Armor | Artifacts | Cursed Items | Intelligent Items | Potions/Oils | Rings | Rods | Staves | Weapons | Wondrous Items | Other


Minor Artifacts | Major Artifacts | Metagame Artifacts | Transcendent Artifacts


Elder Sign

Source Horror Adventures pg. 227
Aura strong abjuration CL 20th
Slot none; Price —; Weight 10 lbs.

Description

This stone tablet bears a carving in the shape of a twig with five branches. There are only a limited number of Elder Signs in existence, so each time one of these artifacts is destroyed, the universe loses one of the few things that can reliably keep cosmic horrors at bay—and inevitable doom draws closer.

A creature holding an Elder Sign can cast banishment, forbiddance, and greater dispel magic at will by reciting occult mantras, though all three effects work only against creatures and magic related to the Elder Mythos, including any of the following creatures (and other cosmic horror-related creatures, at the GM’s discretion): bholeB4, colour out of spaceB4, deep oneB5, deep one elderB5, denizen of LengB2, elder thingB4, flying polypB4, gugB2, hound of TindalosB2, Leng ghoulB5, Leng spiderB2, mi-goB4, nightgauntB4, ratlingB4, shantakB2, shoggoth, spawn of Yog-SothothB4, star-spawn of CthulhuB4, voonithB3, wendigoB2, and yithianB3. Casting forbiddance this way doesn’t require a costly material component, but if the same Elder Sign is used to cast forbiddance again, the artifact’s connection to a previous location warded by the spell is severed, ending the first spell’s effects immediately. Casting banishment on one of the listed creatures works even if the creature isn’t extraplanar; in that case, it sends the creature to the place on the Material Plane from which it originated.

An Elder Sign can also banish a Great Old One (no save), but doing so causes the artifact to be consumed in a bright flame.

Destruction

Elder Signs are immune to damage, and the only certain way to destroy one of these artifacts is to banish a Great Old One with it.