Silvertongue Staff

The silvertongue staff is a magical item in the Temphere game universe.

## Uses

The silvertongue staff, as a staff, can be utilized in melee combat with the same stats as a standard quarterstaff. Being made of silver, it presumably can damage creatures resistant or immune to non-silvered weapons like lycanthropes.

The staff also has a passive magical affect. Anyone who is wielding it receives a boost of half their max charisma, which in-universe translates to enhancing the force of their personality over others.

Finally, the staff has an active magical ability. It carries a one-use-per-day charge of the spell Charm Person, which can be cast from the staff without the use of the any of the wielder's spell slots. This functions identically to the normal Charm Person spell, and taking the staff from the person who cast the spell doesn't release the charmed victim from the effects.

## Appearance

The staff is made of silver, and is long enough to be optimally used by a medium sized creature, though small creatures may wield it with some difficulty. It is designed in the image of a snake, with the top resembling a snake's head and the bottom a coiled snake's tail. The expression on the snake's face is said to be "benign." The entire length of the staff has a subtle patterning like snake scales. When the staff's charge of charm person is activated, the head of the snake shifts dramatically. It opens its mouth in a threat display, revealing its fangs, and a cobra-like hood extends from the sides of the head seemingly out of nowhere. In this form the eyes also glow, though the color of the glow depends on who is wielding the staff.

## In-Story

### Backstory

The Silvertongue Staff is a Hexblade, an evil sentient weapon crafted in the Shadowfell, one of set of five such weapons that were sent to the Yuan-Ti city of Cozamotlan to destroy it from within. The Yuan-Ti were wise enough not to use these weapons, instead sealing them inside the temple of Aion, but they ended up wielding at least the staff out of desperation when their city came under attack by a storm giant quintessant. Eventually the temple sank into the waters of the swamp, bringing the staff with it.

Critically, a servant of the sun god Aion, Kassor, was also trapped in the temple when it sank.

### The Black Claw Gang

When after centuries the yuan-ti temple emerged from the waters of the swamp, the Shifting Mist tribe of kobolds and lizardfolk and the human town of Mire's Edge agreed to try to put aside the tensions between their peoples to send a joint archaeological expedition to explore the temple. It isn't entirely clear what happened, but the implication seems to be that the team found the silvertongue staff in the temple. Something went horribly wrong, the doing of the malevolent sentience in the staff according to Kassor, resulting in the death of the entire team.

When a long time passed without word from the team, the brother of one of the kobolds on the team, Wenrule, went to investigate. He found the entire team dead, and in his rage and grief blamed the humans of Mire's Edge for it. He took up the silvertongue staff as his own, and with the help of the young dragon Dodriar started the Black Claw.

At first the Black Claw tried to drive the humans out of the swamp with fear and by cutting off their trade. When this proved ineffective, however, Wenrule began pushing to escalate their tactics, and use more overt violence. Dodriar opposed this, and insisted on keeping as they'd been. When Wenrule discovered that he could use the silvertongue staff to make others more inclined to listen to him, however, he started going behind Dodriar's back and essentially brainwashing the other scalefolk into doing things his way.

Cree, Anther, Dahlia, Hush and Medea briefly encountered Wenrule when they first entered the mire, and he was described as "holding a staff" at the time. Though it was not described in any detail to the players, it can be assumed this staff was the silvertongue staff.

Later on, the group encountered a coatl, which seemed to be trying to tell them go go to the temple; it is possible that as a revered spirit of the yuan-ti, it knew about the staff being in Wenrule's possession and wanted to stop it being abused. It is also possible that the coatl was a servant of Aion like Kassor, and wanted the party to free him from the temple. Either way, after finding their way to the yuan-ti temple and fighting their way past the Black Claw, the party learned of what was going on from Dodriar and another kobold who was still loyal to him, Yuty. The asked for the party's help, and the party agreed to confront Wenrule.

Wenrule, however, proved unwilling to listen, and used the staff's charm person charge to charm Dodriar into fighting on his side. Cree, angry at the malicious use of mind control magic, tackled Wenrule to the ground and wrenched the staff out of his grasp. Wenrule made one attempt to take it back, but he was unable to do so, and Cree would wield the staff for the remainder of the fight.

Once Wenrule was knocked out by Anther, Cree used her identify spell to figure out what the staff was. Upon explaining it to the others, Yuty asked Cree to keep a hold on it, since she didn't trust any of the Black Claw with the thing. As they were leaving the temple, they passed the altar chamber where Kassor was trapped, and unbeknownst to the party he bound himself to the Silvertongue Staff so that he could use it to escape. Cree showed the staff to Medea upon their return to Mire's Edge, who remarked that it was a "cool souvenir." Later, the head of the Shifting Mist, Apogri, insinuated that the staff likely had something to do with the deaths of the archaeological expedition. When the party left the swamp, Cree took the staff along.

### Into the Frostfell, The Feywilde Ball, and Where Wolf?

Cree wielded the silvertongue staff for the duration of these adventures, but it did not played a prominent plot role.

### And the Thunder Rolls

During a conversation with Valanthe the night before the party was to leave to confront a storm giant quintessant that was causing nonstop storms, Cree felt the staff move seemingly on its own in her hand. Dahlia confirmed that she had seen the staff move as well. Cree cast identify on it, and felt two minds within the staff, something that deeply unnerved her.

Later, during the fight with the giant, the staff began to respond more overtly. Cree felt a sensation of something nudging her to attack the giant (as she was distracting it's lackeys at the time instead) and when she turned towards the giant, it was enveloped in a rainbow halo in her field of vision. She cast Dissonant Whispers on the giant, and something inside the staff amplified the power of the spell, actually briefly distracting the quintessant.

After that Cree started to have recurring dreams of two massive snakes, one white and one grey, fighting in the sky over a storm-swept swamp.

### Rest, Upgrades, and a Drake Egg

After several more such dreams, Cree finally had one where she was free to act on what she was seeing- she tried yelling at the spirits, which got their attention but startled her awake in the process. Frustrated and confused, when the dream occurred again the subsequent night, she tried attacking the snakes instead, if only to drive them out of her mind.

The attack landed enough to break the snakes apart, allowing the white one to momentarily pin the grey one. Cree got her first good look at the snakes- the white introducing itself as Kassor, a servant of the sun god Aion, and explaining that the grey snake was the malicious spirit native to the silvertongue staff.

Kassor struck a deal with Cree- she would do noble deeds and make sure the staff spent plenty of time in the sunlight where Kassor could draw energy for his battle with the staff spirit, and in exchange Kassor would allow her to borrow some of his power. Cree agreed, and became a warlock.

## Owners

### Previous

* Unknown Yuan-Ti
* Unknown member(s) of the Mire's Edge/Shifting Mist archaeological team
* Wenrule