The Iron Scythe

A weapon of the Grey Waste, borne into the Real by the Betrayers of the Wyrm. Lost, re-found, and lost again many many times. The Iron Scythe is perhaps the most deadly weapon imaginable to Yggsrathaal and all her servants. So dangerous is it to Her, and so feared by all Her kin, that the agents of Entropy cannot even touch the Iron Scythe.

A History Of Conspiracy

The history of the Scythe is one of conspiracy and deceit, all orbiting around an imperishable core of Iron. Yggsrathaal hates this weapon, yet she cannot approach it, and cannot destroy it. The only tools remaining to Her are those of intrigue and deception. She, or more likely, her agents, must manipulate, delude or more simply, just pay someone, to steal the Iron Scythe, and then transport it somewhere it can never be found.
In many cases, the poor fools tricked into this business have no idea, from the beginning to the end, what they have done, or why. Often the Scythe is enchanted to seem like something other than it is. Commonly there is some kind of elaborate cover story or complex piece of theatre created to convince the targets that they are doing the Right Thing; perhaps stealing a cursed weapon from a clamored Knight, removing the lynchpin of a dark conspiracy or abducting the staff of an evil Thaumaturge.
If they are pursued by the Scythes current wielders, of course, they take them to be enemies. (No doubt they have been "warned" of the lies and deceptions of the wielders of the Scythe.)
Yggsrathaal may not be able to go near the scythe, or even to scry it too closely, but her resources are vast, and there is no length she will not go to manipulate its removal.
Money is not an object.
The lives and painstakingly constricted covers of deep and hidden agents of Entropy, even whole clans and families of such who have been bedding down for centuries, will be spent, burnt through in a second if She thinks she can cast away this (to her) Cursed Object.
Whatever magics her creatures possess, and whichever they can buy, with coin, or other things, will be directed, not against the Scythe itself, or its current wielders, but against those she intends to steal it for her.
So it is that the Scythe itself has come to be seen as 'cursed', even by those who would wield it in the cause of Reality and Greater Humanity. The deceptions of Yggsrathaal trickle through history, a series of disasters, conspiracies, and lies. Lies piled upon lies. Fact and madness intermixed until none can tell what is true or not.
Is the Scythe a weapon of evil? Pursued by cults or Dreaming Gods? Is it even real and not a conspiracy itself? Can it do what the legends claim? Or is that claim itself a trap?
The truth, the real truth, has always been known and still is, but it is obscured and wafted over by breeding colonies of lies. It is a truth too simple and too clear for those who think themselves "wise" to easily believe.

The Truth

The Iron Scythe was made, either by or for the first of the Nathlings, that race created by Yggsrathaal to be her Knights of Entropy, and who ultimately betrayed her and joined forces with Humanity against Her.
It was brought by them from the Waste and is the chiefest of their relics. Near-sacred to them, they try to guard it against all and preserve it, only using it in the most extreme and necessary circumstances, for they know Yggsrathaal seeks it and will do anything to trick it from their hands.
The Iron Scythe turns Entropy upon itself. It is a Resonator for Emptiness and one of the most deadly weapons to ever exist in Uud. It can kill, by decapitation, any creature of Yggsrtahaal, and likely any creature at all.
Admittedly, most creatures with a head will die if decapitated.
But those few who will not are amongst the most dangerous to exist; Yggsrathaals Entropic Wyrm children. Her Saints and the regenerating Generals of her armies. All those beings existing between life and death, the un-dead, the corpse-bound, the ever-living, and the drinkers of blood. Those Thaumaturges possessing powers over time and circumstance, reality-shapers, and those who hide their souls beyond their bodies. Ghosts. Things from beyond reality itself.
The Scythe could even kill Yggsrathaal Herself, and she knows it.

