Six Cursed Swords

A small list of cursed swords. Place them in burial chambers, abandoned castles, in the artifact collection of ominous figures or wherever you want.
Once acquired or won, they will imprint themselves on their new owner. It is then impossible to get rid of one of these swords, unless they are removed by force or sold or exchanged in a fair trade. Losing a sword does not count. None can be destroyed by natural means. Even if they are not near you, their effects are still present.

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1. Gilgamesh – The Everlasting

2. Katharsis – Delusion of Kings

3. Yorleif – Numbing Frost

4. Ophal – Mindeater

5. Ainsbin – The Infernal Hellblade

6. Lu-Bei – Leching Demise

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Each of these swords possesses a curse and a blessing.
As soon as the sword is in your possession, the effect of both will activate. If you manage to redeem the sword, which involves a long and difficult quest, the curse will expire and only the effect of the blessing will remain.

#1 Gilgamesh – The Everlasting

LEGEND
The sword is supposed to be as ancient as the world itself. It is said that it was cast in bronze by the first blacksmith and passed on to the first swordsman, with which they beheaded the first tyrant. No one can say exactly how old it is. Even in the earliest chronicles, it is already recorded as an ancient relic of a distant past.

APPEARANCE
A blade of brittle bronze, the upper third broken off and missing. The sharp-edged fracture corners form two new tips. The metal is jagged, scratched, slightly crooked and shows clear dents in some places.
The hilt is missing. Traces of antique glue still stick to the narrower side of the blade. It is not removable. If you want to hold the sword, you have to put your hand directly around the metal. It feels strangely fragile.

BLESSING
You do not age anymore, as long as you are near living beings. As soon as you retreat to a place without vegetation or life, you age rapidly. The past time catches up with you quickly. If you attack someone with your sword, they age instead of getting wounds.

CURSE
Plants around you dry up, people complain about back pain. Your mother dies ten years earlier.
All things around you are aging at a rapid rate. The only thing you can do is watch helplessly. The sword drains the life force from them while you are around. You watch them die and feel young and alive.

REDEMPTION
Find the place where the first sword was created and re-cast it with the tools of the first blacksmith. Create something new from old.

#2 Katharsis – Delusion of Kings

LEGEND
A king once won this sword in a game against a demon. He used it first to relieve his dearest friends from their suffering. With time, however, he became more and more delusional and began to strike down his enemies instead. With each victory, his mental state worsened and his slaughter eventually led to his own ruin. In the end he wielded the sword against himself because he no longer trusted his own body.

APPEARANCE
A deep black blade of much too heavy iron. Fine lines of basalt stone run lengthwise through the metal. The hilt is made of ebony and bound with silvery spider silk. Deep black gel drips from the blade when someone is cut by it. The substance is completely tasteless. If it is consumed, one experiences the memories of the person cut, which are associated with the removed illness.

BLESSING
Your blade slices through flesh and afflictions. If you cut someone with it, the victim loses all the illnesses they have, whether physical or mental. A cold is removed as well as delusions or gout. In addition, the victim loses all negative memories that were related to the ailment in question.

CURSE
All illnesses that you remove with your sword fall back on you. If you already have this affliction, it will be made worse. A runny nose turns into a cold. A hallucination becomes an acute insanity.

REDEMPTION
Drink the blood and eat the liver of an immortal being. It immunizes you against all sorts of sicknesses. They are still transmitted to you, but they have no effect anymore.

#3 Yorleif – Numbing Frost

LEGEND
It is said that death once wielded this weapon to forcibly send unruly souls to the afterlife. With lifeless precision, it has led every victim to a chilling end. One of them, however, was able to defeat him and then took the blade for themself. However, the qualities of death were transferred to the blade in the process. Everyone who carries it becomes similar to death.

APPEARANCE
Frozen steel from the polar regions, hardened in blue fire. The handle is made of a human thigh bone. The blade is constantly covered by hoarfrost and is ice-cold to the touch. Scraps of skin are left behind when you slide your fingers along it.

