One of the most powerful and terrible artifacts ever to exist, the Wand of Orcus is an item of absolute evil, a weapon that embodies death, undeath, and the corruption of all living things.
The wand is massive, more akin to a staff or mace than a traditional wand. It stands over five feet tall, sized for Orcus’s enormous frame. The shaft is made of bone, yellowed with age, covered in cracks and fissures that weep a black, oily substance. The bone came from a creature of immense power, something ancient and terrible whose name has been lost to time.
The head of the wand is a human skull, but not just any skull. It is massive, disproportionately large, with hollow eye sockets that burn with a sickly green flame. The jaw hangs open in an eternal scream. The skull radiates malevolence, hatred, and the absolute certainty of death’s inevitability.
Around the skull’s crown, embedded in the bone, are thirteen black gems. They pulse with dark energy, containing trapped souls, fragments of divinity stolen from defeated gods, or perhaps pieces of Orcus’s own terrible power. The gems never stop moving, rotating slowly around the skull, their positions shifting in patterns that hurt to observe.
When Orcus swings the wand, reality cracks. The dead rise. The living wither. Even the gods take notice.
Powers and Properties
The Wand of Orcus is an artifact of legendary power, granting abilities that rival or exceed those of many gods:
Necrotic Mastery:
Instant death to mortals with a touch
Animate the dead on a massive scale (hundreds or thousands at once)
Create powerful unique undead servants
Strip life force from entire regions
Corrupt holy ground and desecrate sacred places
Command Over Undead:
All undead within miles recognize Orcus’s authority
Can seize control of any undead, regardless of their creator
Turn mindless undead into intelligent servants
Create liches, death knights, and other powerful undead
Corrupt areas, turning them into extensions of the Abyss
Resist banishment and binding magic
Travel between planes at will
Divine Authority:
Challenge gods directly
Steal divine power from defeated deities
Grant power to worshippers (clerics, warlocks)
Resist divine magic and intervention
Potentially ascend to full godhood
The Price:
No mortal can wield the Wand without being corrupted by its power. Even touching it risks death or transformation into undead. The artifact hungers for death and will slowly corrupt and consume anyone foolish enough to try to use it against Orcus’s will.
Origin and History
The Wand’s creation is shrouded in myth and horror. Some say Orcus forged it from the skull of a god he murdered. Others claim it was created from his own essence, a piece of the Demon Prince made physical. Still others whisper that the Wand chose Orcus, that it existed before him and granted him his terrible power.
What is known is that the Wand is Orcus’s weapon. His primary tool of destruction, the focus through which his terrible power flows. With it, he has killed dragons, shattered kingdoms, and challenged the gods themselves. The Wand amplifies his already devastating power, making him nearly unstoppable.
During The Dark Age
When Orcus walked the world during The Dark Age, the Wand was the symbol of his reign of terror. With it, he raised armies of undead, corrupted entire kingdoms, and challenged the gods themselves. The land itself withered where he walked, becoming dead, gray waste where nothing would ever grow again.
When Xaverine the Light performed Xaverine’s Trick, the massive magical working that banished Orcus back to the Abyss, the Wand went with him. The artifact could not be separated from its master, and Orcus would not let it go even as reality tore apart around him.
The ritual that created the perfect spherical crater at Arastand also sealed Orcus and his Wand away in the Abyss. The weapon has not been seen in the material world for over 1500 years.
Until now.
Current Status
The Wand rests in Orcus’s grip in the Abyss, in his throne room in the fortress of Thanatos. It is his weapon, carried always, the tool through which he works his will.
When the ritual to summon Orcus succeeds, he comes through with the Wand in hand. Why wouldn’t he? It is his weapon, his instrument of destruction. The moment Orcus steps through the torn veil at Arastand, the Wand will be there, clutched in his skeletal hand, ready to raise the dead, ready to corrupt the living, ready to begin a new age of darkness.
Disarming the Demon Prince of Undeath is another matter entirely.
Significance
It is not one of the three great relics of the Dark Age (see Arrako the Pure’s Sword), though it is among the mightiest artifacts in the world. It represents absolute power corrupted to absolute evil, the ultimate weapon of death and undeath.
For some, the Wand itself is the prize worth any cost. Worth even summoning the Demon Prince of Undeath just for the chance to steal his weapon. A plan that is either brilliant or utterly insane. Possibly both.
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