!!!Gabi's Bane Beware: one-of-a-kind object, which is the goal in one of the Act IV's main quests.

Somewhere in a fold of the spasms-times, somewhere between the planes – in a place which is better not dwelled upon, lest the rules that manage the Multiverse note its existence and decide to reassert their claim on it – is a cave.

A fairly unusual cave too: first, it has a door. A wooden one. On one side of the door is void, or something even more disturbing – an indistinct shimmering that distorts the shape of reality, like a Moebius band designed by a psychopath high on antidepressant, and ends up in the First Infernal Plane. On the other side is the inside of the cave.

This door has two other peculiarities: the first one is that to open it, you have to fit into a cavity of the wood the replica of an evil sword (which will say more about in, oh, at least two lines). The second one is that no sane person would ever wish to open it and know what hides behind.

In fact, the cave is not the most welcoming of places: suffused with a bluish gleam that emanates from its centre, it contains seven fairly snappish and blood-thirsty Athaumos, patches of shadows, more-than-gloomy lights tricks, a lich, ang a katana thrust into a rock.

The Athaumos have only one thing on their mind, vent their anger on the first creature to open the door. The lich has only one thing on its mind, get rid of the Athaumos and have a game of poker. The katana has only one thing on its mind, get out of here.

The trap set on the rock imprisoning the katana has only one thing on its mind, for an unwary adventurer to grap the weapon. Any good trap has a fair amount of sadism.

Let's imagine an unwary adventurer -you- getting here. After having defeated the charming Athaumos, he has to beat the lich at a game of poker – or try and fight it, which is not easy, especially as, once dead, it reappears as a Black Dragon. Then, if he has listened to the defeated lich's resentful mumblings, or to the ominous, red inscription on the floor - "A live foor a live, a blad for a sool: no sheeth emptty cann stay" -, he has to rein in the urge to just grab the weapon – and rather go and get its replica on the door, in order to operate a substitution. Of course, any error will make a new corpse out of this late adventurer.

Once extracted out of its stone sheath, the katana establishes at once a telepathic connection to hers liberator -still you, if you're not dead, in which case she'll tell no one- and starts narrating her life, in a nasal "voice" and at full speed. The weapon starts by explaining that her former master left her there because he didn't like her conversation. Or maybe, she wonders, it's not because she is a divine blade.

If you talk to her nicely, she'll explain that a divine blade is the only weapon able to kill a God (NB : at the end of the Act II, you had only maimed one). Every god has its own and would part from it under no condition. In fact, Gabi is the only known example of a god abandoning a divine blade, such as herself.

Yes, Gabi was her former master. He must have feared for her to fall in the wrong hands, to have exiled her so far from everything, guarded by such a depressing creature. Which is a blatant disregard, hasn't she participated in the Power Ritual which made a God out of Gabi? (she is in fact the blade that Yoshito used to incise Gabi's skin.)

She is happy to be free and ready to help you in your quest. And if you reveal you want to kill Gabi, she is even ready to take on any shape you want: sword, axe, staff, spear…

She also reveals to you (if you know how to talk to her and ignore her endless chatter) the emplacement, inside this very cave, of a secret compartment containing a powerful spell parchment: it drains slowly the caster's health points, but during that time, the caster's weapon multiplies its damage by four. What do you think, in a couple of millennia, you have the time to study your surrounding.

Notes about the poker game : the lich, bored after all that time and egged by its love of poker, would rather play with you than directly kill you; however, it is a bit out of practice. To win the game, the player doesn't need to have a good hand (in fact, he doesn't know it): he must only know to bluff and manage two consecutive dice rolls in persuasion, one for the starting stake, and one for the boost. The guardian doesn't roll any dice: a lich doesn't let any emotion show on its face, its face is dead. If the player fails, or refuses to play, or after starting to play refuses to boost, the fight starts. Beware: the player wager in health points. He must therefore wager enough to have a chance to win without fighting, but must keep enough if luck is not o his side and he must fight. (Every wagered health point is lost, and the player doesn't really have time to drink a potion before the end of the game or of the fight.)