The Silver Coil

I beheld the creature as it held aloft a sphere of the purest unblemished silver and lo it did open and the demons cried out and vanished.

And then the berk closed his eyes and he was in front of us. All of us. All twenty eight of us! and swinging his, or is it their staff, and that's all I remember.Description: When found, the silver coil appears as a solid sphere of some silvery metal about 3 inches in diameter. Despite its metallic appearance, it does not conduct electricity or heat and is non magnetic. It does not radiate magic. When active, it uncoils into a complex three dimensional spiral 12 inches across. Reports also describe it as appearing as an open circle and as a coiling spike. How these forms affect its powers are unknown.Powers:Constant: While held, the coil acts as a universal gate key, opening any gate regardless of time or conditional restraints. It also grants the user the ability to see such gates if she does not already have the ability. This will even function within Sigil though not in or out of the Cage. The Lady of Pain will be aware of interference of the Gates and may take action, or even prevent the wielder from entering the city.Invoked: The wielder can warp space, folding it in on itself and creating permanent dimensional traps, tesseracts, moebius strips, "bigger on the inside" rooms and similar effects.Curse: Use of the artifact has a progressive effect on the user, making her increasingly unfixed in space and time. This has three stages:

• Randomized equipment: First the coil, and later other items of equipment as well, are never where you thought they were. Any item that is not immediately at hand takes d4-1 rounds to locate since it is no longer in the pocket that you put it in. This does not apply to items held or carried, or to a large sheathed weapon but would apply to something like a coil of rope, a flask of holy water or a special material component for a rarely used spell.
• Indeterminacy: The user seems to randomly teleport within a small area. The user will not initially realize it is happening, only that she is in a different place every time. For example, marching order is scrambled just before an encounter, or a thief is hiding in shadows in every corner of a room. The user may also begin to bi-locate (exist in two or more places at once) Other effects include disappearing for a period of time and walking through unlocked doors without opening them. The user may be able to control the shifts to some extent (DM option) In this case, treat the teleports as a blink spell and the bi-location as a mirror image except that the images are real and must all take the same action.
• Instability of history. The final stage is reached when the users past is altered. It starts innocently enough, she wore a different color cloak this morning perhaps, or she memorized different spells. As it progresses, however, she might have her gear altered, or even her class or race. Finally she could be removed from existence entirely as her birth never happened. Whether she can be recovered (or even remembered by the rest of the party) is up to the DM. At minimum, however, she should be transported to another plane and lose the coil.

The key to DMing for the silver coil is that it is unpredictable and may have an intelligence of its own. A sufficiently strong willed individual will be able to control it for a time, but it will always disappear before too long. Its spatial twists can affect areas as large as a tunnel complex and may or may not be permanent after the coil is gone. The same is true for effects of the third stage of the curse. In addition, the usual problems of extra-dimensional spaces do not apply to the coil. It can be safely stored within a bag of holding, for example (whether it stays there is a different matter).