The Black Satchel
This tattered bag shows years of wear from use and travel, but its quality is unquestionable. Made of sturdy walrus leather with steel rivets and clasp, this must have once belonged to someone with a very successful practice or was a fine gift for a new doctor from a benefactor.
The battered look of this satchel, however, belies the great good that any wielder of this item can bestow by offering many boons in the form of mystical cures the owner can use to rid their patients of anything from minor scrapes and bruises to AIDs.
This help comes from the imprinting of many long years of successful healing the original owner had in their practice, but is tainted by unspeakable acts performed on or by the owner in their last days. Due to this taint, the black satchel asks a steep price for its use.
No black satchel can be created on purpose. Each is imprinted with the spiritual and emotional gravity of the situations of their use and gain their enchantments through unknown means, originally being nothing more than a normal doctors bag.
Mechanics
Pathfinder: This artifact, for it indeed carries such power, at first seems nothing more than a normal doctors bag which refills stock of bandages, medicines, and unguents. In addition to constant replenishment, the owner of the bag, when using the mundane items from it, gets a +5 to any Heal checks performed.
This, however, is just a minor effect compared to the awesome healing powers the owner of the black satchel can perform. Each time the character attempts to use their Heal skill, the bag offers a helpful empathic nudge for the character to use its greater abilities.
The bag allows the use of the following spells:
1/day - Cure Light Wounds, Cure Moderate Wounds, Cure Serious Wounds, Cure Critical Wounds
1/week - Heal, Neutralize Poison, Remove Blindness/Deafness, Remove Disease, Regeneration, Restoration
1/month - Resurrection (within an hour of the subject's death)
The price the bag exacts, however, makes using it less attractive as the owner realizes that the balance of life given is life taken. On the night of any use of spells by the bag's owner, they must make a Will DC 35 save or be possessed by the bag until they take the life of a sentient creature and spend at least an hour dissecting their kill, though the owner of the bag will only have hazy recollections of even meeting the victim, even under magical scrutiny - effectively making their save for any divinatory magic used in a subsequent investigation. The bag will never require the owner to kill any patient previously saved, but all others are free game. In addition, if any such save is failed, the bag cannot knowingly be discarded or destroyed. The character might remember getting rid of the thing, only to have it among their gear the next morning.
The satchel seems to want to help. Each time the owner approaches someone in need of medical attention, the bag is suddenly in his hand and sends the empathic nudge to use one of the bag's magical powers and imprints the effects it can create on the mind of the owner. The first time it does this, it only takes a Will DC 5 saving throw to overcome the suggestion, with the DC increasing by 1 with each failed save. It can take many a year for the owner of this item to realize its cost, but once they do, the owner is almost compelled to use the satchel so that it can sate its twisted needs.
In Golarion or Eberron, this medical bag once belonged to a doctor who truly dedicated their life to practice. On the day he wished to retire, while riding back home after collecting the final fees of his practice and doing welfare checks of his patients, his apprentice attacked the old man with the intention of stealing his fortunes and medicines, many of which he had become addicted to during his apprenticeship.
The old doctor was left in a ditch to die, the bag he used to heal so many through the years lie, blood-soaked, just out of reach. When he was found, it was obvious he was reaching for the bag, and he and it were taken away, with the satchel finding its way into the office of the apothecary of the morgue. Once he was arrested for murder, the black satchel disappeared, but it is out there somewhere, causing great relief and grief.
New World of Darkness: The black satchel, for those that know of its existence, is said to have once belonged to Jack the Ripper, himself. Rumors of the killer of Whitechapel being a doctor lend credence to this story and may explain why the good doctor turned to murder in what many also think were the days leading up to the Ripper's own death.
The black satchel has truly extraordinary healing capabilities, allowing the owner an additional die to any Medicine dice pool as well as a replenishing stock of medicines and bandages. The true power of the doctors bag, however lies in its magical restorative abilities, as noted below.
Each day, the black satchel grants 10 boxes worth of bashing healing. Optionally, the owner may spend two boxes worth to heal a single point of lethal damage, or three points to heal a box of aggravated damage. This healing may be split up however the owner deems.
