[Genesis]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Very good.
Do you imagine that it is something they found in old ruins, stole through raiding or something constructed by Al-Warrakh or Abu Jafar?

Oh, it's definitely ancient and found. Someone magically inclined might have figured out how to change the layout of the constructions, but they can't have been very good at it. With all the pieces and knowledge of the item's workings a talented user ought to be able to construct elaborate palaces out of sand - gravity defying wonders that are continuously reshaped as the occasion demands. Of course, most of the rods are long missing/broken, and it's calibrated with some totally weird variant of Architecture, which makes changing things difficult even for folks who know how it works.

This sounds like Abu Jafar's work. The nearby giants are mostly stone giants, but I presume that they have blood within their matted stone skins.

The blood needn't come from the giants, necessarily - I was imagining the special spell being powered by any convenient blood sacrifice.

It's very cool, but I've described the weapons carried by the Sheikh, his bodyguards and several of the lieutenants.

It could be Abu Jafar's sword, but he's not all that good with a sword any longer.* Of course, it could be Al-Warrakh's blade. He was a fine swordsman, even if he didn't get to draw a sword in the battle.

Eh, I liked the idea of a weapon that specifically dismembers targets. It seemed... in genre?

Unless it's an artifact created by more powerful beings than Abu Jafar, there probably ought to be a way to cause the heart to lose its attunement. If nothing else, a Dispel effect that temporarily suppresses its magic would probably return it to inactive form.

I was thinking that the inability to un-attune it is a bug, not a feature. The heart is 'stuck' once attuned - so if you try to hunt the wrong thing you end up with a worthless item, and if you kill the fool who was hunting you the heart doesn't just go away. It might be possible to hide from the heart using scryguard spells or magical containment (for the target or the heart, I suppose), but such measures should probably be doomed to fail eventually in a dramatically appropriate fashion. If it's trivial to defeat (and a Dispel effect seems pretty trivial) than discovering the heart, already attuned to a PC, isn't much of a hook.