Presto2112
Explorer
The following is one of several Legacy items that I've devised for my campaign. This is the first completed one, and I have at least four more in the R&D stage. Feel free to steal it for your game oif you like.
Cutlass of Rutan
The Cutlass of Rutan is a single-edged, slightly curved, layered blue steel blade, with a bronze hand-guard that is etched with images of sharks, a hand-fitted ivory handle wrapped in sharkskin, a tailfin-shaped pommel carved from jade, and the phrase “Freedom of the Sea” is engraved on the blade in Aquan.
Nonlegacy Game Statistics: +1 longsword; Cost: 2,462 gp. The blade drips with small amounts of water within 60 feet of any creature with the aquatic subtype.
Omen: The blade creates a scent of sea spray wherever you go, and the farther you go are from the ocean, the stronger the smell becomes.
History
Captain Bordric Rutan was one of the most storied pirates ever to sail the Vranic Sea. He captained the Fish Story, one of the fastest carracks to sail the sea. However, unlike most of his bloodthirsty kin, Rutan tried his best not to needlessly shed blood. In fact, he’d usually only take from raided ships the most precious of valuables, leave the crews their food and water, tear the sails so that they could not pursue, and leave it at that. Most of the violence that did occur when the crews of the ships that he raided suggested that that ship’s captain was a poor or unfair sort, or unscrupulous or needlessly violent, and thusly ran the lout through. The truth be told, many a ship’s crew was almost happy to be robbed blind by Captain Rutan! This was evident by the fact that one ship that Rutan raided, a packet called the Northern Horizon captained by a slovenly, cruel hobgoblin named Pugfoot, actually rewarded Rutan with Pugfoot’s blade, an exquisite cutlass, perfectly balanced and constructed from exotic materials. As a result, navy ships and privateers were quite unsuccessful in capturing Rutan, because so few ships reported the robberies.(DC 15)
Other pirates of the Vranic Sea were well aware of the brash Captain Rutan, but bore him no more ill will than a pirate bears another pirate. They considered him an oddity, and in fact most rather liked the charismatic young captain for his uproarious tales of larceny and derring-do. One man, however, was not impressed by Rutan; the first mate of the pirate ship Maco named Sammeck Polgran thought of Rutan as a weakling, unwilling to be ruthless enough to earn the title of pirate. Behind the back of his captain, Sammeck made secretive a secret deal with a sect of sahuagin to take the Fish Story, slaughter Rutan and every crewman aboard, and claim the ship as his own. When the bestial fishmen made their attack on the Fish Story, Rutan was indeed caught unprepared, but the brave captain took the fight to sahuagin, gutting one after another with his cutlass. Rutan’s crewmen, witnessing the tenacity of their captain, were rejuvenated, and drove back the attack of the remaining fishmen, until they finally retreated to the safety of the sea. Unsatisfied with the retreat, Rutan suddenly dove into the water after the sahuagin, much to the horror of his crew. He remained underwater for over an hour, and Rutan’s crew witnessed a great deal of blood and gore bubble to the surface, but they let out a holler of triumph when Captain Rutan impossibly surfaced, very much alive, folding the heads of five sahuagin. (DC 18; Dive In After Them)
Unfazed at his failed attempt of direct assault, Sammeck next attempted to wrest control of the Fish Story by challenging Rutan to a drinking game for ownership of his carrack. Sammeck had a reputation of being able to hold his rum better than any sailor living on the archipelago of Fathamal. Against his crew’s warnings, Rutan accepted Sammeck’s challenge on two conditions. The contest be held on neutral territory, neither the Maco nor the Fish Story, and Rutan was to pick the drink in question. Blind with greed, Sammeck agreed to Rutan’s terms, and five days later, the two men sat across from each other in a tavern in Fathamal, and Rutan called for two barrels of Dwarven Hammerbrew, the strongest mead found anywhere. Sammeck protested, expecting Rutan to choose a type of rum, given that they were both seamen, but the decision stood. Both men started drinking tankard after tankard, barely able to stay upright in their chairs after an hour. Rutan was just about to start on his fifteenth pint, when in the reflection of his mug, he saw the glint of a dagger’s blade from behind him. Without missing a beat or spilling a drop, Rutan drew his cutlass and ran through his would-be assassin. The last thing Sammeck saw before the Tavern bouncers handed him over to the Island Guard was Rutan slurring “you lose, Sammeck”, and the back of his eyelids as he passed out from the drink. (DC 25; Name Your Poison)
