This is an old revision of the document!
The Shovel Of Alden traces back to a game I ran in an online format on a forum, long ago, while working a boring office job. A coworker joined the game with a character named Aldin, a goodly paladin, initially. I introduced an evil god that wanted to corrupt his character, and for reasons I forget now, a shovel became Alden's weapon of choice for smiting things. The evil god eventually bestowed a vampiric power on the shovel so that attacking with it did some decent damage and also stole hit points from the target and gave them to Alden.
Later, that game long past, I'd reintroduce the “Shovel Of Alden” as a cursed shovel weapon that does vampiric damage and ultimately works to corrupt the PC that has it. It's pretty hard for a player to resist running around with a shovel that actually heals them and lets them beat the snot out of things, so I deemed this fun enough to keep returning to.
Currently whomever Alden is/was isn't known to the players, but the Cult Of Alden exists.