I think both looting and gathering will only harvest items that have been previously dropped. The only way for _new_ items to appear in the game is from Champion/Alpha drops, or through Sages.
And the Sage will indeed, as long as he is in the same region at least, appear to you when you have a certain amount of hours left in your timepool. I'm pretty sure I read that on the Wiki somewhere.
http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Unique_items
Confirmed. For my one, 4 hours left to use in Ciarin Tut made me a Sage last week.
Also I am not sure, there was no record of it on the wiki but it would make sense that way too, someone drops it - i find it in bad condition, seems logical. Just wish people would make wiki records of things like this
