Originally posted on the Realms of Evil forums (Womb of Creation), December 2, 2001. Changes the author made later in the thread are applied and listed at the end. Shown as written, with light spelling and formatting fixes only.

History

Drow, in their ever branching out in the Underdark, have stumbled on creatures that hunt solely by sound or smell. Their art of shadow play holds no security against these creatures... Now a mage of dark descent has crafted these gems to help scouts in their trek through the dark underworld. Recently surface elves have learned of these as well, as have some mountain dwarves.

Twin Daggers of the Web

• +1 to +5.
• Keen.
• Spell Storing (limited to two permanent spells: web and detect thoughts).
• Returning (special: the daggers return when the web spell is ended by the wielder or 1d4+1 rounds pass).

Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, web, 5th-level caster, Twin Spell feat (used to cast web and detect thoughts, similar to the making of the daggers).

Description

The daggers have to be thrown to activate the web; one dagger cannot do this, because the spell descriptor states that there have to be two anchor points. Once the daggers are thrown the wielder sends the command word to the daggers. This effect can only be used 3/day. The daggers take up to one week to bond with a new wielder, and only respond to his commands. If they are taken away for a week or freely given to another, the bond is broken and the daggers begin bonding with the new owner. If a dagger is lost or destroyed, the remaining dagger retains its enhancement and is considered a normal +(whatever) dagger. Because of the arcane process used to create the daggers with the help of the Twin Spell feat, crafting another single dagger to match the first is useless. This is why these daggers are used sparingly and jealously guarded.

In play: the elf throws the daggers, which embed themselves in the sides of the passage. When the command word is given, the detect thoughts picks this up and the web goes off, anchoring to the hilts of the daggers in the two separate walls. The elf then recalls the daggers and the web stays.

Author's Notes and Corrections

• Reply #2 (December 2, 2001): "forgot to add keen to the list." Keen has been added to the abilities. The same reply explains how the daggers are used in play, summarized in the last paragraph.