A soul-taker weapon is an artifact peculiar to the Nathi. It is most commonly a dagger, less commonly a sword, that is made of the same crystal found in most other Nathi magic artifacts.

When used to break the skin of a victim, the dagger sucks the victim -- body, spirit, and usually everything they're wearing or carrying -- into the dagger. Once within, the victim perceives himself as being within a virtual world, which is under the control of the one wielding the dagger. Usually, the wielder may enter the world within the dagger and interact with those imprisoned within, by falling asleep with any part of the dagger in contact with bare skin.

A variant of these are the crystal rings commonly worn by rich Nathi, which function like the daggers once they contain someone, and either have an alternate method of capturing the victim, or must have the victim transferred into it from a soul-taker dagger.

The precise details vary from dagger to dagger and ring to ring, depending on construction.

Upon first seeing the Nathi use these weapons, the Elves declared jihad against them. To an Elf, who may be confident of remembering all his past lives at some point in his life, to remove an Elven katra (immortal soul) from circulation is the ultimate blasphemy. Thus, the Elves have declared that all free Nathi must be enslaved or killed, and all enslaved Nathi must never be allowed to touch their Power again. More on this later.

Since there seems to be a great deal of confusion, let me explain a few things.

I'm going to call a "primary weapon" one that is intended to be used while held in the hand, or propelled by the hand. A "secondary weapon" is one intended to be launched by another weapon. Thus, a dagger is primary, even if it is thrown. A longbow is a primary weapon, but an arrow is a secondary, since it is fired by the longbow. A special case is a spear-head, since only the head would be crystal, and it would be propelled by the shaft of the spear, the spear-head is secondary as well.

Soul-taker weapons can only be primary, for technical reasons known only to crystalworkers, and it is decreed by GM fiat that any terms they use in their explanation will be incomprehensible to the layman, which includes all but Samas. This is why a soul-taker arrow does not enter the picture.

The difficulty of making a weapon a soul-taker increases with the weapon size, so that a broadsword is about as big as you're going to find one.

If a soul-taker weapon is shattered (very difficult to do, by the way), all those it contains are released, in the exact state they were in when captured. If the crystal is in a volcano, the cause of death will be burning for the inhabitants, rather than the release itself.

Anyone can use a soul-taker, and as long as the target has a mind, it will capture the target. This happens soon enough after the weapon peirces the target's skin that the cut the weapon inflicts is not seen on the victim when they are released. No magical ability is neeed in order to use the dagger.

Each soul-taker implement has a trigger-condition which will cause it ro capture. For weapons, this is almost always when it breaks the target's skin. For rings, it varies with the wielder's intent and with the item's construction. It's usually something like "The next person who wears/falls asleep wearing/touches the ring who isn't me, gets captured," or something like that.