The Demonic Masks of OOR'rshu For Your Old School Campaigns

Out in the desert wastelands of OOR'rshu there are thousands of masks that litter the sands. Their dead and staring eyes betray nothing but the sound of the wind scattering itself across the plains. These masks each houses one of the A.I. demon intelligences that were summoned to the shores of OOR'rshu when the Earth was young.

Some mad and quite stupid shamans or wise men seek these relics out for each one contains one of those damned and terrifying intelligence that once ruled OOR'rshu. Then these things from a forgotten hell of nether concepts tempted the human populace to don their masks & 'ascend' to the demon stars. Their souls are forever now stored in the cold, dead, star stuff gathered by the demon things only to be torn apart again & again.Most right minded peoples will have no truck with these relics of the damned.

These masks will grant a ten percent magic resistance to their owner but it comes with the knowledge that there is another watching just over the shoulder of the owner. The owner will grow a covering of demonic slime that will make them immune from electrical & poison once the mask's intelligence makes telepathic contact with the owner. This hellish stuff is thick, ropy, gooey, smelling of a strange hellish lubricant or something much worse. Animals will flee from the stench of the stuff.

The owner may cast 3 second level black magic spells per day but they take 1/2 points of damage as bits & pieces of their soul stuff is eaten by the intelligence. The demon intelligence will try to tempt the owner into casting more spells from higher levels telepathically. The mask will grant another level for every three points of damage the fool allows it to do. This damage will appear as dark purple blotches on the surface of the owner's skin. This is temporary damage & will heal within three days as damned soul absorbs the astral echoes of the spiritual damnation. The mask can be used to cast a contact other plane spell once per day or speak with the dead. There is a ten percent chance that instead the mask's intelligence will summon a demonic essence of incredible malignancy instead & the owner must use a successful wisdom roll to out smart this imitator. The masks are worth a cool 1000 gold pieces to the right collector of such black foul relics.  After 1d100 days the mask will summon demonic spiders for the owner's soul which it bargained for eons before the birth of the owner. They will take the former owner's soul away beyond the light of living stars.

“White spiders, demon-headed and large as monkeys, had woven their webs in the hollow arches of the bones; and they swarmed out interminably as Nushain approached; and the skeleton seemed to stir and quiver as they seethed over it abhorrently and dropped to the ground before the astrologer. Behind them others poured in a countless army, crowding and mantling every ossicle.”

― Clark Ashton Smith