A couple of years later, Rutan gave up his life of piracy and accepted a Letter of Marque from King Mazhold of Dengel to become a Privateer of the Crown. Rutan and his crew then proceeded to become as successful a privateer as he was a pirate, but unlike his victims of old, his former friends and allies did not take well to being turned in and shown up by a man who was once one of their own. The day eventually came when Rutan was tasked with tracking down the Maco, the ship of Rutan’s nemesis, Sammeck Polgran, who by now has become the ship’s captain. No evidence was ever found that linked Rutan’s attacker with Sammeck, so after a week in the stocks he was freed. Sammeck conspicuously put up no resistance when Rutan boarded the Maco, and when he returned to the Fish Story to sort through the booty, he picked up a bright fist-sized ruby. However, the ruby shattered when he picked it up, and from the shards of the ruptured gemstone came a horrifying creature from the Elemental Plane of Fire – a noble salamander! Sammeck spent almost every last copper he had to have the monster bound to the ruby, knowing he would eventually be hunted down by the privateer Rutan. The brave Capt. Rutan took up arms against the monster, buying his crew time as they took to the lifeboats. The salamander set the ship ablaze everywhere he slithered, as the Maco slowly sailed alongside to watch. However, the impatient Sammeck approached too closely, and the burning masts snapped off amidst a swell, and crashed onto the deck of the Maco, setting it ablaze as well. Sammeck selfishly made it away from the burning flotsam without his crew. Captain Rutan was not so lucky, perishing at the hands of the flaming beast before him. The salamander picked up Rutan’s blade and tossed the trophy to Sammeck, but found it could not escape the vast sea, as the icy water boiled around it as it sank with the Fish Story. (DC 31; Down With the Ship)
Cutlass of Rutan
---- Personal Costs -----
Wielder Level Attack Penalty Will Save Penalty Hit Point Loss Abilities
5th - - - Cut Through the Water +5
6th -1 - - -
7th - -1 2 +2 cutlass
8th - - 2 -
9th - -2 - -
10th - - 2 Like a Fish
11th - - - +2 keen cutlass
12th -2 - - Electrosensitivity
13th - - - - -
14th - - 2 Cut Through the Water +8 (Swim Speed)
15th - -3 - -
16th - - 2 +2 fire bane keen cutlass
17th - - - Escape the Net
18th -3 - -
19th - - - Refracted view
20th - -4 - +4 fire bane keen cutlass
Legacy Rituals
Three rituals are required to unlock all the abilities of the Cutlass of Rutan.
Dive In After Them: You must defeat in personal combat a hostile creature with the aquatic subtype and a CR equal to your level or higher (maximum CR 10). Cost: 1,500 gp. Feat Granted: Least Legacy (Cutlass of Rutan).
Name Your Poison: You must willingly accept some form of ingested poisoning, and take at least 10 points of Constitution damage from that poison. If you die from the poisoning, you are still given credit for the ritual’s completion. Cost: 13,000 gp. Feat Granted: Lesser Legacy (Cutlass of Rutan).
Down With the Ship: You must locate and travel to the final undersea resting place of the Fish Story and leave treasure and valuables in the cargo hold of the ship equal to the value of the ritual cost, never to be retrieved, so that the ghost of Captain Rutan will be appeased and grant the Legacy Abilities. The cost of the chest may be included in the ritual cost. Cost: 40,000 gp. Feat Granted: Greater Legacy (Cutlass of Rutan).
Wielder Requirements
The wielders of the Cutlass of Rutan are primarily seagoing characters, or characters that have grown up or live close to the ocean. Fighters, rogues, and clerics of deities of the sea seem to be most at ease with the weapon, but it has found itself in the hands of the occasional bard, rogue, or sorcerer. Barbarians tend to shun the weapon for its small size and odd styling; the only rangers that might wield it are rangers whose domain includes coastline, and paladins look down on the simple cutlass because of its reputation as the pirate’s weapon of choice.
Cutlass of Rutan Wielder Requirements
• Base attack bonus +3
• Swim 3 ranks
• Any non-lawful alignment
Legacy Item Abilities
All of the following are legacy item abilities of the Cutlass of Rutan.
Cut Through the Water (Su): At 5th level, you gain a +5 competence bonus on Swim checks. At 14th level, you gain a Swim speed equal to your base land speed. If you already have a swim speed, it increases by 10 ft.
Like a Fish(Su): At 10th level, when holding, wearing, or wielding the Cutlass of Rutan, you can breathe water freely, as if continually affected by the water breathing spell.
Electrosensitivity (Su): At 12th level, you cannot be caught flat-footed.
Escape the Net (Sp): At 17th level, two times per day, when you issue the command word and gesture with the Cutlass of Rutan, you can use freedom of movement as the spell, with a range of personal. Caster level 15th.
Refracted View (Su): At 19th level, while you are wielding the Cutlass of Rutan, you can activate displacement for 1 round as a swift action and appear wavy and distorted, as if you were underwater and were being viewed from above the water’s surface. You can use this ability up to ten times per day.
