Skorr, The Hungering Axe

Weapon (greataxe), artifact (requires attunement)

This mighty axe bites and tears at creatures it hits. Black, metallic eyes wrap around the haft and adorn its toothy blade. Whenever you hit a living creature with this weapon, it takes an extra 4d6 necrotic damage from the attack; you then regain 6 hit points for every 6 you roll on the necrotic damage dice (up to the creature's hit point maximum). Whenever you slay a creature with the axe, its organic body is consumed by the axe, leaving behind only its skeleton (if any).

The weapon has 6 charges for the following properties, and it regains all expended charges daily at dawn.

Bite Down. When you hit a creature with the axe, you can expend any number of the weapon's charges to maximize that number of its necrotic damage dice (regaining hit points as if you'd rolled a 6 on the dice).

Craving Strike. While you have fewer than half your maximum hit points remaining, you can expend 1 of the weapon's charges as a bonus action to immediately make an attack with it; the attack scores a critical hit if you roll a 19 or 20 on the attack roll.

Devour. While the axe is on your person, you can take 1d6 necrotic damage and reduce your hit point maximum by the same amount (no action required); you then regain 1 of the weapon's expended charges. This damage can't be reduced in any way, and the reduction lasts until you finish a long rest.

Random Properties. Skorr, the Hungering Axe has the following random properties:

• 1 minor beneficial property

• 1 minor detrimental property

Sentience. Skorr, the Hungering Axe is a sentient chaotic evil weapon with an Intelligence of 5, a Wisdom of 18, and a Charisma of 15. It has hearing and darkvision out to a range of 120 feet.

The weapon communicates telepathically with its wielder and can read and understand Abyssal and Common. When it speaks, it only growls.

Personality. The axe is animalistic in almost every way. In all things, it hungers for the taste of new flesh. Skorr's hunger must be regularly fed. Daily at dawn, if the axe hasn't slain a creature within the last 24 hours, it roars in anger and loses all of its charges.

Destroying the Axe. The only way to destroy the axe is to somehow sate its undying hunger, such as by slaying a greater deity or similar entity with it.

If you read these words, we have failed, and what we sought to entomb will return to the world again. Still, if you are wise, you will heed this warning and avoid our fate.

It will make you strong, this we cannot deny. Strong enough to wade through rivers of blood—your foes' and your own—to whatever end you seek. At first.

It is not your ally. What mind it has will turn to your dissolution, meting out power only as you seek carnage to quell its infectious gluttony. In its animal cunning, in its roaring in your ears and in your veins, it will turn your mind to dreams of undying might. For it—not you—cannot die.

It will not stop, will not allow you to stop until it has gorged upon the world entire. Then, amidst the husk of all you once knew, will you conclude its feast with the only life that remains.

—Inscription in a dead tongue on an adamantine chest uncovered from ruins sunk deep in a volcano caldera, unearthed after an eruption emptied it entirely; the original expedition was found torn to shreds around the chest, which was cleaved in half and empty.