Chapter Three: The Last Dream of Mirza Horgul

With a little work, Felor widens the crack and pries off a chunk of bronze, then carefully turns the Implacable's body over to let whatever is inside it spill out.

The first thing to hit the ground is a wet, fleshy thing roughly the size, shape, and color of a Mezian eggplant, which appears to be the source of the cobalt-blue fluid. It seems to be an organ, but it is no recognizable part of the anatomy of any creature any of you have ever seen butchered.

This is followed by a short length of large amber beads strung together with sinew. There are nine beads, each one larger than an inch in diameter, and inside each bead is a black wasp.

A small cage made of silver falls out as well. Inside the cage is a feline skull, and inside the mouth of the skull is a small dead bird.

Felor gives the Implacable a shake. You can hear some other objects stuck inside its body cavity.

It's the creepiest piñata ever! Keep shaking it, but don't touch anything.

With some cautious inspection, you can see two thin, narrow tablets of beaten copper and a roughspun cloth soaked with the blue fluid still inside. It doesn't look like they'll shake out on their own.

It doesn't appear to be.

Wrapping his hands as best he can, Felor removes the remaining objects from the Implacable's body.

The tablets are each about 4" wide and 11" tall and are filled top to bottom with glyphs in no recognizable language. The cloth looks like it would unfold to about 3' square, and is made of linen.

Zora comes over to look at the Implacable's innards, and makes a disgusted face.

Anything ring any bells?

None of this makes any sense to Mordred.

Based on his inspection and what he saw of it being used in combat, Felor determines that the catchpole is a +1 polearm with a poison effect enchanted into the blade's metal. The blunt end can also be used as a staff weapon and retains the magic attack/damage bonus. The catchpole blade can also be used for a special sort of grappling attack. The Implacable was able to attack with both the blade and blunt ends in a single round, or sacrifice the blunt end attack to perform the special attack. It looks like anyone with polearm proficiency could wield the catchpole, but unless your weapon skills allow for multiple attacks, you can only make a single attack with either end each round or attack at disadvantage to use the special grappling attack. Assuming, of course, you would want to make use of a weapon built for such evil purposes, which has spilled the blood of innocents...

Felor infers that these objects used some combination of enchantments and sympathetic magic to inform and animate the Implacable.

Zora picks up the head and shakes it out: more black powder falls out, along with a cracked crystal with a red thread tied around it, with one loose end that was probably severed when the construct was decapitated. Sure enough, you can see a bit of the same thread in the hollow stump of its neck.

The catchpole feels light and well-balanced.