Neat Historical Artifacts for a game

[olethros]

Can we please leave out stuff like FDR's monocle, or whatever? I doubt that's what the guy who started this thread was looking for. Yes, Lincoln wore a hat. But that doesn't mean he derived some kind of power from it. Have there ever been legends regarding the power of Lincolns hat?

Actually, I started this thread and that stuff doesn't bother me. I basically wanted this to be a brainstorming exercise to help develop ideas.

In this campiagn, it's a low-magic setting. Magic items can't be crafted, but rather some unique set of events would imbue them with power. The items themselves aren't extraordinary, but if soemone did soemthing extraordinary witht he items it would imbue the items with power. Kinda like how the grail is supposed to have holy powers because of what happened to it.

Maybe Billy the Kid was supernaturally fast and when he died some of that ability was deposited in the revolvers? That's kinda what I'm thinking of.

On the other hand, I'd like to include magical artifacts that were magical to begin with, like Excalibur.

Along the lines of the previous post....
Can anybody think of some famous Native American artifacts?

 

[philreed]

Ronin Arts will be coming out with a PDF product, 101 Legendary Treasures of Medieval Europe. (Unlike the other 101 books, it won't be written by Phillip J. Reed.) Here's the direct link to the PDF preview:

http://www.philipjreed.com/images/101legendarypreview.pdf

Thanks for mentioning the product. It's being illustrated by Christopher Shy right now and will be available in a week or two. It's 40 pages and will be priced at $5.

Another sample from the PDF:

Titulus, the True Cross of Jesus the Christ
History/Description: One of the first artifacts of the Christian religion, and often duplicated by charlatans across all of Europe, the Fragment of the True Cross first resurfaced during the reign of Constantine when it was brought back to Rome by his mother during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, St. Helena. During the middle ages it became a blessed artifact carried by the Crusader knights, throughout the Crusades, until it was eventually lost along with the fall of Christian Jerusalem.
Special Properties: The Fragment of the True Cross appears as a fragmented and weathered piece of wood, which has the following spell-like abilities for the possessor of the fragment, as an 18th level caster: Healing Circle (6/day), Mass Heal (2/day), Remove: Blindness/ Deafness/ Disease/ Paralysis (at will), Greater Restoration (1/day) and True Resurrection (1/week). The possessor also has a bonus + 4 to Fortitude and Reflex, and a +6 to Willpower saving throws. Also, if the possessor’s party enters melee and the possessor does NOT engage in any melee combat throughout the entire combat, and merely tries to heal wounded/dead party members, the character gets a + 20 AC bonus vs. attacks of opportunity.
Weight: 1 lb.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

We live in a secular and humanist age, ascribing animistic, totemic power to common everyday items (see my Pamela Anderson quote) due to someone using them for a game is not anything I respect or applaud (despite what fans of American Military history might have to say)

Stuff from distant history? I'm all over it. Excalibur, The Grail etc. all good.

Stuff from the Age of my grandfather? not so worthy of the term "Artifact" (in the D&D sense).

So, you wouldn't give a perform bonus to a bard using Jimi Hendrix's guitar or John Bonham's drum kit? What about wearing Joey Ramones rose colored sunglasses?

 

[Amrynn Moonshadow]

oh, why stop there?

Bill Clinton's box of cigars (Cha bonus, to say the least)

The chair of Geraldo (high crit range chair)

The Bat of Barry Bonds (lets you hit homers)

The Corked bat (lets you hit farther, but is corrupting)

The Frankfurter of the Ballpark

Clown Make-up which makes you able to take over the globe with multinational corps. (do you know how many mcdonald's there are?)

Flight Suit of AWOL (nuff said)

Golden Shoes of Michael Johnson (makes you claim to be fastest runner in the world, the epic title for the winner of a race he wasn't in, and then have him lose a race to the real fastest -- ie. cursed artifact)

Glove Of Jackson (changes your race over time)

Dust of Whitney (makes you a crack wh*re)

Glove of OJ (it doesn't fit, but can cast Thrall at will upon entire town populations)

Helm of Madden (uh . . .)

Rod of A Rod (uh . . .)

Some Random American guy on a bus' Bus Pass (freedom of movement at will, permanently slowed . . .)

The Death Shroud of HMO (cannot stabalize by yourself, can only stabalize if you have enough gold on you)

Clintons Cat Socks

Eyebrow of Dukakis

Microphone of Barker (bob barkers mic)

Spoon that James Brown once used at some Diner outside of Dearborn, Mi (obviously epic artifact which like a sponge, became such a great spoon from just being used by him . . .)

Man, it's reasoning like that I wonder why the FR isn't full of enchanted water closets for whenever Elminster takes a poop!

Underpants of Taft -- it makes you fat, i think

Something else cool that was owned by each and every famous American evah! (from Necklace of Mr.T to Goggles of Sanunu (sp?) to Shirt of David Schwimmer to )

Not to be completely abrasive, if it's a low magic world, why does everybody who's ever had a favorite shirt which they were identified with pass along magical characteristics to it?

