By Lynna Landstreet (lynna@yorku.ca)
It was forged long ago, possibly before the Sundering, by an Unseelie Nocker, at the request of his lord who held a deep grudge against a Seelie rival. With each blow, it adds a point of permanent Banality to the victim, in addition to draining a point of temporary Glamour as cold iron weapons normally do. As with the Gray Sword, if a changeling is killed by it, or has her permanent Banality raised to the point of forgetting her nature, she is forever Undone.
But perhaps the most sinister aspect of the Sword of Undoing is that it is sentient, and will bond with and slowly come to control its wielder. Having been forged with the purpose of vengeance, this is what the Sword thirsts for. When it is without an owner, it will "call" to any Kithain it senses harbours a deep anger or hatred for another. He or she will feel an immediate fascination with and attraction toward the Sword. He may roll his Wits plus Gremayre (difficulty 8) to sense something wrong and avoid picking it up. If he fails this roll, he will pick up the sword.
Once he has touched it, the Kithain will begin to come under the Sword's spell. The first sign is that the hatred he bears for his enemy will intensify. It will increasingly come to obsess him, and everything else will slowly fade in importance in contrast with the necessity of wreaking his revenge. The Sword will figure more and more strongly in the Changeling's revenge scheme, as he begins to feel driven to Undo his enemy by its means. Eventually, he will swear the Oath of Undoing, thus entering the realm of the Dauntain.
Each day before he swears the oath, the Kithain may make a Willpower roll (difficulty 9) to attempt to break the Sword's compulsion, but each day that this roll fails, the Sword saps a point of temporary Willpower from the character for the purposes of this roll or any other roll that involves avoiding the quest for revenge. When his Willpower (as calculated for this purpose) falls to zero, or if a roll ever botches, he will swear the Oath. Note that the character will still be deemed to possess his full Willpower for the purpose of any other rolls, just not those opposing the Sword or the vengeance obsession. For the purposes of any rolls made in support of the Sword or the quest, the stolen Willpower is added to the Kithain's dice pool, as the Sword is actively lending its Willpower to his.
There are many ways in which the Sword's control will become apparent. The character will have an increasing tendency to believe that "the end justifies the means," and be willing to do almost anything to further his quest, even things that he might previously have seen as repugnant. He will distrust anyone who tries to warn him about the Sword or point out its influence on him. He will become increasingly attached to the Sword, and reluctant to leave it anywhere he does not consider absolutely safe. Note that the strength of the Sword's influence varies with proximity to the Sword; if the Kithain is actually touching it, the Sword's control is absolute, and he can think of nothing but vengeance. If it is close by, his perceptions are likely to be heavily influenced by it, and revenge is on his mind, but not completely obsessing him. If it is far away, though, he may be able to almost forget his quest for a while, and function as a relatively normal person, though he will still do nothing that would undermine his quest or result in his losing the Sword.
If the character succeeds in Undoing his enemy, he will gain two points of permanent Banality, as per the rules. His attention will then turn towards someone else who he harbours a grudge towards, possibly someone who tried to deter him in his initial quest for vengeance, and the cycle will begin again, and again, until the character's permanent Banality reaches 10 and he is himself Undone. At this point, no longer recalling his fae past, he is likely to consider the Sword a useless old relic and consign it to an antique dealer or junk shop, where it will wait until another angry Kithain comes within its reach.
The Doom that the Kithain falls under is that of the Cursed in all respects save one: since the swearing of the Oath itself was motivated by an outside force, the taint can potentially be removed by the removal of that force: the Sword. The Dauntain will not willingly give up the Sword; it must be taken from him by force, and he will use all his considerable powers to prevent its being taken, including spending his Sword-enhanced Willpower to achieve automatic successes on any roll relating to the struggle. If the Sword is taken from him, he will make every effort to get it back.
If the person who has taken the sword is Kithain, the Sword will attempt to bond with her, usually urging her to use it to Undo its previous owner. Like someone who picks up the Sword for the first time, she may roll Wits plus Gremayre (difficulty 8) to realize the Sword's malevolent nature and cast it from her; if this roll fails, she will bond with the Sword and henceforth be subject to its effects herself. If the roll botches, she will immediately attempt to kill the Sword's previous owner, or if he is not nearby, she will take the Oath of Undoing against him immediately. If either of these two things happens, she is henceforth considered Dauntain. Otherwise, the standard sequence of daily Willpower rolls takes place.
Note that when the Sword bonds with its new owner while its previous owner still lives, this does not negate the bond with the previous owner, who will still make every effort to regain the Sword. The goal of Undoing its new owner will temporarily take precedence over the initial quest for vengeance.
The only known way of breaking the bond is for both Sword and owner to be transported to the Flux Realm (see Umbra: The Velvet Shadow), wherein no one and nothing can be bound or controlled. (There may, at the Storyteller's discretion, exist other ways, but this is the only one in my chronicle.) If this happens, the bond is severed and the character ceases to be Dauntain. However, the combined shock of the severing and the sudden resurgence of awareness of just what the Kithain has done in its service can be harsh. Roll the character's Banality against his remaining Glamour; the successes indicate the number of Health Levels of chimerical damage he will suffer when the bond is broken. The sundering of the bond will also remove a random number of points of permanent Banality (0 to 3) from the Kithain, and will likely knock him right out of the realm and back into the physical world.
Unless he actually suffers chimerical death, he will not be subject to the usual Mists chart; instead he will awaken a few hours later in his mortal seeming, with a bad headache and absolutely no recollection of the events that have just passed, or even of his fae nature. The Mists have claimed him, to safeguard his sanity from the shock of the sundering. The forgetfulness can often be counteracted by exposing the character to Glamour once more, but the shock of returning awareness, coupled with coming to terms with the onrush of memories and the sudden loss of a great deal of Banality will often bring on bedlam.
The character will also be afflicted with a fear of the Sword as intense as his former obsession with it; he will not willingly come anywhere near the Sword, not even to destroy it. Even members of the House of Fiona, who are normally immune to fear, will have to make a Willpower roll to avoid this effect. If they fail the roll, they will not only fear the Sword, but probably be intensely ashamed of fearing it, and may suffer ridicule or ostracization from their House if this fear is discovered.
The full healing of a Changeling after an encounter with the Sword of Undoing may take a very long time. The hatred that initially motivated the character to take up the Sword may well remain unabated, although the character is likely to be much more cautious in acting on it, having seen what vengeance uncontrolled can do. The character is no longer subject magically to the Oath that he swore, since that binding too has been sundered by the Flux Realm, but now runs the risk of being ostracized as an oathbreaker, in addition to the stigma of having been Dauntain. Likely, the character will have to complete one or more arduous quests to recover his social standing in Kithain society. These will usually involve undoing (so to speak) the damage that he did while under the influence of the Sword.