Interesting magic items

[0bsolete]

I remember playing the old Bioware D&D games and I used to spend grotesque amounts of time in the magic item shops. While there was always an assortment of +x magic items, there were also always ones that had a story behind them. Many of them with creative and interesting effects. I've been wanting to bring that to my current campaign but I'm running out of ideas so I've come to you all. What are your interesting magic items, weapons, armor, trinkets, anything, with or without stories?

 

[NMcCoy]

A mixup at the Rune Forge resulted in a Execution Axe of Lullabies and a Guitar of Storm's Fury. The party's bard was quite pleased; the barbarian, less so.

 

[Psychotic Jim]

In the Freeport Trilogy you eventually visit a sunken temple of the Snake God Yig. One of the encounters leaves you with a +1 ghost touch shock shortspear. I made this appear like a snake with fangs at the end that crackles energy out of the "mouth". When it struck incorporeal undead, the snake's head (the blade of the weapon) seemingly bit and devoured bits of the undead's essence instead of just running the undead through. It's really just nice description for what would likely be a powerful relic for Yig.

Ravenloft had several strains of cloaker that emulated normal cloaks, but attached themselves to "hosts" and gave special benefits in return for payment (bestowing the ability to Drain Con in return for the host regularly doing so to feed the cloaker, for example). I made a variant that linked itself to the party and has switched itself from host to host within its ranks a time or two (always "off screen" though- while they were sleeping). It functions right now as just a +1 cloak of resistance, but it will get more powerful as they gain xp (kind of like an ancestral relic)- that is, if they keep it around.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I once gave a player a few extra plusses on a weapon he commissioned. The guy who forged it also happened to die in a gruesome accident pretty much immediately after completing it.

The player never actually investigated, and ended up being possessed by the demon that had possessed the sword.