Things like the True Cross, or Shroud of Turin or Holy Grail, yes, we all can agree these are massive things which require such mention. I just find that this is getting absurd. We all love american history and it's undoubted dominion due to high pop cultural achievements. But they do have their limits. Maybe if the game was purely run from the 70's onwards then having all these things in the game would be usefull. But if you are looking for magic items which span the entire collective history of the world (not just the modern one, from the middle ages and up) than some random american general's corn cob pipe does not fit on the same page as, say, Noah's Arc, or The Hubble Telescope -- or even The Golden Club of Hanuman. (did he do much else besides smoke and strike poses with that pipe? was it instrumental to his success? perhaps, but not the same way a favorite sword would be to a knight -- that on the other hand is more worthy of accumulating magical properties by association, something that has saved someones' life, or something.)

Please excuse me while i wear my bunny slippers of jon arbuckle which gives me the ability to be manipulated by fat orange cats . . .

 

[Djeta Thernadier]

One word...


Sampo!

(mst3k fans and people familiar with Finnish legend will get that).

 

[smetzger]

Baba Yaga's Hut

Can't believe this one hasn't been mentioned yet...

Baba Yaga's Hut

 

[fusangite]

Well, now that people are becoming cantankerous and argumentative, I think I'll throw in the opinion I've been harbouring all along.

I see people re-inventing Lincoln's hat and Gandhi's walking stick as magic items as a logical function of the ideology of ENWorld. Whenever Teflon Billy and I make generalizations about groups of people (no matter how grounded in reality these might be), the chorus is always, "No. That can't be true. Everyone must be the same."

I think the ease with which people come up with objects to associate with real historical figures is the compatibility of this notion with the ENWorld political ideology. Lincoln can't have been any better or worse than anyone else; it must have been his hat. Gandhi can't have been any better or worse than anyone else; it must have been his stick. If Billy the Kid was supernaturally fast, this speed came not from him having a God-given endowment of magical speed but him luckily running across an artifact that anyone could have found.

Now, I'm not suggesting that ENWorlders actually believe such assertions but I think the ease with which many can slip into this thinking is a function of the anti-specialness ideology the boards generally reflect. In other words, when we are asked to invent myths about the real world, it is no surprise that the myths we create are consistent with the general ideology of our community. Thus, when ENWorlders create myths derived from human history, it is no wonder that they de-emphasize human agency, choice and inherent talent/distinctiveness.

Anyway, here was my standard for why some objects made the cut and some didn't: objects that made the cut as "magical objects" were those objects whose legends/history actually called them magical/mystical; those I didn't include were those objects whose legends/history didn't identify them as such. I don't think it's a chronological thing -- most Mormon magic items were invented in the 19th century, the century which gave us Lincoln and Billy the Kid. My rule for listing magical objects is pretty darn simple: if the myth of the object claims it's magical, it's in; if the myth doesn't, it's out.

There is no shortage of items in the world that call themselves magical/mystical; I don't see why we need to invent magical/mystical stories of objects which, in effect, actually undermine the myths from which they are derived. There are powerful myths about the greatness of Gandhi and Lincoln; if we want to add to these myths, the least we can do is come up with stories that do not undermine these myths. Gandhi's myth is that of the selfless, anti-materialistic ascetic; telling a story that invests power in an object he possessed detracts from the themes of personal heroism and anti-materialism around which the Gandhi myth is based.

 

[Teflon Billy]

So, you wouldn't give a perform bonus to a bard using Jimi Hendrix's guitar or John Bonham's drum kit? What about wearing Joey Ramones rose colored sunglasses?

Uh...no, I wouldn't.

I suspect Jimi had more than one guitar in his career, and I guarantee that Joey had more than one set of sunglasses (plus no talent to "mystically transfer" )

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

When I was thinking of items to post in this thread, I reasoned that an item used or owned by a historical figure would inherit some of that person's power or abilities after that persons death, similar to the way the Catholic church considers items owned or used by the saints to be relics. Therefor, if an item was used by a person for some famous deed, or was something that was considered to be part of their personal mythology, then it was important enough to give some sort of power to. The abilites come from the person, not the items. It is not about "people must be the same, therefor the power came from an object" but the exact opposite. The person was different, powerful, or better at something than everyone else, and that is precisly why the item associated with them has taken on some of those characteristics. When olethros started this thread, he asked for historical artifacts. Thats what we gave him. Yes, some were silly (I was kidding about the guitar, drums, & sunglasses, obviously), but many of them are items I would have no problems ascribing powers to and using in a game, if it was appropriate.

 

[andargor]

The Trumpets of Jericho.

Casts Earthquake. It takes 7 days of ritual dancing by a minimum of 100 people to activate it's power.

Andargor