Ryaba's Golden Egg

This egg was laid by a perfectly ordinary speckled hen named Ryaba , who lived in the village of Sitnitsa. The egg appeared to be made of solid gold.  
News of the marvelous egg began to spread to outlying towns and villages, and people started to come to Sitnitsa to view the marvel. After word of this egg reached Ladeisk, Lokan convinced his Serpent Slayer companions, along with Vanya and Vasya, to go see the egg, always with the intention to steal it. While in the village, Lokan speculated out loud about what would happen should the egg be cracked. This got an immediate reaction from Cherniava, who happened to be present in Ryaba's barn. The Serpent Slayers later met with Cherniava (who they took for the village witch), and the crone told them that the true treasure was not the egg, but what lay inside it. She implied that the egg contained (or represented) the whole of the cosmos, and that its contents would bring its possessor untold riches, power, and knowledge. When accused of tempting the party to steal and break it, Cherniava responded that the true tempter was God, who set mortals before the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and forbade them to eat of it.   
Lokan late succeeded in his endeavor, and stole away with the egg. As he traveled back to Ladeisk with most of his companions, a rat named Stinker, who Cherniava had given as a pet to Agapia, swished his tail and cracked the egg. The contents - a very heavy golden yolk, fell onto the ground, after which Agapia swallowed it. Lokan retrieved the golden shell, and later gave it as a present to Prince Trofim Andreevich. Both decisions, but especially the former, brought on a host of problems, which have not been resolved to this day. 
As concerns the shell, the prince gratefully accepted it, but soon, Ryaba's owners arrived from Sitnitsa, and came before the prince, saying it was stolen. Trofim Andreevich was not aware of the theft. He had been encouraged by Lokan's statement that any property found on his patrimony was his anyway, and as Yuri initially had no information on the egg having been stolen, he assumed that the cossack would testify to that in open court. When Yuri, upon learning what had happened, testified that the egg had in fact been stolen, the prince was humiliated before his peasants, and though he initially rejected the testimony, he was furious about having been made to look like a thief, and expelled Yuri from Ladeisk.
The effect of Agapia's eating the yolk caused a much bigger problem. As was revealed by Mother Feodosia upon her return, eating it materialized a vortex of evil and good magic swirling around her, and the most immediate result of the vortex was that unclean and undead creatures of various kinds were drawn to her. After several attacks by upyri and navii inside the city, the prince asked Agapia and her companions to leave Ladeisk, as it was endangering his people's wellbeing. The Serpent Slayers traveled north, to see if Archbishop Nikifor could save her from this predicament, but all along the way, they continued to draw creatures of darkness to them - first, a horde of navii (which the slaughtered residents of Sitnitsa had become in the interim), and then, a family of wolf shapechangers which had adopted Lokan some years earlier. The shapechangers in particular tried to convince Lokan to join them in devouring Agapia, which would give them the power of the egg, and allow them to draw all their kind from all over the world to them so they could take back the lands humans had stolen from them long ago. Lokan was initially tempted, but then, changed his mind, and helped Agapia escape.   
As they continued to seek the archbishop, the Serpent Slayers then came to a huge tree, which had a portal to the realm of Grey Wolf, the Tsar of all wolfkind. As they had been followed there by Lokan's wolf family, Agapia tried to escape by jumping through the portal, and ended up inside Grey Wolf, or at least under his power. Her companions followed her. Grey Wolf's presence thanked them for bringing him such a handsome gift, which would allow him to gather an army to expel the humans. Lokan spoke up for reconciliation, but Grey Wolf insisted that the only choice before humans, who had violated an earlier pact with this kind was to flee, or be devoured, thus restoring the natural order of things. He would let the others go, but Agapia was now his. Yuri alone resisted this settlement, though it did not change the outcome.
When Grey Wolf led his minions in an attack on Malinka - the archbishop's summer residence, he disgorged Agapia. As she tells it, Kivi appeared to her, and comforted her. After Agapia confessed that she had done a bad thing by swallowing the egg, and would try to set things aright, she felt warm all over. The next thing she knew, she was disgorged by a giant wolf, and nearly mangled by this teeth on the way out. Though the wolf harried her no more, it's obvious that the power of the egg stayed with him. His minions took Malinka, and subsequently, destroyed a number of other villages in the surrounding area, killing or driving off all of their inhabitants.
At present, Grey Wolf and his cohorts control the whole north of the Ladeisk Principality. They seem to be making plans to besiege the city, and presumably, have continued to draw more wolves, nechist', and other creatures of darkness to them. Some vast tracts of land have become corrupted, though the cause of this isn't clear.

Item type

Consumable, Magical

Rarity

Unique?

Weight

5 pounds ( originally)