BLESSING
Winter penetrates your bones. You no longer need warm clothing, no matter how cold it is. Your sword strokes are of cool severity. When you kill someone, you can look into the great beyond for a short time. Each time you do so, you become a little more insane. No mortal should be able to perceive the hereafter.

CURSE
Your thoughts turn into frost and your mood into ice. You lose every emotion in your life. You can no longer interpret the emotions of others.

REDEMPTION
Find the corpse of the personified death and grant it a proper burial rite. Have compassion on the one who never knew it by his own.

#4 Ophal – Mindeater

LEGEND
A sword that is passed down from generations of hermits. Everyone who has wielded it so far has had a very successful, albeit extremely short, career in politics, only to retire to the wilderness afterwards and spend the rest of their lives in solitude.

APPEARANCE
The metal shines like the sea itself. The white color reminds one of endless pearl necklaces. Instead of a hilt, a large piece of rope has been tied around the lower end. On the side of the blade there is an engraving: “Whoever sits in stillness may be able to break the silence”.

BLESSING
The wounds you inflict are not physical. Your blows never cause blood to flow. Instead, the sword eats the thoughts and memories from the heads of your victims. You are free to choose which ones. Yawning gaps remain in their heads.

CURSE
You hear the thoughts of all the people around you. You cannot turn off this effect. Several streams of thoughts at once mix into a uniform mush that you can no longer decipher. Real voices and sounds are easily drowned out by this.

REDEMPTION
Lose the ability to speak. It is not enough to remove your tongue. You must actively unlearn to speak. The mute deserve the truth.

#5 Ainsbin – The Infernal Hellblade

LEGEND
Ainsbin was melted in the liquid rock of an active volcano and pressed with the help of the continental plates. An innocent man, condemned to death, has put all his burning anger into the manufacturing process. A witch at the stake has spoken the magic words. Driven by death and anger, it burns everything to ashes and smoke.

APPEARANCE
The reddish sword is constantly surrounded by blazing flames, which cannot be extinguished. Underneath, the metal is dark from soot. Whoever fights with it leaves behind a constant trail of ashes. The hilt and sheath are both made of the damp, green wood of the Frinkel tree, which can never be set alight. Scenes of violence and torture are deeply carved into the wood.

BLESSING
As soon as you take your weapon out of its sheath, it goes up in flames. The sword blade itself is always red-hot. Wounds are immediately cauterized after every strike.

CURSE
What you touch and is flammable starts to burn, including people. The same happens when something in return touches you. But you yourself are not hot, nor do you give off heat.
Fire burns you, just as high temperatures still hurt you.

REDEMPTION
Dip the blade into the water of life. Let the water evaporate and the sword will shine in renewed white fire.

#6 Lu-Bei – Leching Demise

LEGEND
According to rumors, a false god used this weapon to judge those who did not follow his commandments. Once, however, it met a skilled swordmaster, who promptly struck the false god down and took the artifact. The master tried to resist the unholy murmur of the blade, but eventually their mind broke and they set out on a murderous crusade throughout the kingdom. No one was equal to them or could hide from them. In the end, the swordmaster even struck down their own family, whereupon they took their own life.

APPEARANCE
A blade of crystal glass sharp on both sides is stuck in a hilt made of a light green metal. The crystal is transparent and has a small opening at the tip. If you dip it into the blood of a corpse, the hollow space inside will fill up by itself. Afterwards the glass sparkles for a few days in the reddish complexion of the juice of life.

BLESSING
Your enemies can no longer hide from you. The sword can determine their position even in the dark and behind walls as long as you are within 400 meters of them. You do not see them. Instead, you feel the vague presence of their blood rushing through their veins.

CURSE
The sword craves the blood of the innocent. Every week you must let it drink by at least one truly innocent person. If you refuse, you will slowly go mad with bloodthirsty thoughts and dreams, until you finally kill yourself in madness.

REDEMPTION
Slaughter your true love and let the sword drink of their blood. It will be nourished for a lifetime afterwards.