The Lock-Pick Blade

The Pick is beautiful. A wedge-shaped, fullered dagger, on one side, razor-sharp and notched with serrated key-teeth on the opposite. In the hilt of the knife is a small key-hole, entering into nothingness. A slender haft hoops and loops into a graceful pretzel-shaped circle of infinity.   The haft feels like brass or stained, worn gold. The blade is gritty grey steel which glimmers oddly in occluded light. It gleams in fog, and, a fact not known to all, beneath the light of a lamp seen through fog at night, in the chips of reflection that gleam from the cut key-teeth, a bitter pair of glaring and inhuman eyes peer out from the blade as if reflected from another world.   This lends some credence to one legend of the Fog Knives forging. The story goes that Olimia Bond a semi-mythical thief, thaumaturge, and weaponsmith, made the knife with stolen powers. She trapped and outwitted a Name-Taker, a creature of Yggsrthaal, itself a stealer of identity, fat and gross with stolen names. She tricked this thing and stole its power, as it stole names from mortal lives. Now it exists as anti-energy, trapped in a timeless infinity, looping round the haft and back to the point of the knife, before being reflected by its tip, flowing through the blade forever. It is this that the blade is made of, and this that powers its spell.   If the Fog-Knife is itself a magical prison, that must be the greatest irony in Uud, for as an artifact it has been implicated in more escapes and prison-breaks than any other item in the world. It is famous for it. That is why it is banned.  

Its Powers

  The simplest power of the Pick is that it can open most material locks with ease. The blade shrinks and warps to slide inside the keyhole like an eel. The haft jiggles and crackles as the key-teeth bite and shift. Sometimes the knife must be coaxed and soothed to do its work. Then, with a 'click', the lock snaps open.   Most material locks will submit to their will. Though, a small handful said to be the work of the greatest and most maniacally-devious genius-level locksmiths, have resisted it. Some magical and multidimensional locks have also fought back against the Fog-Knife. But, for the most part, whoever wields the Pick walks in an unlocked world.  

Minor Powers;

  The 'Shameful Blade' has exhibited a range of other abilities at one time or another. The blade may have complexities that many of its holders miss, secrets only a few have unlocked. Or it may simply have a personality and character of its own, presenting a particular facet of its powers to one holder, and a different range of possibilities to another.   Ooum the Fool, the musical Thief, claimed that the chime it made when rung would echo specifically around hidden cracks and disguised doors. He said the Pick "wanted" to open doors, for that was its lust.   Fishwife Jax, the barbarous Thief of the Wastes, said the Pick would 'open' the armor of her opponents, causing the plate to untie and mail to unknot itself, that when struck correctly, weapons would fly from her opponent’s hand and tools and items burst from their pockets like birds. She also said it made "a real good mess" of someone’s rib-cage as it was pulled out through the flesh. Though this seems to be simply a quality of its notched, serrated blade rather than any magical effect.   Wise Belvoir, the Thaumaturge Thief, who entered palaces through a story and escaped through a page, said the Pick could "even steal a secret from your heart".   But the most noted power of the blade is that which earned it a name - it is a Meta-Key.    

The Meta-Key

  The knife has a keyhole in its hilt. If, while the blade is being used to open a portal or door, the bearer pauses, and, using lockpicks, manages to pick the lock inside the blade at the same time as the blade itself is picking a lock, the door will somehow open twice.   An opening squared, a meta-opening.   The portal will open to some other place. Not the area directly behind it in our reality, but somewhere, perhaps distant, or even inconceivably different. To Marginalia, the Palaces of the Tetrarchies, to mythical Zoiterra, into the Cold of Interstellar Space or the dreams of the Sleeping Gods.   The doorway could lead anywhere. Perhaps somewhere useful, or simply somewhere strange.   Because of the unpredictability of the effect, the Blade is much better at getting people out of places than it is at getting them to specific places. So long as there is a door, there can always be an escape. Where one might escape to is another matter.  