Its Form And Nature

The Scythe is a weighty and unwieldy weapon. Its staff curls and weaves like grained wood, or like windblown smoke frozen in an instant. Yet it is curious, pitted, and glimmering black iron. Shards of some reflective elements spark back glints like shifting constellations.
Shaped something like the staff of a scythe and something like the leg of a goat, the Scythe ends in a goats hoof in something like burnished blue-metal steel.
At the top of the haft, the face of a goat grins, or threatens, in the same cold blue-sheened metal. The grip just below the haft has been bound many times. Currently, a simple ox-leather band is wrapped tightly.
The blade seems almost corroded, chipped and bitten as if from heavy wear, like the overused scythe of a paupers farm. This wearing bears no relation to the scythes recorded use, so far as historians of such Curia know, it has always been worn, and the wearing itself shifts, deepening into near-cracks in one Age and then healing invisibly when the scythe is recovered in another. As if the scythe itself has another life, or fights battles and earns repairs in some other reality when unobserved in ours.
The metal of the blade seems like black wrought Iron only from a distance. Up close, the metal, if it is metal, has waves within it like flowing oil. When the edge and the cracks in the blade catch the sunlight, they Glare. Not glimmering or flashing like the edge of a normal blade, but bouncing back and concentrating light into a pure white beam matched evenly from every point of that angle or chip. It is as if the blade eats every color other than white, or merges all colors. Its shine is more like the dangerous edge of an eclipse than anything else, earning it one of its names.
One legend says this blade is a tooth of Yggsrathaal herself, or else that of some dreaming Daemon-god, or some lost apocalypse device.
Cumbersome to pick up and dangerous even to be near; beware the blade, for it will abide no covering and cuts from it will not heal, except to the most powerful magic and the rarest blessing, and for creatures of Entropy, not even then.
The weapon has an air of danger and finality about it, eyes are drawn towards it. Fearful in the hands of an enemy, but mighty in the hands of a friend. Though the Scythe is a difficult battlefield weapon, battles have been won or lost, simply by its presence on the field.
During the great advancement of the Waste which came with the Last Theistic Wars, the Scythe saved many cities on the northern border, rising at the heads of armies and striking terror into the advancing Orcs, and Her children.
But not for long enough.
Eventually, all such cities fell, and the Scythe itself was recovered from the Battlefield amidst the Ash of the advancing Waste, covered by a great cairn of Human bodies but untouched by Her children, who feared it still. The Scythe, and mankind, fell back to the borders of Blackwater as they are known today. And as it always must, the care and watchfulness of Humanity slipped, and the Scythe was stolen, taken by victims of Yggsrathaals trickery and secreted somewhere in Uud.
When the blade of the Scythe bites home into a servant of Entropy it bursts out in stuttering, violent bright blue-white light that shines without interruption even through closed lids. The light is said to shine even through trees and cloth as if these things were not dense enough to interrupt it.
Then comes the wineglass-edge static-scream of its victim. For the most powerful of Yggsrathaals Children are forged against most mortal blades, and for many, even if they should die, they decay only to ash and maybe reborn and recreated by Her, as she pulls the dim strands of their Para consciousness from the Ether and binds them into new flesh, making seeming death little more than a humiliating inconvenience.
When they Iron Blade bites though, even immortals and the undying know this is the true and final absolute against which even they may not prevail. The unknotting of imperishable flesh bursts out in blue-white radiation. And time after time, they scream.
Though not for long.
Another curious quality of the Scythe, claimed by those who have wielded it, is that it acts as a kind of Resonator for Emptiness. The Scythe shivers in the hand when empty things are near. It can even burst open containers with simply a touch, anything from jars to chests to entire castles, but only if the container is empty.
Some wielders have claimed that the Scythe shivers near Her creatures, perhaps due to the emptiness they embody, and one even said the Scythe reacted to a powerful meditating monk who had achieved a sacred mind-state.

The Seekers Of The Scythe

Many seek the Scythe, and many of those are victims of Yggsrathaals manipulations, though they know it not. For she will never just manipulate one person or group to seek if for her.
Are you sure that you are not such a one? How much do you know about the origin of your quest? Was it your idea, or was the concept allowed to drift into your life?
And not that everyone who knows of the Scythe knows that Yggsrathaal seeks it.
That is only one strand of the rumors and histories that flow around the Scythe, and there are many more. The most popular is that it is a cursed weapon containing the soul of the first Nathling to turn against Yggsrathaal, and that this soul will speak the truth of the Nathlings to one who can command it, and that this truth is a terrible one the Nathlings do not wish anyone else to know, explaining why they seek it endlessly and do not wish anyone else to have it.
Another is that the scythe is the creation of, and locks the path to, a dreaming Demon-God who is the Father of the Nathlings, as he mated with Yggsrathaal in his sleep without knowing, and that the Nathlings seek the Scythe to set him free - a dangerous and risky result foe every non-Nathling.
Another is that the Scythe is of ancient Deoth make, formed out in the cold interstellar void when there were still stars and the space between them was still black, and that the Nathlings found one of the fallen Iron Keeps out in the Waste, and formed the Scythe from what they found there, and that if the right Deoth, with the right knowledge, finds and wields it, they will find the way to that keep.
Another is that the scythe was made in Marginalia by a Lifian, a wandering half-god of old Esh, or that it was made in Old Esh itself. Or that it marks the way to riches, or will release the Spirit of an Optimate of Esh, or open the Gate to Hell, or end the world.
Lie upon lie upon lie. Many backed up with records, details, and entire sub-cultures and cults dedicated to them. Many with popular books and scrolls written about them. All spread and encouraged by Yggsrathaal over the millennia, and all to obscure the simple truth and to set traps for victims she can manipulate.
The most powerful seekers of the Scythe are the "Iron Goat Tendency", a sub-faction of extremely Hawkish and extreme Nathlings who believe that every second not spent actively combatting Yggsrathaal is effectively a second in her service and that every act they are unwilling to commit, due to its extremity, is also an act in her service.
Though few, they look for the Scythe more obsessively than most and seek to use it in the most immediate and aggressive manner. So much do they distrust all other groups and races, as being too easy for Her to manipulate, that they will willingly kill other seekers as potential dangers.
The Tolerance also seeks the Scythe. They wish to study and control it, as they believe that all such weapons against entropy should be in the best, wisest, and most ruthless hands, that is to say; their own, and used for the good of all Greater Humanity, as only they will truly do.
But any city under threat, or Gloom-Queen or marginal land, any adventurer or Waste-Wanderer, anyone who fears Yggsrathaal and is directly threatened by her, has reason to seek the Iron Scythe.
And in Uud, that counts as everyone.

View The Iron Scythe in the Seraphormer

Also called:

• The Eclipse Scythe
• Scythe of the Iron Tendency
• Scythe of the Iron Goat
• Yggsrthaals Bane

Item type

Weapon, Melee

View the Iron Schyte in the Seraphormer