Destroying occult items

[Jd Smith1]

I'm prepping for a long-term Flames of Freedom campaign (historical), and it looks like the PCs will be acquiring a number of dangerous occult items during the course of their operations.

What would be a good way to destroy Cthulhu Mythos-type occult items, staying within the conditions set below?
1) It is 1776
2) The PCs have no access to magic of any sort.
3) The process will not involve anything at all religious, even in the slightest degree.

 

[John Dallman]

Acquiring a windmill or watermill, and grinding said items to dust might well work. It has the advantage that the PCs don't have to be on the scene if it goes badly. Just don't use the mill for grinding foodstuffs afterwards.

 

[aco175]

You still have the classic- lock it in a chest and throw it in the ocean trope.

I kept thinking of other things and could link them to religion somehow. Something like sand from the grave of a pharaoh, or a native Indian ceremony. I was finding that a lot of the scientific thinking was tied to religion, especially back then.

 

[Jer]

1) Burn it with fire. If that's too mundane burn it in fire built from a specific kind of wood coated in alchemical powders.

2) Immersion in pure running water.

3) Dipping it in liquid lead/iron/silver/some other occultish metal

4) (For a darker turn) Can only be destroyed as part of a blood sacrifice - someone has to die to destroy the item.

5) You can't destroy them - you have no choice but to lock them away somewhere to keep them out of the hands of others in some kind of vault.

6) Every item has its own unique ritual that needs to be performed based on the mythos that it's tied to. So a whistle that summons the Hounds of Tindalos would need to be placed in a perfectly spherical room with no angles in it for a prime number of days, or a tome tied to the Mi-Go needs to be treated with certain alchemical anti-fungal reagents. Not magic rituals per se but things the PCs can do that are the antithesis of what the item was meant to do is often the thing that destroys it in those kinds of stories.

 

[Umbran]

I have always been partial to "crushed under the foot of a humble ant" myself.

I cannot think of any occult traditions from that era that are, for lack of a better term, humanistic. They are all informed/inspired by and related to someone's religious practices.

We might note that, after the Roman era, use of concrete became extremely rare. The technology was redeveloped in the mid-18th century. So, to folks of 1776, concrete would seem quite extraordinary, making "sink it in a block of concrete, and dump it in the ocean" seem novel in context.

How an item may be destroyed will depend a bit on what the item is, at least thematically. An elder sign amulet made of an unidentifiable material from beyond the stars might be a bit of a head-scratcher, while an enchanted pair of normal period spectacles is just a matter of crushing lenses and scattering the dust and fragments along a mile of beach.

 

[J.Quondam]

Destroy it with lightning. Consultation with Ben Franklin optional.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Destroy it with lightning. Consultation with Ben Franklin optional.

That is a really innovative idea (the lighting).

 

[Ulfgeir]

Put it way down in a deep dry well or mine, then use copious amounts of gunpower to seal it in there.

Bury it in the middle of a salt desert.

Immerse it in a bath of the strongest acid you can find.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

What is the artifact and it's history? Ideally you want something thematic and relevant to the individual item rather than a generic go to method.

If you need generic - write a thesis disproving it as occult and explaining it as SCIENCE!, wrap the item in the pages, and seal it in a bust of one of the founders of the Age of Enlightenment... you KANT go wrong with that option!

Barring that... have Washington eat them with his super dentures.

 

[Jd Smith1]

What is the artifact and it's history? Ideally you want something thematic and relevant to the individual item rather than a generic go to method.

This is a long-term campaign. There will be many objects.

If you need generic - write a thesis disproving it as occult and explaining it as SCIENCE!, wrap the item in the pages, and seal it in a bust of one of the founders of the Age of Enlightenment... you KANT go wrong with that option!

Barring that... have Washington eat them with his super dentures.

.