The Court of Doors

  Only one person has claimed to have solved the mystery of where the Meta-Opening might lead, and therefore have attained the key to predictable multiversal travel across all known realities; the poet, traveler, addict, and drunkard Uxlorian Vesh.   Vesh's "theory" is so odd that almost no-one alive believes it might be true. He claims that every door is only a reflection in our reality of a great hierarchy, a government and society almost, of Hyper-Doors. That all doors are related to each other and bound in mutual service, and that this relationship has absolutely nothing to do with a doors appearance and origin in our reality, for doors in our world are only the most recent expression of a timeless door beyond our perception.   He put forward this theory in his book "Amidst the Court of Doors". This was long assumed to be a work of radical experimental fiction fuelled by decadence and drug use and was read in that sense by an audience of jaded aesthetes.   Vesh always claimed, increasingly fitfully, that the book was simple, and precise, reportage, that the events in question happened, that he did indeed meet "The King of Doors", exactly as he claimed and that the family trees and maps of the great clans of doors in the book, along with the signs by which they might be recognized in our reality, are his best memory of the simple truth.   No-one has ever believed anything Uxlorian Vesh said or wrote.   Until his disappearance, from behind a series of locked doors, followed by the burning and suppression of his book by unknown forces across all of Blackwater.   Now it crosses the mind of not a few that if Vesh was, by some wild chance, correct, and if one had a copy of his book, and the Meta-Key, that person might indeed have unrestricted access to all Reality.    

The Culture And History Of The Pick

  The Pick is carried secretly. Other Curia and legendary items make their bearers minor celebrities, both amplifying the legend of their deeds and riding their heroics to add mystique to their fame. But the holder of the Pick can only be seen as a Criminal, and a Thief. (Although perhaps the greatest of Thieves).   The Fog-Knife is loathed by all forces of Law and Order as an instrument of Chaos and Lawlessness.   Decent, civilized, home-owning Homon, in particular, want NOTHING to do with it, despite, or probably because it is probably a creation of their race. They gossip continually about the Shameful Blade’s most recent crimes and print outrageous tabloid stories about anyone who is known to possess it. There is nothing Homon society loves more than being outraged about something.   Nine out of Ten organized polities in Blackwater have declared the Pick formally and illegal as being inherently a Rebellious Instrument, derogatory to Safety, Public Order, Decency, and the Security of the Queen/Emperor/Parliament/Chancellor/whoever is currently in charge.   Yga has not made the Pick illegal (yet), and those cities and queendoms in which it is not outlawed often tend to be those smaller, weaker than their neighbors and closer to the danger of the Margins.   Tolerance, in particular, seeks the Pick. They control The Grey Cells, where many of Yggsrtahaals more subtle and dangerous agents and thralls are contained, they dare not risk any penetration of that gaol. And if the blade is, indeed, itself a cage or prison for one of Her creatures, and uses that to power its magic, that is something they would very much wish to study.   Two more culture-figures relate to the blade. Two Titles of Thieves, quite different.  

The King of Thieves

  The "King of Thieves" is a grand title. It’s a little like being Heavyweight Champion of the World. Most cities have a local "King of Thieves" and the general assumption (for it is not a formal role) of who is the current "King" is widely spread through Blackwater.   Thieves compete amongst themselves to be "The King", though few hold the title for long. Possessing the Pick, especially if you stole it from someone else, forms a good basis for the argument that you are, indeed, the King of Thieves, for it is the King’s Blade in that world and Excalibur of Crime. Though possession itself is not enough if you lack the reputation and achievements to go with it.   The Master Thief   "The Master Thief", another figure associated with the blade, is quite a different being, more akin to a mythical figure or a shadowy demi-god.   It is thought only Children and the Mad (or the drunk) can really, truly encounter The Master Thief, that only then will He, or Her, or They, allow themselves to be observed, and then only for their amusement. While any thief could dream of becoming the King of Thieves, perhaps no-one can "become" The Master Thief. They ghost through history and reality like a dream, going where they will, stealing things like crowns, nations, futures, and souls. They are a story really, a kind of Saint of Thieves.   Some legends say Olimia Bond was The Master Thief, but in disguise, or that she knew them and that it is The Master Thief who makes sure the Pick stays in circulation around Uud. Whenever it is locked up by the authorities, or someone attempts to destroy it, or when the King of Thieves proves unworthy of its use, it is The Master Thief who spirits it away and hides it once again, ready to be recovered and to re-enter History once again.   It is The Master Thief who guards the Silver Key which fits the Keyhole in the hilt, carried on a chain around their neck    

See the Lock-Pick Blade in the Seraphormer