Shield of the Justicars (Patreon)

Armor (shield), rare

One of the original arms from the Upheaval, this shield can be used to release a magically discordant pulse. While holding this shield, you have a +1 bonus to AC. This bonus is in addition to the shield's normal bonus to AC.

In addition, the shield has 4 charges and regains 1d4 expended charges daily at dawn. While holding it, when a creature that you can see within 30 feet of you casts a spell, you can use your reaction to expend 1 of the shield's charges and speak its command word. When you do, the target must make a DC 15 Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, the target takes a –2 penalty to its spell attack bonus and saving throw DC until the end of the turn, including against the triggering spell.

Dorainir was tired. As she stood in the storm, she knew she should not be the one to do this. Her fine elven hands were never meant to wield the Spelldrinkers' blade, but she was the last of those to whom it had been entrusted. It had never been her place to carry on this long, but... the duty she had entrusted to her successors had been passed back to her.

And before her stood the cause, a face she was all-too familiar with. Once, she and Orvus Nightbane had stood together in the Spelldrinkers, her kinder hand a fair match for his acidic temperament. But they were younger, then. And time had only rendered the contrast all the starker, writ large by the hateful sigil his shield now bore.

Finally, the dwarf spoke, the bile dripping from his voice as he said, "So, the coward returns."

"I left because I believed my work was done, that I had given my place to those who came after. How many of mine have you sent to the grave? How many that couldn't fight back?"

"I have only destroyed those who stood against the oaths we swore so long ago, or have you forgotten those promises?"

"You took those words and twisted them to your own purpose, just as you did with the weapons you stole in your exile."

"I have forged my own tools, now, and to a man they've triumphed over those depraved magics you enabled, those servitors of yours you thought a match to my resolve."

Dorainir's shoulders sagged, looking towards her former compatriot with cold fury. He and his cursed shield were the icon of a new age, one in which her people were purged for the crime of truly trying to make things better. Her grip on the sky-laden blade tightened as she spoke with the weight of irretrievable sorrow.

"Four stars against the whole of the night sky, old friend. The Spelldrinkers shall not falter."

It was that day Dorainir earned her title as Hunter of Justicars, and left a wound from which her enemies would never truly recover.