Sydanjaa's Call

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Description

These weapons traditionally have a diamond-shaped iron head, smoothed and sharpened with fine abrasive tempest jade dust. It is the shaft that requires most of the artisan's attention, the wood carefully worked and polished with ambergelt, and inlaid with a few larger pieces of tempest jade. Traditionally, the weapon must be crafted entirely outside, under the night sky, and it is said that if these weapons spend too much time indoors - or worse, underground - their enchantment fades faster than it normally would. The greatest of these spears are said to be crafted in Winter months when the ice winds howl, and the very greatest are crafted on the wastes of Sermersuaq, within sight of the eternal storm Sydanjaa.

The shaft of the weapon is usually marked with Mawrig, rune of storms. Because that rune is considered dangerous by many, it is not uncommon for the rune to be covered with a strip of cloth, or even left off the weapon entirely - in this case it is often painted onto the shaft or the head shortly before the weapon is to be used, to minimize the bad luck and madness it can cause.

The Varushkans have also made some use of these weapons, although they have fallen out of favour in recent centuries. Historically used by the Ushka rather than the Vard, they were often marked with the rune Naeve - hunger - and named wastewalker's howl. These weapons had a much darker reputation that the Suaq counterpart, and it is said that they were sanctified in some way by dark spirits of the howling blizzard and midwinter chill. Some orcs - Imperial and otherwise - have an almost superstitious dread of the wastewalker's howl; when the weapons were captured in battle they were destroyed, rather than being claimed by the victorious barbarians.

Wielders of these weapons comment that they are often unnaturally cold to the touch, and that odd breezes occasionally spin up around them. When wielded under the night sky, a hunter will often seem to hear a distant howling, always on the very edge of hearing. For the Suaq this is the distant cry of Sydanjaa. For the Varushka, especially those with the white mark of an Ushkan bloodline, they represent a much more sinister howling of some lost and forgotten spirit of the Northern wastes.

Rules

• Form: One-handed Spear.
• Effect: Once per day, you may spend a hero point to call REPEL when you hit with this spear.
• Materials: Crafting Sydanjaa's call requires ten ingots of tempest jade and eight measures of ambergelt. It takes one month to make one of these items.

Thorin was tiring, and the big orc chasing him across the ice knew it.

The day had been going well enough; the seals were out and Thorin’s party had been occupied collecting plenty of meat for the hall. So occupied, as it turned out, that they had been surprised by a small band of Jotun raiders. Thinking quickly he’d taunted the biggest and meanest of the bunch into chasing after him, leading him away from the others. But the orc was big, with long legs and, even encumbered by his armour and weapons, he was outpacing Thorin, who was not at all confident he could take him in a fair fight.

Currently he was armed only with a spear that, even though it was enchanted, was looking decidedly small in comparison to the great orcish cleaver that he suspected would soon be heading rapidly in his direction. But Thorin knew Sermersuaq in the way that only a true Suaq hunter can. He knew every snowdrift, every crevasse, every rock and every freezing lake. he also knew that he had only one chance at this.

Suddenly he rolled to the side, and striking at just the right angle, stabbed his spear at the orc’s calf. A blast of wind and flakes of snow that Thorin's cousin had collected from Sydanjaa flew from the tip and pushed the huge orc in all his mail away and out of reach. Hearing an ominous creaking sound the orc looked down to see a spiderweb of cracks slowly expanding around him and before Thorin’s eyes he simply dropped through the ground. Weighed down with all his equipment he would have no chance. Today Thorin would live and the orc would die, simply because Thorin knew to strike where the ice was thinnest.