SADHBH’S HIVE
Magical item
This hinged cast iron mold, marked with an intaglio honey bee, is enchanted with persistent magic; it can make magical sling bullets from common nonmagical materials. Between sunrise and sunset each day, the mold can be employed to make D10 bullets. The two-sided mold is filled with clay on each side after the metal depressions are dusted with any variety of flower pollen; the mold is folded shut at the hinge, pressing the two wet clay halves together and trimming the excess, and then the mold is left in the coals of a wood fire for approximately one hour. When the hard-fired product is removed from the Hive and allowed to cool, it is a rock-solid walnut-sized clay bullet shaped and textured to resemble a natural bee hive. Used as a missile weapon and fired from a typical sling, a successful hit using a clay bullet from Sadhbh’s Hive will do the usual D6 WEAPON (bludgeoning) damage with an additional D8 MAGICAL (piercing) damage as a swarm of angry bees is summoned to sting the target creature for several seconds (as long as it is susceptible to such an attack). The bees disappear at the end of the attack turn, but any struck mortal target native to the common material plane of existence must make HARD STAT checks until the end of its next turn when the stinging subsides. A bullet from the Hive that misses its target simply shatters wherever it lands, wasted, with no magical effects. (Bullets produced in excess of the Hive’s rolled daily allotment are utterly normal in virtually every way and only deal WEAPON damage, although on a HARD success the struck target creature may hear a faint buzzing sound for the next D4 rounds.)
Notes:
- In case you’re not up on your Gaelic orthography, “Sadhbh” rhymes with “hive”…
- Apparently, the Entymological Society of America and most taxonomists use a convention for the spelling of common names of insect species based on a relatively logical dichotomy—“If true, then two”—whereby a name is spelled as two words rather than one if the associations of the words are literal rather than metaphorical, making it “honey bee” rather than “honeybee” (as contrasted with “dragonfly” or “silverfish”). Conversely, historical common usage in both British and American usage has favored the single-word form “honeybee” by about 3:2 since it overtook “honey bee” in writing during the 1920s.
- Bullets from Sadhbh’s Hive do not do extra (stinging) damage to structures or inanimate objects; the magical bee effect is not triggered. Constructs and elemental creatures may be subject to the effect at the GM’s discretion.
- See what else is on top of The Loot Pile.