Magic Evil... Thingy

[Darth Grall]

I could use some suggestions for what item to place in my encounter in my homebrew game. We're playing with PF, but they're familiar with earlier editions so nearly any magic item is game save for my qualms below.

Quick Scenario Description:
For my upcomming session, my players are going to encounter a truely massive mob of zombies and be forced into a town whose borders are Hallowed to prevent their entry(though the party can fight through the zeds if they really want, but that would be a hard encounter vs a challenging one). Assuming this goes as planned, in the center of the town is a Church, where the mayor lives(the son of the cleric who hallowed the town). Shortly after their arrival, a Graveknight will begin attacking the town. His goal however is not neccasarily to kill the players but to uncover an item buried under the church(protected by magical whatnots). If he beats them to it, he'll destroy it for an Illusroy Script hidden inside to return to his "boss"; and thus begin laying the groundwork for the upcomming villian.
End Description.

Thus I'm stuck on what to place. There is a good the chance the item could fall into player hands, which would be cool since then the Graveknight would have a reason to follow them around then, but I don't want to place something super powerful for them to abuse(APL is ~6). On the other hand, it should be substantiably evil and potentially cool so that they recognize what's at stake if a baddie's willing to destroy a powerful object just to get to a message hidden inside.

Any suggestions?

[Lapak]

It's not evil explicitly, but 'powerful, destructible, something that could have created the Hallowed region, something that can fall into PC control without breaking the campaign, makes sense to be located in a cathedral, and any edition is a viable source' makes me jump straight to Heward's Mystical Organ.

[Blightedmarsh]

Relic of some description, the bones of a (dread) saint pehapse? An (un)holy symbol maybe?

[blazinghand]

How about the bones of a dead anti-saint? Perhaps some great villain was defeated a thousand years ago, and his remains were entombed beneath the church so that he could never be raised from the dead. Now a follower of the religion he founded has deciphered the ancient texts and learned where he is kept. If the PCs find the skeleton, they will have to keep it away from his followers who are trying to bring him back to life so he can shroud the world in darkness once again.

[Xervous]

For some reason, the place being hallowed seems to clash just a tiny bit with the idea of a powerful evil object residing there...

I would have it be just a powerful/important object that can be turned towards evil purposes, maybe even corrupted (irrevocably?)

[Darth Grall]

For some reason, the place being hallowed seems to clash just a tiny bit with the idea of a powerful evil object residing there...Blazinghand's got it on conceptually, the points that something evil was sealed in a holy place to make it harder for evil things to get to it.

As for ideas:


A generic powerful/important object - If the other things don't pan out, sure.
Bones of an Evil Saint - A very cool concept, though when the Graveknight breaks it they might get confused... Still might go with it though.
Heward's Mystical Organ- Don't know what this does. What's it from?

[blazinghand]

Oh, I've got it-- maybe it's just a skeleton, but there's a plate embedded in the skull that contains the Name of the figure, who was only known by his title, The Destroyer or something similarly eerie. And the Resurrection Spell requires that you say his Name or something (or that he recognize you, which he won't unless you know his Name). So the guy wants to break open the skull? And take the rest of the remains back to be Resurrected.

[Lapak]

Heward's Mystical Organ- Don't know what this does. What's it from?Sounds like you might be on the track of something that's more in-theme with what you were going for, but:

The Organ is a 1e/2e artifact. It's a great big pipe organ (the musical instrument) with pedals and twenty-odd stops (with dozens of positions each) that alter the sound and tone. When you play upon it, a magical effect occurs. Usually big, almost entirely unpredictable. Every combination of settings (literally thousands of settings) combined with a particular song produces a different effect. Think a Wand of Wonder, but blown up to Artifact proportions; a town-wide Permanent Hallow effect is entirely within the scope of something that might happen. (Or a rain of toads, or every weapon within a mile becoming enchanted for 24 hours, or a blight killing every plant in the area, or everyone who can hear the Organ being teleported to the Elemental Plane of Fire...)

It's extremely powerful but non-portable. It's also one of only two artifacts I'm aware of that are explicitly destructible through ordinary means (i.e. you can just smash it.) It reforms after destruction somewhere else, of course.

EDIT: Oh, right. And you can find it in the 2e Book of Artifacts or the 1e DMG.