The Pendant of Ashaba
The Pendant of Ashaba is a magical device created by the water wizard of Shadowdale shortly before he joined with the river that also bears his name. The Pendant has two known powers:
- The Pendant, upon command, will say in the voice of the old wizard, "The bearer of this token be the one and true lord of Shadowdale."
- The Pendant also has the limited ability to know alignment as the spell, but with severe limitations. The pendant will only detect the most extreme of alignments - the glorious good and law of a paladin, the villainy of the most black-hearted scoundrel, the peaceful balance of the most devoted druid. The more common alignments of evil and good, law and chaos found among ordinary people are lost to this device (though they would be revealed by the spell of the same name).
- The Pendant may have other abilities, at the DM's option. However, these additional abilities should be limited in nature (no lightning bolts or raise dead spells), otherwise, their nature would have been revealed previous to this time.
It is thought that this limitation to the Pendant's use of the know alignment spell is due to the limitations of Ashaba himself, but a minority (including Elminster himself) have put forward the idea that this version of know alignment is an improvement, since it bypasses "the everyday humdrum allegiances and petty vices of the people, and thereby prevents the local lord from dividing his people into good and evil camps."
The Pendant of Ashaba is a silver crescent moon, with the horns pointed upwards. It was originally hung from a plain thong, but during the rule of Aumry this was replaced with a simple silver chain crafted by the witch Sylune.