Cutlass of Rutan
The Cutlass of Rutan is a single-edged, slightly curved, layered blue steel blade, with a bronze hand-guard that is etched with images of sharks, a hand-fitted ivory handle wrapped in sharkskin, a tailfin-shaped pommel carved from jade, and the phrase “Freedom of the Sea” is engraved on the blade in Aquan.
Nonlegacy Game Statistics: +1 longsword; Cost: 2,462 gp. The blade drips with small amounts of water within 60 feet of any creature with the aquatic subtype.
Omen: The blade creates a scent of sea spray wherever you go, and the farther you go are from the ocean, the stronger the smell becomes.
History
Captain Bordric Rutan was one of the most storied pirates ever to sail the Vranic Sea. He captained the Fish Story, one of the fastest carracks to sail the sea. However, unlike most of his bloodthirsty kin, Rutan tried his best not to needlessly shed blood. In fact, he’d usually only take from raided ships the most precious of valuables, leave the crews their food and water, tear the sails so that they could not pursue, and leave it at that. Most of the violence that did occur when the crews of the ships that he raided suggested that that ship’s captain was a poor or unfair sort, or unscrupulous or needlessly violent, and thusly ran the lout through. The truth be told, many a ship’s crew was almost happy to be robbed blind by Captain Rutan! This was evident by the fact that one ship that Rutan raided, a packet called the Northern Horizon captained by a slovenly, cruel hobgoblin named Pugfoot, actually rewarded Rutan with Pugfoot’s blade, an exquisite cutlass, perfectly balanced and constructed from exotic materials. As a result, navy ships and privateers were quite unsuccessful in capturing Rutan, because so few ships reported the robberies.(DC 15)
Other pirates of the Vranic Sea were well aware of the brash Captain Rutan, but bore him no more ill will than a pirate bears another pirate. They considered him an oddity, and in fact most rather liked the charismatic young captain for his uproarious tales of larceny and derring-do. One man, however, was not impressed by Rutan; the first mate of the pirate ship Maco named Sammeck Polgran thought of Rutan as a weakling, unwilling to be ruthless enough to earn the title of pirate. Behind the back of his captain, Sammeck made secretive a secret deal with a sect of sahuagin to take the Fish Story, slaughter Rutan and every crewman aboard, and claim the ship as his own. When the bestial fishmen made their attack on the Fish Story, Rutan was indeed caught unprepared, but the brave captain took the fight to sahuagin, gutting one after another with his cutlass. Rutan’s crewmen, witnessing the tenacity of their captain, were rejuvenated, and drove back the attack of the remaining fishmen, until they finally retreated to the safety of the sea. Unsatisfied with the retreat, Rutan suddenly dove into the water after the sahuagin, much to the horror of his crew. He remained underwater for over an hour, and Rutan’s crew witnessed a great deal of blood and gore bubble to the surface, but they let out a holler of triumph when Captain Rutan impossibly surfaced, very much alive, folding the heads of five sahuagin. (DC 18; Dive In After Them)
Unfazed at his failed attempt of direct assault, Sammeck next attempted to wrest control of the Fish Story by challenging Rutan to a drinking game for ownership of his carrack. Sammeck had a reputation of being able to hold his rum better than any sailor living on the archipelago of Fathamal. Against his crew’s warnings, Rutan accepted Sammeck’s challenge on two conditions. The contest be held on neutral territory, neither the Maco nor the Fish Story, and Rutan was to pick the drink in question. Blind with greed, Sammeck agreed to Rutan’s terms, and five days later, the two men sat across from each other in a tavern in Fathamal, and Rutan called for two barrels of Dwarven Hammerbrew, the strongest mead found anywhere. Sammeck protested, expecting Rutan to choose a type of rum, given that they were both seamen, but the decision stood. Both men started drinking tankard after tankard, barely able to stay upright in their chairs after an hour. Rutan was just about to start on his fifteenth pint, when in the reflection of his mug, he saw the glint of a dagger’s blade from behind him. Without missing a beat or spilling a drop, Rutan drew his cutlass and ran through his would-be assassin. The last thing Sammeck saw before the Tavern bouncers handed him over to the Island Guard was Rutan slurring “you lose, Sammeck”, and the back of his eyelids as he passed out from the drink. (DC 25; Name Your Poison)
