Wand of darkness

A wand of darkness was a magical wand that could not be used by good people.

Description
Wands of darkness were made of ebony or carved and polished bone. Some had ornamentation in the form of claws at one or both ends of the wand.

Powers
There were three requirements to use a wand of darkness. First, the user needed to be sentient. Second, the user needed to be capable of speech for the wand was activated by command word. Lastly, the user could not be good. Not only could good people could not use the wand, it was also dangerous to them. The wand actually harmed good would-be users.

The wand was created with eighty-one to one hundred charges. These charges could be replenished by clerics and wizards who knew the right spells and were strong enough. On being drained completely of charges, the wand turned into dust and the user's arms were withered. The latter effect could be reverted with a heal, regeneration, restoration, or limited wish spell.

The wand had a total of four powers for certain, while about a tenth of them had an additional fifth power. First, it could create a darkness, 15' radius, which the user could see through, for four minutes with the wand's tip as the center; this ability cost one charge. Second, the wand could end any protection from evil spell or harm a good person with heat; this ability cost two charges. Third, the user could summon a nightmare for nine minutes. This ability worked only two in three times and it took one to three minutes for the nightmare to appear in an explosion of black smoke and brimstone. Fourth, the wand could cast animate dead on one corpse of 7 feet (2.1 meters) in size or smaller, which served for six minutes. It cost four charges to animate the corpse again after these six minutes. The fifth ability, which only one in ten of the wands had, was the ability to summon an undead shadow. This ability worked only once in three times, but two in three times in deep caverns or ancient ruins. The shadow would not attack any creatures who were touching the wand, and they did not need to be the summoner.

History
The wands of darkness were associated with the drow.