A sword or other weapon from the shard will manifest the destructive power of the storm: The sword may strike with lightning, thunder, fierce winds, sharp ice, pelting hail, or any other attack that might be expected of storm magic, depending on the forging of the sword and the mind of the wielder.

Wearing armor containing a Shard of the Storm, the protected will find that the winds and sky themselves are willing to come to his defense. He may find himself resistant, or even immune, to natural and magical thunder and lightning, or he may find that fierce walls of winds turn aside the blades and arrows of the foe. He may even find that his armor runs with lightning and electricity, which will leap to the foes that strke him, dealing damage to them.

Wands and staves fashoned from Shards of the Storm may grant the wielder powers over the weather of an area, the ability to call down lightning from above, or perhaps any other weather-related ability he had in mind when creating the stave.

To wear a crown or helm containing a shard in its making is perhaps the most dangerous, for while it will grant the wearer the voice of command, and perhaps knowledge of all that can be seen from the sky in the region, it will also grant him the fury of the storm. Once he has begun a course of action in battle, he will see it through to the end, no matter how devestating it may be.

Other combinations are possible, even likely. The shards may be fashioned as a part of any thing that contain their physical size, and each will grant the holder of that item a tiny fraction of divine power over the weather, as much dependant upon the holder as upon the fragment.

Only a few things remain constant between each of the shards. First, the larger the shard, the more powerful its abilities. Second, as they forged of the divine will of the Storm Queen, that will will begin to possess the bearer of the shard or the crafted artifact. Capricious, destructive, demanding, and utterly chaotic, the Storm Queen's behaviour will slowly make itself the behaviour of the mortal who bears the shard.

Should all thirteen shards of a particular blade be gathered into a single place, a particularly powerful wizard or priest, also talented at the forge, may be able to reform them into the original blade. The shards of Typhoon cannot be combined with the shards of Monsoon into a single blade. Should either blade be reformed, they will grant the wielder an enormous amount of power over the storm and its related elements, however, the Storm Queen will -immediately- know of its recreation, as well as each and every use of its power. More than likely, she's going to want them back. Badly enough to kill, if needed.