[UA] The Dead Man's Hand

[Hammons, Jade]

This has been occupying my thoughts for the last couple days, so I
thought I better right it down and get that demon OUT! Hallelujah

The Dead Man's Hand

Appearance :
	The Dead Man's hand appears to be a skeletal hand carved from
bleached driftwood. It is affixed to a base of stained black wood with a
brass plate on the front reading 'Dead Man's Hand'. Beneath this is
presumably the name of the artist or creator, but it has been scratched
out vigorously. The space however seems large enough for somewhere
around 20 letters.
	The hand itself hold 4 cards, a pair of aces and eights. The
cards are invariably of a more recent vintage that the apparent age of
the statue, the current hand being blue bicycles manufactured sometime
in the 1960's. A 5th card lays face down next to the base, firmly
affixed. One supposes it is indicative of the fact that the value of
Wild Bill Hickok's 5th card is lost to antiquity.
	Careful examination by a forensic scientist, or a lab or person
of similar skill will identify the hand as being an actual, mummified
and treated hand, severed just past the wrist.
	Occult research of a most difficult nature would eventually pin
this down as the hand of Jack McCall, in fact the same hand that held
the gun that murdered Wild Bill Hickok
	The Hand was created sometime around the turn of the 20th
century by a Serbian Entropancer Immigrant to the U.S. It was first used
against Franz Ferdinand, but the outcome was so destructive that the
items owner hid the artifact where he believed it would never be found.
Being an object of entropy though, it always seems to become unlost. As
far as any subsequent owner can tell, World War I was either a
coincidence, a fluke, or the strength of the very first use of the
artifact going out of control. Of course those that would use the
artifact are able to rationalize a lot of things.
Using the hand:
	To activate the hand's magic it must be bathed in approximately
a pint of very special blood. As this is done the hand 'rehydrates'
until it once more looks alive, or at least freshly severed. When this
happens, the fingers release the cards, which rapidly age and decay into
dust before they are able to reach even the base of the artifact. The
5th care can now easily be removed from the base. Written on the face of
the card (most often a Joker) is the name of the last victim of the
hand's magic. When first rediscovered the name on the Joker is John
Fitzgerald Kennedy.

The blood has a certain number of requirements, all attached to the
Hand's legacy.
- The blood must be from a pre-meditated murder victim. The killing
cannot be accidental, or random. The killing must be in cold-blood.
- The victim must have been killed because of a misunderstanding. The
killer will think there is a reason to kill the victim, but that reason
must be invalid or completely false.
-  The blood must be from the victim of a revenge killing. In other
words, it can't be because, 'I think you are going to kill me', but must
be 'I think he killed my brother'

	After the hand is free of cards, a new deck of cards is marked
with the blood before the seal is broken. a joker, and the dead man's
hand are drawn from the deck. Using his own blood the artifacts user
then writes 4 Hebrew letters onto the cards, translating loosely as Luck
of the Damned, and then writes the Hebrew word for 'Enemy' on the face
of the joker while picturing the face of someone you loathe in your
mind's eye. The cards are then replaced onto the artifact. This must all
be accomplished before the blood dries on the artifact, for as the blood
dries the hand returns to it's normal appearance, and the cards become
affixed and irremovable. Once this is complete, the brass plate will now
show the name of the person who just completed the ritual. This is why
it's normally scratched out. Once the ritual is done, the magick is
activated and takes place in it's own time. No more control over the
magick is allowed to the ritualist. The only way to stop the ritual is
to tear the cards from the hand, at which point the magick turns to
target the one that cast the ritual being stopped.

Effects:
	The magic of the Dead Man's Hand is very fickle, but always
extreme. It waits to strike the victim of the artifact until they are at
a personal high moment, and then does a complete reversal of fortune on
them. In many cases this reversal of fortune is fatal, but if there are
worse things that can happen at that moment than death, that will
usually be the effect that hits. This dark fate will almost always be of
a severity that can wake the tiger, but due to the layers of coincidence
that the hand has been building it can't be detected as a magical
intervention by any means. Also, the hand may decide you have a greater
enemy than the one your tried to cast the spell on and affect them
instead. The magick of the hand will only affect one person, it doesn't
inflict collateral damage. OF course the reactions to the event may
cause collateral damage, but the hand will not do so directly. In other
words it won't blow up an airplane to kill one person. So far the
artifact has only been used against people. It is unknown if it could
target an ideal, a country, a religion, or anything other than a person.
There is no game mechanic effect to simulate this reversal of fortune
other than GM dramatic license.

Jade Hammons
"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be
normal." - Albert Camus