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Price of Vigilance: This +3 lawful defender bastard sword has a fairly unremarkable appearance. It is made of steel, with a crossguard and hilt made of a darker steel. The hilt is wrapped in black leather, which always has several bloodstains on it that appear to have just dried. The only truly unusual feature is the shield-like symbol on the hilt, which is made of tiny interlocking three-pointed inlays made of ivory. Some speculate that this weapon is one of three of its kind (as represented by the three points of each symbol), especially as a broken bastard sword bearing a part of this symbol was found in the hands of a dead adventurer in the Dungeon of Swords, although no trace of the rumored third weapon has even been found.     Price of Vigilance was created somewhere in the Vilhon Reach approximately 1242 DR, and is recorded as property of a Helmite caravan guardian in Ormpetarr (Sespech) in 1244 DR, where it is listed simply as a minor defending weapon. The next time the sword appears is in the logs of the mage Turinsar the White-Armed in Waterdeep, who bought it in 1301 DR from an unnamed Calishite sorcerer who reputedly took it from the hoard of a young red dragon. Turinsar noted that the weapon has three enhancement bonuses and is a defender weapon. He sold the weapon in 1302 DR to Klanaus Ironhand, a cleric of Helm known for collecting and creating magic weapons sanctified to Helm. It is believed that Klanaus gave the weapon its remaining properties over the next few years, and then awarded it to Helm Graywood (another Helmite cleric) in 1355 DR as a boon for slaying a cabal of Banite clerics. He disappeared during the Time of Troubles and the weapon has not been seen since.     In addition to its primary properties, The Price of Vigilance has the ability to cast shield other once per day. If the bearer has not used this power of the sword in a while, the weapon sometimes activates this power automatically upon a worthy nearby person, forcing them to protect that person until the spell expires.     Caster Level: 9, Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, shield or shield of faith, order's wrath, shield other, creator must be lawful,; Market Price: 85,335 gp; Cost to Create: 42,835 gp + 3,400 XP. Pricing:     A +3 lawful defender is a +6-equivalent, or 72,000 gp.     Shield other 1/day at caster level 9 (which is the default for the rest of the sword's powers) is 2 x 9 x 1,800 (command word activated) / 5=6,480. Doubled because it's a secondary property=12,960, which rounds off to 13,000 to make the numbers pretty. This brings the total magical cost to 85,000.     Half of that is the cost to create, or 42,500 gp.     1/25 the magic price is the XP cost, or 3,400.     Add in the 335 gp for a masterwork bastard sword and you get the final costs.