Aces over Eights. A murder, a world war, a presidential assassination. What would you risk to satisfy your hatred?

THE DEAD MAN’S HAND

Power: Major
Type: Created (Unique)

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 holds 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 Entropomancer 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 un-lost. 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 its 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.