Once per week, the black satchel can be used to fully restore a single person's health track if they are still alive, rid the body of a patient of any toxins or disease, restore any senses dulled or nonfunctioning by natural means or injury - such as blindness or deafness, though the sensory organ must be present, and even regrow limbs or organs, though the patient must have previously had the organ or limb in life for this to work.
Once per month, the owner of the satchel may restore life to any patient that has expired in the last hour, though the body must be mostly intact for this magic to take hold.
The satchel will always appear handy or even in-hand when the character approaches someone in need of medical assistance, and it will send a mental nudge to use one of the mystical powers it has to the owner, instructing him on its use. The owner of the bag gets to roll Resolve+Medicine+Willpower, without the extra Medicine die added from the bag, to resist this urge. With every two failed resistance rolls against the bag, the difficulty goes up by +1. Additionally, any time any of the black satchel's magical healing is used, that night, the bag will attempt to compel the owner to commit a murder and spend time with the body, dissecting it and studying the inner workings. This roll can be resisted, as well, with a Willpower roll at difficulty 6, but few have the mental and emotional fortitude to fight the black satchel's need for blood. This roll can be modified by spent Willpower for a single success or three dice to the roll, or the owner may burn a Willpower dot to automatically succeed, but that only makes it harder to resist future urges.
Diente de Jaguar
Literally "tooth of the jaguar", these daggers are constructed by primitive jungle tribes from strong leg bones of their eponymous sources and have teeth of the large cats magically embedded all along the "blade", making them resemble something akin to a shortened macahuitl, though with teeth instead of obsidian shards..
Although lacking a proper blade, for all purposes the diente de jaguar acts as a normal dagger, slightly enchanted. If a more telling blow is struck, however, the primary enchantment kicks in, inflicting an additional grievous wound that appears on the flesh as a tearing bite wound. When this happens, one of the teeth lining the blade disappears. Diente de jaguar daggers are usually made with twenty teeth and once they all are gone, the weapon loses the additional "bite" damage enchantment, but retains the minor enhancement.
In addition to the dagger version, short sword variations have been seen, as well. These are constructed with thirty teeth along the blade, but otherwise function as the dagger version, presented above. All diente de jaguar are treated as metal weapons for the purposes of break attempts and other rules that take an item's durability into account.
Mechanics
Pathfinder: Both variations of this weapon are
+1 weapons. When a critical hit is confirmed on a roll of 19 or 20, in addition to any other effect the critical may have, the weapon deals another 1d8+4 damage, leaving a bite wound on the subject resembling that of a jaguar's.
The diente de jaguar is treated as steel for the purposes of hardness and break DCs.
In Golarion, these daggers are sometimes found in the hands of shamans of the Shoanti peoples, and are regarded as a sign of status. Most diente de jaguar are made from the bones and teeth of firepelt leopards, but the Shoanti have been known to make them from carnivorous lizards and other natural threats.
According to tribal taboos, no shaman may wield such a weapon he did not create on his or her own, but no such restriction applies to the warriors of these tribes.
In Faerûn, these daggers and swords have been found among the tribes of both the Chultans and the Mazticans, especially among both cultures' Jaguar Warrior castes, lending further credence to theories stating that these peoples share a common ancestry.
In Eberron, the drow of Xendrik have been known to employ these daggers in their skirmishes with the explorers of the dark continent. Some of the weapons scavenged from these elves seem to be made of chitin instead of bone, with spurs of barbed stingers embedded instead of teeth. Instead of additional bite damage, this variation injects the poison of a giant scorpion, as below.
Sting - injury;
save Fort DC 17;
frequency 1/round for 6 rounds;
effect d2 Strength damage;
cure 1 save.
New World of Darkness: These weapons usually have a primary enchantment that grants them +1 accuracy. That, however, is the least of anyone attacked with one of these weapons' worries, for if the attacker scores an exceptional success, the weapon deals an additional 3L damage dice and leaves a bite wound resembling that of a jaguar's upon the flesh.
Daggers of this type are likely to be found used by the indigenous people of the jungles of South America, but it wouldn't be out of the question for peoples of Asia or Africa to wield similar weapons made from the bones and teeth of tigers or lions. These might even deal more additional damage, reflecting the immense power of the true great cats, and would be deadly weapons, indeed.
