Contract of Binding

Easily mistaken for a scroll if found as treasure, this item is actually a magical contract, usually contained in an ivory tube and scribed in black ink on golden-brown vellum. The details of the contract are blank, and the user can fill it in with any instructions, agreement, or conditions he cares to create. When the contract is signed, though, the item’s true power is revealed to both parties, and any signatory who breaks the contract is subject to a curse that strikes it blinded, deafened, and mute (no saving throw, though spell resistance applies). The curse of a contract of binding can be removed only by means of remove curse cast by an 8th-level spellcaster or a break enchantment spell (DC 25).

Because a contract typically involves two parties agreeing on a set of conditions, nonspecific terms might allow a clever signatory to escape them without suffering the contract’s curse. For example, if an adventurer signs a contract with a king stating that she will slay a dragon in the Northern Hills by the eve of the new moon, the contract is effectively open-ended by virtue of its not specifying “the next new moon,” even if that was both parties’ meaning and intent.

Contracts signed by creatures under the influence of charm or compulsion effects are null and void.

Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, lesser geas.

Cost to Create: 700 gp, 56 XP, 2 days.

Source: Complete Arcane, page 148. Originally named contract of Nepthas after a spell from the Advanced D&D 2nd Edition book Powers and Pantheons of the goddess Nepthas that does something similar.