Ghost Swords

The Ghost Swords were apparitions of swords created by priests of Selûne to protect and aid the people of Turmish.

Description
They took the form of swords with sharp naked blades, but were translucent and ghost-like and glowed with a white light. Moreover, they flew through the air of their own accord.

Powers
The product of an ancient enchantment laid upon the whole land of Turmish, the Ghost Swords appeared sometimes on moonlit nights. When one was first sighted, it was suspended vertically in the air, its tip downward, but on being observed it started to move and fly through the air. They would pass through walls and earth and through plants and creatures without harm. The swords could not be grabbed, nor controlled or dispelled with magic, nor contacted with psionics, and no spell or psionic power would reveal what, if any, intelligence or being was behind them.

Invariably, the Ghost Swords led the one who had encountered it to an injured person needing aid, to a lost child or sheep or other animal needing rescue, to where bandits had their hideout, or else to where lost items or treasure could be found. After that, the Ghost Sword faded from view, but could reappear if the rescuer had overlooked something or someone and was about to depart.

While it was unknown how many Ghost Swords there were or how many could exist at one time, they were known to have been sighted in different places across Turmish on a single night. Although not commonly known, a byproduct of the enchantment was that it also prevented the creation of similar images of swords—glowing, translucent, flying swords, specifically—by any person or power anywhere within Turmish, so there were no bogus Ghost Swords.

History
A grand many-spired temple to Selûne once stood in the woods between the Alaoreum and Aphrunn Mountains. The priests there created the Ghost Swords that protected the realm, since before it was even known as 'Turmish'.

But in the early 4 century DR, a raiding dragon obliterated the temple and slew the priesthood with it. Nothing would remain of the temple by the 1300s DR, bar legends of deep buried vaults still filled with treasures and potions.

Nevertheless, the Ghost Swords remained, whether through the magical might of the old priests, the work of surviving priests through the ages, or the will of the Moonmother herself. Either way, the Ghost Swords sightings would continue for over a thousand years, into the mid–14 century DR.

Reputation
For centuries, all the people of Turmish knew to follow a Ghost Sword, and the militia patrols would react and pursue them without hesitation.

They inspired the founding of the Ghost Swords band of defenders, who took their name from the apparitions and who kept watch for threats to Turmish. Their symbol was a hanging white sword on a black field.

Travelers' tales supposed that the Ghost Swords inspired the Bright Sword cult in Thentia in the Moonsea, as well as venerations of flying blades in Calimshan and the city-states around the Lake of Steam.