The Crown of the Storm

Full Item Description

The Crown of the Storm is heavyly padded with velvet and ermine so it can be worn in confort for long periods of time. It is made of gold with emeralds embedded in it and a small Shard of the Storm fixed to the front of it.

History

Elohaloth was a small city state centered around two things that made it possible, a river running down from the mountians and a mine that provided the entire region with it's jewels and gold. The mine became a village which grew until it was a sizable city state. Sadly, the richer it got the more envious and jealous grew it's rivals until the Valermorian army was sent to take it over and slaughter it's people.

Before the army was fully ready however, workers in the mine discovered a long piece of silvery metal of a kind they had never seen before, that glowed softly with it's own light. They sent it to the Royal Wizard at once and he guessed something of it's powers, although even he was unsure of what it was. In fact it was a Shard of the Storm.

The old king had died at the ripe old age of eighty and been placed in his barrow, and the new King Edward was a few days away from his formal crowning, so the Shard was placed into his golden emerald studded crown. When the crown was put upon his head, he stared into space and then slumped back into his throne before suddenly yelling that his kingdom was under threat from Vallermoore.

He ordered his army such as it was to post itself in ambush in a narrow pass between two mountians and described the threat exactly as if he was there and seeing it. When Vallermoore's army came he waited until half of it was within the path and then launched his ambush, cutting the army in half.

In this narrow region the forces ranged against him could not envelop his army but it wes clear that soon they would push through the pass through numbers alone. And then it began to rain...but only on the Valermoore side of the battlefield. A bolt of lightning forked down and struck the Vallermooreian general dead where he stood, and the rain poured so strongly that it turned the area into a bog. When it began to snow...in the middle of the summer...the morale of the Valermooreians cracked and they ran for their lives, even more scared of the weather then of their formidable Queen.

The Elohalothian celebrations lasted for days, although the king fell ill with a chill and his royal doctors doubted he would recover. But he did and decided that since the powers of his crown had been so helpful, he would have it padded so he could wear it all day. With it he could see what was going on in the whole continent, providing that it took place in the open air. Within his castle the powers were even greater and he could use it to see and hear what was going on as if he was in the room.

However, there was a price for such awesome power. His temper and mind changed as frequently as the weather. When it was calm and warm he was a very good king, but storms would throw him into a fury, to the point where he would order trusted courtiers to be put to death on the spot or thrown into the deepest dungeon just for coughing or sneezing at the wrong time. And he could never be persuaded to change his mind when the weather was stable, whilst at other times he would change his mind several times in the course of a day.

As summer turned to autumm and autumm to winter the once beloved king became a tyrant and a megalomaniac, having several people executed per day, and planning his own army to conquer the whole continent. What is more, nobody dared plot against him within the castle because everyone knew they could be watched at any time.

One day one of his bodyguards, knowing things could only get worse as long as the winter lasted, drew his sword and cut the king down on the spur of the moment. The normal penalty for treason was burial alive, but so hated was King Edward that the regicide's life was spared and he was only exiled from Elaholoth. Everyone knew the crown had caused Edward to act like he did, so thinking that it was cursed, they buried the crown with him in his barrow. Normally Kings and Queens of Elohaloth were only buried with a single gold coin to pay their way into the afterlife, so that theives would not rob the graves, but this was a national emergency.

Magic/Cursed Properties

The crown is not in fact cursed. It grants great powers-the power to see advancing armies from a long way off, and to see within all the rooms of a building just by concentrating on the area to be looked at. The wearer can chage the weather in an area and even call down lightning bolts, but that causes severe sickness for the wearer and can cause the death of the wearer if down for too long.

The flip side is that the personality of the wearer becomes as changeable as the weather. Whilst fine weather helps the wearer, storms make then furious with rage, and cold makes them cold hearted and cruel.Should the weather change a lot then the wearer will not be able to make his or her mind up. If the weather is steady, then the wearer will refuse to change his or her mind under any circumstances. The result is that sane rulers are turned into vile tyrants.