Avaethen - True Tongue or True Speech Amulet
Considered a simple and 'cheap' amulet in the height of Blaenevon's glory days, the True Tongue was popular amongst the elite Elvish families.
It quite simply polishes the rough tongue of the 'lesser races' giving them the ability to speak and understand elvish fluently. Many of these are found and traded around from the ruins of the elvish cities, it DOES NOT allow reading or writing of the elvish tongue.
(The elf kingdom in my campaign were LN douchebags)
Wow, that's snooty as hell. I like it! Especially since it only gives 'listen/speak' -- if your elves have streetsigns, the party's still dependent on them for translation (or a
comprehend languages spell).
The Skull of Argoth The Unwavering (artifact, miscellaneous)
The
skull appears to be a preserved human skull sans jawbone, painted with various prayers over the course of centuries. Detection magic will barely sense it as having some abjuration effect when it is not active.
To activate the
skull, it simply needs to be uncovered. It cannot be hidden in a bag, or under a cloth, for it to work. It must at least be partially visible. Once active, the
skull generates an
anti-magic field in a double-strength range (20' radius from the skull). Every turn it is active, the radius increases by 20', to a maximum of 800'.
Within this field, no spell, spell-like ability, or supernatural ability of less than deific rank can function. Period. Summoned outsiders are immediately banished (no save), while called outsiders are the target of a DC36
banishment effect, every round, until they leave the area of effect or are returned to their home plane. Any entity suffering from an existing malign spell effect (such as a curse) is targeted by
greater dispel magic as well, every round, as if cast by a 20th level caster. This can affect spells that normally would require
break enchantment or
remove curse (and as a note, those spells are temporarily negated by the
anti-magic field anyways). This only targets malignant spells, however; benign effects are merely suppressed within the field.
To deactivate the
skull, it simply needs to be covered or hidden. Once this is done, the
anti-magic field immediately ends.
Unsurprisingly,
mage's disjunction does not work on the
skull properly. It takes one
disjunction to deactivate the
anti-magic field, and then a second, targeting the
skull itself. Even then, this only suppresses the
anti-magic field for 1d10 hours.
Destruction: In life, Argoth was a martial master who detested magic and trickery. To permanently deactivate the skull, someone must travel to the plane of eternal Law, Axis, find Argoth's soul, and convincingly argue the merits of sorcery and magic. Should they succeed, the
skull's abilities fade and it becomes simply a relic.