The Shadowkey

Created by Cai-ban, the Everlasting, it was crafted as a necrotic tool guided by the hand of Myrkul, The Lord of Bones and his demon prince Orcus. It has since been lost, and is located trapped somewhere in The Sundered City, wielded by a lich king there. It is considered a relic of arcanum, as the plans were first created for this staff by a powerful servant of Myrkul.
Any creature that tries to attune to the staff, other than Cai-Ban, must make a DC 17 constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature takes 10d8 necrotic damge. If the creature dies it rises again as a skeleton dedicated to orcus. On a success, the player takes only half of the damage and does not rise as a skeleton.
Dormant:

• +1 to your armor class
• The Shadowkey has 2 charges. While holding it, you can use an action and expend 1 or more of its charges to cast one of the following spells (save DC 13) from it: animate dead (1 charge) or speak with dead (1 charge). The staff regains 1d4 expended charges daily at dawn.
• You have resistance to necrotic damage

Awakened:

• +2 to your armor class
• The Shadowkey now has 4 charges. While holding it, you can use an action and expend 1 or more of its charges to cast one of the following spells (save DC 16) from it: animate dead (1 charge), blight (2 charges), or speak with dead (1 charge). The staff regains 1d4 + 1 expended charges daily at dawn.
• You have resistance to necrotic damage.
• Your constitution increases by 2, to a maximum of 24.
• You become vulnerable to radiant damage.

Exalted:
A creature must be considered undead to attune to the exalted Shadowkey.

• +3 to your armor class
• The Shadowkey now has 7 charges. While holding it, you can use an action and expend 1 or more of its charges to cast one of the following spells (save DC 18) from it: animate dead (1 charge), blight (2 charges), circle of death (3 charges), finger of death (3 charges), power word kill (4 charges), or speak with dead (1 charge). The staff regains 1d4 + 3 expended charges daily at dawn.
• While holding the staff, you can use an action to conjure skeletons and zombies, calling forth as many of them as you can divide 500 hit points among, each undead having average hit points. The undead magically rise up from the ground or otherwise form in unoccupied spaces within 300 feet of you and obey your commands until they are destroyed or until dawn of the next day, when they collapse into inanimate piles of bones and rotting corpses. Once you use this property of the staff, you can’t use it again until the next dawn.
• You have resistance to necrotic damage.
• You cannot be frightened.
• Your constitution increases by 2, to a maximum of 24.
• You become vulnerable to radiant damage.

Item type

Magical

Creator

Cai-ban, the Everlasting