Spéir Scian (roughly, “Sky Knife”)

Relic 00

Grants access to the Psychopomp and Sky purviews.

The Spéir Scian is a longsword of steel forged in Ireland when steel working was new to the Emerald Isle. It is said that the sword came to its maker, a man whose name is lost to obscurity, in a dream. Though his dream of the blade included etchings of the sun, moon, stars, and arms of the Milky Way upon the blacksmith had not the skill nor ability to learn what was needed to create these designs. While he tried to compensate by pouring his attention and devotion into the sculpted moon pommel and sun crossguard, the blacksmith could not surpass what he had seen in his dream. In disgust, he tossed the weapon into a passing cart of disease-ridden bodies.

Thus it was that in a pile of bodies that the first wielder of the Spéir Scian encountered the blade which would forever change his destiny. The young, fatherless beggar named Barry Mac Lochlainn spied the sword, and, at first, intended to snatch it and sell it to the traders who frequently passed through his town. When he touched the hilt of the blade, however, the daylight around Barry seemed to fade. In that darkened space, the blade erupted into its own light, glowing like the stars in the firmament. In that moment, the Spéir Scian became what the blacksmith had seen in his dreams.

The light faded, though, when a man dropped a heavy hand onto the shoulder of Barry Mac Lochlainn. The orphan knew his death was near, but it was not to be. The man was Barry’s long lost father, the god Lugh. It had been he who had first designed the sword and employed a goddess of dreams to place it in the blacksmith’s nocturnal visions. Lugh had intended the Spéir Scian for Barry upon the boy’s first successful foray into combat, but here the 12 year old Scion stood, sword already in his hands, and the Samh-ildánach could see the hand of fate behind this turn of circumstance. He explained to the boy his heritage and set Barry to the task of hunting titanspawn upon the Emerald Isle.

The boy, though small and inexperienced, proved to be a sturdy hunter, felling many foes before finally succumbing, according to many accounts, to an illness of the heart after 121 years wielding the Spéir Scian.

Currently, the blade is in the hands of Ash Kelly, Scion of Aranrhiod, the very same goddess who Lugh had employed to place visions of the Spéir Scian into the mind of an unknown blacksmith.