Weapon

Varies Requires Attunement

This black cane is made of gnarled wood and has a silvered raven's skull at its top. You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon, which has the finesse property, regardless of which form it's in.
While in its cane form, it functions as a quarterstaff. While holding it, you can use a bonus action to transform it into its scythe form. When you do, a large, shadowy sickle blade erupts from the raven's beak and the cane glows with fiery embers.
  While in its scythe form, the weapon functions as a halberd that lacks the heavy property, although it's still considered to be a quarterstaff for the purposes of weapon proficiency. When you hit with an attack using the scythe, the target takes an extra 2d6 fire damage. You gain temporary hit points equal to the fire damage dealt, which last until the start of your next turn. If a creature hits you with a melee attack while you have these hit points, the creature takes 5 fire damage. The weapon remains in this form until you use a bonus action to transform it back into its cane form or until you drop or sheathe it. When you reduce a creature to 0 hit points using the scythe, you can choose to reduce it to ash. A creature with legendary actions can't be turned to ash in this way.
  Death's Vigil. As an action, you can touch a corpse with the weapon to create a harmless, flaming mantle around it. The mantle duplicates the effect of the gentle repose spell, which lasts until this property is used again or until your attunement to the weapon ends. While protected by the mantle, a corpse has a damage threshold of 20, which means it has immunity to all damage unless it takes 20 damage or more from a single attack or effect, in which case it takes damage as normal.
  Fate's Bond. While holding the weapon, you can use a bonus action to curse a creature that you can see with a grim fate. The curse remains for 1 minute or until the creature is reduced to 0 hit points. While cursed, your attacks with this weapon against that creature are made with advantage, and you magically know the exact distance and direction of the creature from you, provided that you're on the same plane of existence. This property of the weapon can't be used again until the next dusk.
  If the curse lasts for its full duration, it rebounds; you take 4d10 fire damage, which can't be reduced or prevented in any way. If you're reduced to 0 hit points when this happens, your body is incinerated and turned to ash.

From our first days, she was there. Leaning upon a silvered skull, she helped bring us into life.



To the ailing, she brought aid. Not light, not bright or honored, but as embers that yet kept us from death's cold.




To those in the hands of death, she lent a gentle departure. The lost under her care bore a wreath of kindling sparks, forms alight in unblemished dignity.




And when others would bring death, she burned. A practitioner's incision, borne on blackened blade; what she excised would not trouble us again.




So it was we lived, and grew, and passed on beneath her watch, a twinned weight on her of penance and solace alike.




For who better to preserve life than one with mastery of its end? And who better to harvest life than one who knows its value?



—A farmer's account of the acts of former Infernal matron Minatra Corax, excerpt from Exiles of the Planes