A couple of years later, Rutan gave up his life of piracy and accepted a Letter of Marque from King Mazhold of Dengel to become a Privateer of the Crown. Rutan and his crew then proceeded to become as successful a privateer as he was a pirate, but unlike his victims of old, his former friends and allies did not take well to being turned in and shown up by a man who was once one of their own. The day eventually came when Rutan was tasked with tracking down the Maco, the ship of Rutan’s nemesis, Sammeck Polgran, who by now has become the ship’s captain. No evidence was ever found that linked Rutan’s attacker with Sammeck, so after a week in the stocks he was freed. Sammeck conspicuously put up no resistance when Rutan boarded the Maco, and when he returned to the Fish Story to sort through the booty, he picked up a bright fist-sized ruby. However, the ruby shattered when he picked it up, and from the shards of the ruptured gemstone came a horrifying creature from the Elemental Plane of Fire – a noble salamander! Sammeck spent almost every last copper he had to have the monster bound to the ruby, knowing he would eventually be hunted down by the privateer Rutan. The brave Capt. Rutan took up arms against the monster, buying his crew time as they took to the lifeboats. The salamander set the ship ablaze everywhere he slithered, as the Maco slowly sailed alongside to watch. However, the impatient Sammeck approached too closely, and the burning masts snapped off amidst a swell, and crashed onto the deck of the Maco, setting it ablaze as well. Sammeck selfishly made it away from the burning flotsam without his crew. Captain Rutan was not so lucky, perishing at the hands of the flaming beast before him. The salamander picked up Rutan’s blade and tossed the trophy to Sammeck, but found it could not escape the vast sea, as the icy water boiled around it as it sank with the Fish Story. (DC 31; Down With the Ship)
Cutlass of Rutan
---- Personal Costs -----
Wielder Level Attack Penalty Will Save Penalty Hit Point Loss Abilities
5th - - - Cut Through the Water +5
6th -1 - - -
7th - -1 2 +2 cutlass
8th - - 2 -
9th - -2 - -
10th - - 2 Like a Fish
11th - - - +2 keen cutlass
12th -2 - - Electrosensitivity
13th - - - - -
14th - - 2 Cut Through the Water +8 (Swim Speed)
15th - -3 - -
16th - - 2 +2 fire bane keen cutlass
17th - - - Escape the Net
18th -3 - -
19th - - - Refracted view
20th - -4 - +4 fire bane keen cutlass
Legacy Rituals
Three rituals are required to unlock all the abilities of the Cutlass of Rutan.
Dive In After Them: You must defeat in personal combat a hostile creature with the aquatic subtype and a CR equal to your level or higher (maximum CR 10). Cost: 1,500 gp. Feat Granted: Least Legacy (Cutlass of Rutan).
Name Your Poison: You must willingly accept some form of ingested poisoning, and take at least 10 points of Constitution damage from that poison. If you die from the poisoning, you are still given credit for the ritual’s completion. Cost: 13,000 gp. Feat Granted: Lesser Legacy (Cutlass of Rutan).
Down With the Ship: You must locate and travel to the final undersea resting place of the Fish Story and leave treasure and valuables in the cargo hold of the ship equal to the value of the ritual cost, never to be retrieved, so that the ghost of Captain Rutan will be appeased and grant the Legacy Abilities. The cost of the chest may be included in the ritual cost. Cost: 40,000 gp. Feat Granted: Greater Legacy (Cutlass of Rutan).
Wielder Requirements
The wielders of the Cutlass of Rutan are primarily seagoing characters, or characters that have grown up or live close to the ocean. Fighters, rogues, and clerics of deities of the sea seem to be most at ease with the weapon, but it has found itself in the hands of the occasional bard, rogue, or sorcerer. Barbarians tend to shun the weapon for its small size and odd styling; the only rangers that might wield it are rangers whose domain includes coastline, and paladins look down on the simple cutlass because of its reputation as the pirate’s weapon of choice.
Cutlass of Rutan Wielder Requirements
• Base attack bonus +3
• Swim 3 ranks
• Any non-lawful alignment
Legacy Item Abilities
All of the following are legacy item abilities of the Cutlass of Rutan.
Cut Through the Water (Su): At 5th level, you gain a +5 competence bonus on Swim checks. At 14th level, you gain a Swim speed equal to your base land speed. If you already have a swim speed, it increases by 10 ft.
Like a Fish(Su): At 10th level, when holding, wearing, or wielding the Cutlass of Rutan, you can breathe water freely, as if continually affected by the water breathing spell.
Electrosensitivity (Su): At 12th level, you cannot be caught flat-footed.
Escape the Net (Sp): At 17th level, two times per day, when you issue the command word and gesture with the Cutlass of Rutan, you can use freedom of movement as the spell, with a range of personal. Caster level 15th.
Refracted View (Su): At 19th level, while you are wielding the Cutlass of Rutan, you can activate displacement for 1 round as a swift action and appear wavy and distorted, as if you were underwater and were being viewed from above the water’s surface. You can use this ability up to ten times per day.
