Physical Form for an Artifact

[Ruined]

My players, stay out please.


Hello all. In my current campaign, I've left out a bothersome detail that I'll need to fulfill soon. The characters will soon learn that an adversary has located a long-lost artifact. I'm looking for a good idea on what shape or form the artifact has.

Details are: It's split into two parts, whether they be equal halfs, or obvious part A and part B does not matter to me.

One of the results of this item will be cold and snow. Does not have to be intrinsic to its form, but might help in ideas.


Any cool ideas spring to mind for you experienced GMs out there?

 

[arwink]

If it hasn't been detailed yet, why give it a physical form? Just have the artifact manifest as a cloud of magical energy around the bearer.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Are you talking combat cold spell type things or large scale freeze the kingdom cold?

If you are talking the latter then you could make it a magical snow globe. You know one of those annoying souvenirs people buy that when you shake the "snow" swirls around inside.

To make it a little more interesting the "town" inside the snowglobe is an actual image of wherever the magical cold weather is being targetted. This could be right down to seeing the towns people walking around as the globes secondary abilities as a crystal ball become apparent.

To expand on this the two parts of the artifact could be the crystal ball and its base. The crystal ball has all the powers to affect cold but it has a drawback. You have to hold it to use it and it gets damn cold quickly doing damage to the caster and dropping the temperature in the area around him giving away where he is.

Once you find its base though these drawbacks disapear making the artifact easier to use and hide its use.

 

[Quinn]

The artifact could be a pair of statues that together form one single scene. The statues reflect the balance of good and evil within nature. One statue could be a demon, an elemental or a storm giant, and represents nature at it's most tempetuous and destructive. It could have powers that include fire and cold, elemental forces that destroy. The other could something like a unicorn, or a treant, etc., representing nature's healing and nurturing side. Perhaps it has powers that represent healing and life or are based on elements such as earth and water. Together the two statues represent harmony and balance. The statues could be elven or maybe sacred to a druidic order.

 

[Ruined]

In response to DocMoriartty's question, this is more of a Freeze the Kingdom kind of cold artifact. It will have some powers in its split forms, minor things, maybe Cone of Cold, etc.

And for arwink, yeah, it does need to have a physical form in my opinion. I'm looking towards one of those old scenarios like in the G.I. Joe cartoons, where the bad guy has one half of the uber-powerful device and the good guys are scrambling to get the other to prevent them from succeeding.

Thanks so far!

 

[Carnifex]

Two perfect hemispherical spheres of cloudy blue-white crystal; perfectly smooth, cool surfaces. This means they don't look all that special, just pretty or odd, until someone realises that no matter what he does he can't break them or even scratch them; nothing can marr their perfection...

The full artifact being the two combined of course

 

[WayneLigon]

Maybe the artifact could be two people or creatures instead, one of whom forms this effect (freeze the kingdom) the closer they are to each other. Perhaps a god-touched mother and child, or twin brothers. The Bad People have one, need the other.

 

[Ruined]

Thanks, so far. I'm leaning towards the snow-globe idea at the moment.

 

[grodog]

theRuinedOne---

You might also consider playing with various non-traditional ideas on cold, especially if you want to try to throw your players off a little. Cold can be caused by many ways:

- blocking light
- creating shadows or darkness
- water + air = cold
- something that sucks heat out of things
- etc.

You could have an artifact that opened a gate to the demi-plane of ice. You could have an artifact that commands the creation and movement glaciers.

If you're curious, I wrote some general guidelines on artifact creation and usage for the Living Greyhawk Journal that were cut from the published version of the article. They cut material appears on Canonfire! at http://www.canonfire.com/html/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=268

It may give you some other ideas, too.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

If you use it let me know how it works out.

It should be interesting since putting the two parts together doesnt add power but instead take away dangerous side-effects.

Thanks, so far. I'm leaning towards the snow-globe idea at the moment.