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One of my players is starting with an Artifact.

S

stealth

SOC-12
He wants it to be a mystery, so that leaves out the ring of flight and the cloak of invisibility. I also ruled out the hand mirror of AI. Now I'm stumped as to what to give him.

I considered a small white globe (so he can have a force field in a marble), a psychotronic device like a teleport ticket, a psi-point reservoir, a multi-gun or relativity rifle, and a weather control device once worshiped by cultists.

And yet, none of these things is doing it for me. What can you suggest?
 
stealth said:
He wants it to be a mystery, so that leaves out the ring of flight and the cloak of invisibility. I also ruled out the hand mirror of AI. Now I'm stumped as to what to give him.

I considered a small white globe (so he can have a force field in a marble), a psychotronic device like a teleport ticket, a psi-point reservoir, a multi-gun or relativity rifle, and a weather control device once worshiped by cultists.

And yet, none of these things is doing it for me. What can you suggest?
Click to expand...

how about a walki talkie like FTL communication device, but since he only has the one he can't use it. every now and then it can squawk or recieve an uninteligable signal.

R
 
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What about a wireless link to the font of all knowledge: a nearly invisible sub-vocal throat mike and ear plug which allows FTL connection to a universal encyclopedic data AI (the hidden location of which could form a sub-plot).

In game terms acts like a high level access to library data and a JOT-2 skill!
 
stealth said:
He wants it to be a mystery, so that leaves out the ring of flight and the cloak of invisibility. I also ruled out the hand mirror of AI. Now I'm stumped as to what to give him.
Click to expand...
Is that a mystery as in he knows he has an Artifact but he don't know what it does or he doesn't know he has an Artifiact?

A cylinder about the size of a shoulderbag. It has 64 different chambers and has six buttons set in the lid that switches one chamber for another when a button is touched (this gives 64 possible combinations). The previous owner disguised it as a cheap shoulderbag by covering it with synthetic cloth and adding a strap. He also covered up the control buttons on the lid with ther same material. There's a secret catch that allows access to the buttons. When jostled, the cylinder may randomly switch chambers (and thus contents). The previous owner had all sorts of nifty emergency travel equipment stored in the other chambers.​

(The previous owner would like to get his luggage back). ;)


Hans
 
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The key to a very old, alien, abandoned spacecraft. (I.e. The Annic Nova). The player won't have any info about it at all. But maybe several groups are looking for the key.
 
Here is an artifact I created recently for an adventure I'm writing:

Torc of Influence-

A large, rigid, neck ring made from strands of metal twisted together, joined in front by a black opal, which also forms the clasp. This torc makes one be able to extend their influence to make others feel as if the wearer's desires are their own, usually by spoken suggestion unless the wearer is psionic. The side effect is that to be exposed to the power and influence and the flood of everyones desire is a slow descent into madness by the wearer, as well as to be exposed to the law of unintended consequences of influencing others.

Here is a black opal:

frontnew1.jpg
 
How about one portal disc. The location of the master disc, and even the knowledge that there is a master disc, and even the knowledge that you need a master disc in order to operate this one, is unknown.

Or, if he isn't well-versed in Traveller adventures, an antimatter battery. Enough power to run a small starship for 100 years.
 
Try making it a Pet Rock, except the rock is a crystal and it eventually grows into a crystalline lifeform; if fed well and given enough energy. You can decide how much and what is necessary.
 
Perhaps it's a skill-sharer... a small crystal, set in a circlet. When a character lacks a skill for a given task, but someone in a few meters has skill 1+, the character gets "inspired" and acts without the full unskilled penalty.

Or a psi-null well. Looks like any old jeweled torc or circlet. Absorbs psionic effects used by or upon anyone within 1.5m of it.
 
A crystal sphere with a dozen different colored flecks gleaming inside it, and a ruby in dead center. The sphere represents a star map, with the flecks showing the place of star systems. If the party figures out what it is supposed to be and goes to the ruby, which is not anywhere according to the regular Imperial maps, he wins.
 
These are some great ideas.

I like the star-map gem as a first step in the mystery, but it should do something else, like the key-to-a-starship suggestion, or one end of a teleporter, or containing anti-matter....

Thanks guys :)
 
stealth said:
I like the star-map gem as a first step in the mystery, but it should do something else, like the key-to-a-starship suggestion, or one end of a teleporter, or containing anti-matter....

Thanks guys :)
Click to expand...

Maybe when he gets to the ruby system, the map flips to a new scale, showing the planet surface with a ruby at a particular location...

After several more scale flips, maybe it acts as a key to a door...
 
Hi

stealth said:
I like the star-map gem as a first step in the mystery, but it should do something else, like the key-to-a-starship suggestion, or one end of a teleporter, or containing anti-matter....

Thanks guys :)
Click to expand...

It could be like some modern personal GPS's or smart phones with GPS, where you can store the location of your car to make it easier to relocate it later.

In this case, maybe the "map" ultimately shows the location where an ancient starship was left by its owner many millennia ago.

This can eventually lead to an adventure where 1st the group must figure out what the device is, then how to power it and use it, then how to correct for stellar/galactic changes over the millenia since it was last used, then how to advance it to its next phase (ie, once you get to the star system in question, how do you now "zoom in", then ultimately how to retrieve the ship.

If a fully capable ancient ship is too big a prize for your group, you could have the final ship, when found, be catastrophically damaged, etc, but there may still be useful items in the wreakage, etc.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

Regards

Pat
 
So this got me thinking all day and I found some notes from an old game where an NPC was a theoretical physicist who had developed a gadget that detected the special emanations of Ancient artifacts (Q-rays or whatever). He fleed the Imperial University with his device when Imperial Military Intelligence threatened to take it away from him. Of course, the players didn't know this until after they had secured themselves an emperor's ransom in Ancient tech.

Along the same lines, an eager inventor is constantly harassing your player, trying to prove his Q-ray detector works; always a step or two behind and always trying to call in the Imperials to verify the veracity of his invention.
 
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I would try and make it somewhat useful in a utilitarian fashion but nothing that would dominate any aspect of the adventure. For example it is something about the size of a file card box with basically an on / off "switch" on it. But, placed in contact with two electronic devices (in working order) it will couple the two in a manner that allows them to work together (assuming a logical paring) and get a useful output.

Examples of this might be:

Your party is on a low tech planet that uses something akin to phonograph records or tape for recording data. You could hook a player device to a high tech computer with memory and your artifact would download the record to the computer's memory successfully or, vice versa (assuming that the media would hold the information).

Or, you could place a non-compatable electrical energy source next to say a power pack for a laser pistol and charge it successfully.

Useful, handy but, not something that overwhelms the game.
 
OK, I have this idea for a scene....

Pauldon Rigel, owner of the artifact, finally convinces the party psionic (Charity) to use clairvoyance on the object.

She sends her mind deep into the ruby spot, and sees a grandchild playing with a small star-gem, in a black space full of floating star-gems. Suddenly, it looks up straight at her, and reaches toward her face with a clawed hand.

In the real world, Paul sees an ectoplasmic clawed demon-limb come out of the stone and grab Charities face. She fails a hopeless psi rolls and screams. If he tries to cut the limb, nothing happens because it's ectoplasmic. If he tries to pull the gem away, the arm just stretches out like in a nightmare.

Then Charity falls unconscious and the arm fades. That should freak my players out and score me some DM cred points.

Now that I have vision, I only need to rationalize this somehow :)

P.S. this game starts 8/28 so I have time to nail this down. I'll keep you guys updated on the game....
 
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