D&D General World Building: Artifacts and Relics

[LuisCarlos17f]

Indiana Jones, Lara Croft(Tomb Raider), Sidney Fox(Relic Hunter TV serie) or Nathan Drake(Uncharted) are examples of how artifacts can be the origing of epic quests, but also bloodied conflicts.

If you want an important artifacts to not be stolen, then this should be totally secret and unknown, but if there is intention to be used.

In 3.5 a relic is a sacred magic item, and even there was a craft feat to create them in The Divine Complete.

Some times I imagine some D&D "artifacts" like "soulstones" (Mage: the Awakening).

A right worldbuilding shoudl avoid artifacts to be too necessary for "Historical" events.

Some "artifacts" aren't portable objetcts but buildings, for example temples. Or to work would need a ritual or ceremony with a group of loyal wordshippers.

* But I don't like the trope of "to save the realms we have to explore the ancient dungeons with traps to find that sacred relic".

 

[RoughCoronet0]

I have different classifications of Artifact is my world, with Relics being one of those classifications.

Relics are artifacts that came into existence during the Age of Creation and the three eras within. The first era was the time the Primordials created the Material Plane and the Creator Deities created life and and order on said plane. The second era was the war for dominance between these two powerful forces known as the Creator Wars (essentially the Dawn Wars). The third era ending the age of creation with the Serpent’s Sundering, which was the war between the victorious Creator Deities and their mightiest creations who would end up usurping the old creators and becoming the new gods.

These Relics are powerful and practically impossible to duplicate because most were created either by the Gods and Primordials that have been banished from the world and connected planes, or using untamed and old magic that no longer exists in the same quantity today. One such Relic is an arcane staff simply known as Origins, that was said to be gifted by Hekzia the Serpent of Secrets to the first mortal she gifted the forbidden knowledge of Arcane magic to, turning them into the first Sorcerer and allowing the mortals to protect themselves from the destruction wreck by the gods and primordials with this knowledge.