Elvish Whipvine

Property of:Kerri

Lore: The Elvish Whipvine is the treasured weapon of the Darkonian elves. For a human to be gifted one, he must have done a great service for an elf, or have shared a great friendship or love with one of their kind. The leather of the whip is wrapped around a vine of ivy that only grows on the sacred tree of the Nevuchar shrine. The elves soak the whips in water once a week to keep the magic of the vine from going dormant. Some even soak it in a weak tea, broth or, even watered-down wine, to keep the spirits of the woods happy.

DM note: I invented the Elvish Whipvine as an attempt to reemphasize Kerri's father's connection to the Darkonian elves, give Kerri a decent magic weapon without making her switch from her weapon of choice, and give her something to do with her herbalism skills. The sacred tree of Nevuchar Springs does appear in canon, but the whips do not.

Origin: Left behind by her mysterious father, Albert, the whip was either given to Kerri by her grandparents, or perhaps simply taken as she left their home in search of adventure. "Albert" was gifted with the whip by a Darkonian Elf, but when the Kargat came for him, it was left behind and went dormant. Kerri had no idea it was magical until Sister Eleyna of the Guardians helped her rouse the whip from its dormant state, and an elvish passerby in Neblus later explained all the details of its power.

Appearance: In its dormant state, a Whipvine appears to be a normal leather whip, with the exception that several bits of sharp glass and small metal barbs and blades are woven into the leather, making it a capable of inflicting deadly wounds. Once watered, tiny buds sprout from between the woven leather bands of the whip. In battle, the buds magically extend into tiny grasping tendrils that tear and rend the target, inflicting even more damage.

Kerri's particular whipvine has several distinctive scratches on the wooden handle.

DM Note: The picture of the Whipvine is based on the Sword and Fist whip dagger, with the addition of several leafy viney tendrilly plant drawings from the web. While a living whip was my answer to the Kerri-needs-a-magic-weapon-that-she's-had-all-along-and-didn't-know-it conundrum, I tried very hard not to go the route of covering her weapon in happy, pretty flowers because she's a girl. blech. So I just went with tiny little vine buds.

Powers: +2 Infusion* whip dagger**
(* See below)
(** Sword and Fist)

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Infusion ability:

DM Note: I tried to make the whip rules as simple as possible without sacrificing too much flavor, and when in doubt, I erred on the side of usability over realism. I realize that's difficult to believe when one reads the overly complex rules below, but I felt I had to do what I could to make the item fun, and encourage clever usage. So, I tried hard to avoid anything that would just degenerate into "soak it in holy water all the time." I'm counting the Infusion ability as a +1 enhancement. Maybe it should be a +2, but I'm being generous due to the complexity of the rules. I must thank members of enworld.com, fraternityofshadows.com, and wizards.com message boards for their advice, even when I ignored most of it. :)

The whip can hold five flasks worth of liquid, on top of the plain water needed to keep it from going dormant. Each flask of liquid takes up a "slot" in the whip. The slot stays full until expended. There are two ways to fill a slot.

1. Overnight Soak
   • Time to fill: 8 hours (Interrupted soaks follow the same rules as interrupted spellcaster rest)
   • How often you can fill this way: 1/day
   • Benefit: When activated, any creature hit by the whip that would be damaged by the liquid takes +1d4 damage.
   • Time to activate: 1 swift action
   • Duration: 1 day. (At the end of the duration, the slot is empty.)

DM note: this isn't quite as good as "flaming" in damage or cost to maintain, but that should be made up for by the overall versatility of the item compared to flaming.

2. Quick Soak
   • Time to fill: 1 standard action
   • How often you can fill this way: 1/round
   • Benefit: When activated, the next creature hit by the whip is covered with the liquid, which seeps into the whip wounds. If the creature would be damaged by the liquid, it takes the full damage of the liquid, in addition to the whip damage.
   • Time to activate or deactivate: 1 swift action
   • Duration: until the next time you hit with the whip or deactivate. (On a hit, the slot becomes empty, on deactivation, it stays full.)

DM Note: this is better than simply throwing the liquid as your standard action, since it's not expended on a miss, and you can do it as part of a full attack.

One Overnight Soak per week in plain water will keep it from going dormant (I.e. losing the +2 enhancement bonus). During that night, none of the "slots" can be filled at the same time. You can deliberately empty a slot and collect the liquid in a bowl or similar device as a full-round action.

Special liquids:

• Potions: Potions can be loaded with the Quick Soak method. (Overnight Soak dilutes the magic too much over time to be effective.) The whip absorbs and feeds off of the magic of the potion, thus when the potion slot is activated, instead of the potion's usual effect, the whip gains a temporary additional enhancement bonus equal to the level of the spell in the potion. This bonus ends on a successful hit.

DM note: upon reflection and consultation with some online DMs, I decided that allowing potions to convey their effects could be too powerful.

• Oil: Quick Soaked oil will spread on the target, but requires a spark of some kind to light.
• Acid: acid will hurt the whip. don't use it.
• Poison:
  • Quick Soak - injected and contact poisons work as normal. ingested poisons work with the DC reduced by 5.
  • Overnight Soak - the usual +1d4 damage to anything that would be hurt by the poison.
• Herbal infusions: same as poisons, Quick Soak only.
• Lycanthrope chemical banes: (e.g. wolfsbane solution for werewolves, skullcap solution for werebats, etc.) since these are effectively ingested poisons to werebeasts, when used with the Quick Soak method, they work as with the DC reduced by 5 (Fort DC15, initial 1d6 Con, Secondary 2d6 Con). When used with an Overnight Soak, they do the normal +1d4 damage.
• Anything weird: as a rule of thumb, if a creature has some sort of aversion to a particular liquid, it will work for Overnight Soak's +1d4, and will do 2d4 damage on a Quick Soak. (same as holy water would do to undead)

While you can fill multiple slots with the same liquid, multiple activations of the same liquid do not stack. If you have an Overnight Soak active, and then do a Quick Soak of the same liquid, the Quick Soak will override the Overnight Soak for the single attack in which it hits.