The Cursed Sword 

The God’s Wake Dagger, the knife forged to kill the Dreaming God 

Those who wield it can never leave their task unfinished. 

From Sacred Forge

The Wielder 1

The Principles

Name: He-Who-Will-Wield-the-Knife (he/him)

A mortal man of flesh and blood, created by the gods, fully formed, for the sole purpose of wielding the God’s Wake Dagger. 

He was born with the dagger in his hand and knows that he will die with it in his chest.

Round 1 

Roll: 3 

The Dreaming God was dead, their body sealed and guarded, and the war soon came to an end. But Will had not known life before, and struggled to find purpose. In what they thought was benevolence, they bestowed Will with the opportunity to live a life of his choosing, but he knew not what the choices could be. 

He soon learned of the petty arguments between the gods, each with a contradictory view of the nature over humanity. He could not serve one without betraying another. The Knife would kill more than just one god, and he knew that it would not be long until they asked him to kill again. 

The first time he refused, the knife slipped from his hand and severed three toes from his left foot. He spent three years ignoring it, which became infected, healed, and re-infected several times until he finally rested.

Through the disputes of the many gods, he learned to listen to more perspectives than one and to not blindly agree with all.

Round 2

Roll: 6 (All Principles are destroyed)

Around him, in the last remnants of the war, he saw suffering, he saw hoarding, he saw stealing, he saw lies and exaggerations, and he felt himself agreeing with them. What was justice, except an extension of power? Who decides it but those who are already in control? Justice is but an excuse.

He could no longer listen to those who were greedy and wielded power. When he pleaded to the gods they did not answer, for these were the affairs of mortals. Will took it upon himself to start an uprising against his own gods, joining with the last dredges of the Malhal Empire. 

Desperate and tired, the gods attempted to completely destroy the city by making it so that it would have never existed, forgetting that they had once blessed it themselves. In this new contradiction of cursings and blessings, the city along with the people, those who were in it, and all objects simultaneously existing and not existing. 

The God’s Wake Dagger has never existed, and will always exist, and Will was struck down by another servant, a Hunter of the Gods when both he and the blade were real. 

The Wielder, 2

Roll: 9, a lifetime

It appeared one day at the bottom of a crate, when an insignia appeared on the side of a place no one had ever heard of. 

The cataloguer, a woman by the name of Lina Semaru, picked it up and felt it bury itself deep within her mind. 

The Principles

Round 1

Roll: 3

She tried to write the knife in the catalog, she really did, but every time she looked away the words were gone, as was the knife. Until it, and only it, reappeared right where she had left it. 

If it wasn’t really there then it couldn’t really be gone and using something that wasn’t quite real wasn’t really taking. It was the sharpest knife she’d ever used and it sliced clean through any paper, or parcel she needed. 

She sliced through anything she needed, things were faster, more efficient, and if it could be done right away she would do it. Soon people even started to seem too slow to her. She cut them out too if they weren’t as efficient as her. 

She even cut her husband didn't really serve her purposes anymore and he was cut out too. 

Round 2

Roll: 5

When her hair got in the way, she sliced it. When the door was in the way, it was sliced. When her coworker questioned her methods he was cut from the company. 

She continued to cut, and continued to minimize, and continued to sever everything and anything. She cut out her job, she cut out her friends, she cut away at herself. 

And in the end all people found was her head,  sitting upon the knife, eyes finally resting. 

Wielder 3

Roll: 5, Week

The knife went missing shortly after. People speculated, and speculated, but most concluded that someone stole it. 

Carita knew it was a holy dagger when she saw it. She could feel the blessing when it sliced into her skin when she picked it up and did not need the gods themselves to appear for them to tell her to do miracles with it. 

She prayed with it in her hands then slipped quietly into the night. 

The Principles

Round 1

Roll: 2

It would take a long time before Carita realized she had done something wrong by picking up the dagger. She took it wherever she went, righting whatever injustices she thought were wrong, and every time a misfortune befell her she assumed it was merely a test. 

It wasn’t until the god of Clarity spoke to her through her own reflection in a glass window did she learn the true nature of the knife. 

But it had brought her power, and it had helped her kill evil and thwart misdeeds. Eventually she convinced herself that despite their warnings, the ‘evil’ knife was doing more good in her hands. She believed she had the power to convince the gods that using it was good, even if it was in spite of them. 

Round 2

Roll: 2

Carita soon became wanted, both as a fugitive of mortal and divine law. She had struck down a priest whom she believed to be extorting others and declared that she would strike down the god of coins for his evil upon the world. 

They did not catch her, but when she escaped into an underground cavern looking for a way to the holy vault, they sealed the entrance behind her. Only then did she think that maybe she had gone too far, and she might need to think in smaller steps.

Round 3

Roll: 4

She wandered for days in the dark, narrowly avoiding falling, and eating only moss and other small animals that lived in the dark. 

Carita eventually admitted to herself that she would not escape by herself. She found a small beam of light and laid down where her face could see sunshine. 

She held the dagger flat against her chest like she would a bouquet of flowers, closed her eyes, and tried to sleep until she was found. 

The next person who would find the dagger wouldn't even consider that the dust underneath it was once a person.