Hoof-hilted curved vultite dagger

Prize item for Hunt for History.

a hoof-hilted curved vultite dagger

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Tarnished with age yet still an elegant statement in craftsmanship, this dagger has retained a deadly edge and point with very little care. The hilt is carved from a solid dark-colored hoof, with the tips protruding from beneath the rotting cloth wrappings around the grip. A slim design, coupled with a thumb bar for leverage, make for an excellent concealable weapon that leaps to hand with casual ease.

Loresong:
Jarring flashes of color bloom in your eyes as the dagger throbs nauseatingly, visions spluttering roughly to life. Images flicker and distort with static, hundreds of them flying by too fast to discern, before lurching to a normal speed.

Stocking the display cases with daggers matching the one in your hand, from crates marked and stamped as unclaimed evidence and bearing the city of Fairport's official seal, an aging man putters around in his store. Documents, portraits, and framed sections of uniform hanging on the walls display the history of the man, revealing him to have once been a constable. A jovial couple from the bakery next door rap at the window as they leave their shop, placing an open box of day-old muffins by the constable's door. The constable slumps behind his counter with the box, gazing hatefully at the yellowed parchment hung on the wall, a wanted poster with a blade-wielding giantkin assassin sketch. He bites into a muffin from the box, and emblazoned on the bottom of the wrapper are two crossed daggers.

Your stomach clenches as the vivid scene slows gelatinously and then reverses, everything you just watched unhappening before your eyes and continuing on backwards in a blur before snuffing out.

Images waver into your vision as the dagger renews its pulsating song with a sickly quiver, black spots forming around the edges of your sight like molding apparitions. Figures resolve into clarity, and their backwards movements jolt and play forward.

As crime scenes go, this one is far more opulent than the norm. A decorated grand ballroom, the overly-gilded space would easily be decreed majestic by any viewer, were it not for the single disfiguration of a murdered corpse on the floor. The constable, looking less old and even less retired, is on his knees beside the body of a slashed man in baronial vestments, sobbing not with remorse but out of frustration and confusion. Beside him, nearly ten feet up, two identical daggers are stabbed into the wall, one with its blade facing up, the other down. Between them hangs a red velvet handfasting cord.

Images swirl by faster in a blurry collage of visuals, and then a crackling hiss and acrid spark from the dagger snap you from the vision and the connection breaks.

Once again the swimmy visions crawl into your sight, flashes of people and shadows moving in reverse too quickly to interpret. With a jumbled twist of color the vision suddenly plays forward.

The constable is standing beside another man bearing a large sketchbook. The artist is listening carefully to the sharply-dressed constable, while trying not to glance at the bloody corpse already freezing in rigor at their feet. The constable is describing a huge man, perhaps even giantkin, and gesturing at the dagger embedded high in the wall. He pauses in his description, taking a length of marked twine from his pocket and measuring the height of the blade from the floor, and gestures at the picture the artist is drawing shaking his head. Flipping to a blank sheet of parchment, the artist begins again, this time drawing a gigantic menacing figure apparently twice the size of a human.

Images swirl by faster in a blurry panorama of visuals, and then a crackling hiss and acrid spark from the dagger snap you from the vision with a shock!

Your song vibrates unsteadily through the dagger, in your vision indecipherable swathes of colored light flicker like a windblown candle refracting through tumbling crystal balls.

Images splutter by, one crime scene after another, each showing quickly a different room, different victim, but high up on the wall one unwavering similarity, a single dagger with its edge facing either up or down. Another constant becomes apparent, the constable, slowly becoming younger at each location. The backwards scenes slow and one plays forward, the constable reaching up and prying the calling card blade from the wall for the first time, confusion and interest warring on his face at this new discovery. A note is pinned to the blade, which he unfurls and holds up to read. Though written in a style lost to ages, glowing letters in your own tongue appear above the note's surface, stating, "Oops, I have beaten you again little man!" The constable frowns at the note, and tucks it into his pocket as if it were written directly to him.

The vivid scene slows gelatinously and then reverses again, everything unraveling backwards and on past the scenes you just viewed. The dagger emits a loud *bang* which snaps you out of the vision.

Vibrations erupt furiously from the dagger in your hand, threatening to shake it from your grip! As you clench the hilt tighter, visions crawl backwards through your eyes, slowing and then starting forward.

A pantsless lord lounges in a bedroom chair, alone and dozing, and a cloaked halfling approaches from behind. He reaches around to slash the lord's throat, but a dagger appears suddenly stuck between his eyes! Another halfling assassin waves with a grin from the other side of the room and bounces over to collect her weapon, which they notice matches his dagger exactly, both bearing a rolaren gecko on the hilt. The two diminutive killers do not appear to know each other, but speak at length beside the cooling corpse with growing smiles. A flirtatious game is conceived, and as they leave the female hurls her dagger into the wall above the door, blade facing down, and says, "That is one vote for bakery!"

The scene reverses and the figures within dance oddly in their mangled backwards-time movements. After the lord staggers back into his chair the scene slowly goes dim, and then black. Your vision clears and the dagger falls completely still.

Reference

Unofficial documentation located here: http://members.aol.com/gs3augie/hoofdagger.html