Day 31 - Artefact
Artefact is a game of legendary items and transient heroes. You create a magical item, and follow it through the ages, through various keepers, through triumph and tragedy, year after year. I did the setup, but also played through the first round, the first keeper of my magic sword. I'm curious how I would translate this particular item to other systems and retain its specific traits.
Memory's Edge
CREATION: I was created by
Maelis Vhal, Forgemaster of The Ember Circle, smiths who believed metal held memory and that steel should be taught its purpose, not merely shaped.
Her forge stood deep within a mountain whose heart burned with ancient fire. Bellows made from dragon hide fed air into vents carved directly from magma channels, and molten metal flowed through runed trenches cut from the very heart of the mountain.
Maelis folded iron fallen from the sky with steel from the weapons of soldiers fallen during the Battle of Greywatch Pass to forge my blade, and quenched it in water mixed with ash from the battlefield pyre.
She spoke to me as she worked, telling stories of courage, valor, and survival, so I would understand the world I was meant to enter.
TRAITS
Knowing: I remember battles, choices, betrayals, and victories. Time does not dull them. I carry the memory of my use by those who wield me, and through their triumphs and failures I can guide the hands that hold me now.
Loyal: Once I accept a Keeper, I am theirs. I turn aside blows, strain against their enemies, and resist those who would claim me from them.
Warding: I am not only a weapon but a safeguard. In my presence, danger falters, blows stray, and death sometimes passes my bearer by.
FIRST KEEPER
Choice - A REVOLUTIONARY LEADER, THEY ARE INSPIRING, REBELLIOUS AND DRIVEN
Seris Anwen was a young officer of the Stoneharbor City Guard, born among the Ceralis elites who owned much of the city’s wealth and land. Known for discipline, intelligence, and a stubborn sense of fairness, Seris earned respect from the soldiers under her command. She came to possess me when I was awarded to her in honor of her victory against the horse-lord raiders of the plains. I remember the moment she first held me, testing my balance, surprised at my weight, unaware of the long memory already sleeping within my steel. I was with her when she celebrated with her troops, and later, when she celebrated privately with her best friend.
Describe the unjust social order they wish to overthrow.
In Stoneharbor, wealth and power rested almost entirely in Ceralis hands, while the Valrenn, though citizens of the same city, were confined to poorer districts, denied advancement, and forced from their homes when profit demanded it. Laws claimed fairness, but in practice the Valrenn bore the burdens while the Ceralis reaped the rewards, and resistance was answered with force. Seris chose to stand against this injustice, even when it meant turning against her own people.
How did you help them achieve their first major victory?
When Seris refused orders to force Valrenn families from their homes, her second, Branna, who was also her best friend, moved to arrest her and carry out the eviction by force. Steel was drawn, and panic threatened to turn the standoff into slaughter.
In her hands, I turned aside the blow meant to end her defiance and struck true. She disarmed Branna without killing her. Seeing Seris defeat the stronger soldier without bloodshed, many guards faltered, and the eviction collapsed as soldiers refused to attack their own neighbors.
That day, the people of Stoneharbor saw that the Guard could be defied and the rebellion claimed its first victory.
Your KEEPER uncovered an insidious conspiracy in their people’s ruling class. With your help they exposed the devious scheme. What was the price for speaking truth to power?
Seris uncovered proof that members of Stoneharbor’s ruling council had deliberately driven Valrenn families into debt intending to justify mass expulsions and seize entire districts for redevelopment and profit. With proof of the council’s scheme exposed, Seris tried to bring the conspirators to justice, but the ruling families answered with force, sending loyal guards to silence her. When the newly promoted Branna came to arrest her, fighting broke out in the council hall, and in her hands I turned aside the blows meant to kill her, allowing Seris and her allies to cut their way free and carry the truth to the people.
The price was exile: stripped of rank and declared a traitor, Seris was forced to flee Stoneharbor, hunted by the very Guard she once served.
You were once used to kill someone your KEEPER was madly in love with. Describe the person they were forced to eliminate. Did you love them too?
They say the killing blow was an act of heroism, that Seris struck down a traitor to her people without hesitation, bt the songs never speak of how it truly ended.
They do not tell the truth of Branna. In the retellings, she is only a monster. In truth, she was a soldier who believed honor meant never disobeying orders, even when those orders demanded cruelty.
Nor do they speak of how Seris begged Branna to surrender, how her voice broke as she pleaded for the woman she loved to step away from a war neither of them could escape. They do not tell how Seris’s hands trembled as she held me, nor how Branna, bound to the Guard that had given her purpose, refused to yield even after all that had passed between them.
And they never speak of the tears that fell upon my blade when the fight was done, or how Seris cried out Branna’s name long after victory had been won. In the legend, it is triumph, but in truth it was only loss.
Consider how the KEEPER loses you.
When peace finally came, Seris found she no longer wished to carry a weapon at all. On the cliffs overlooking the harbor, where the wind drowned the sounds of the city she had fought to change, she planted me in the earth beside a lonely cairn built for those lost in the struggle.
She left me there, choosing to live the rest of her life without war, and so I waited for my next keeper, half buried in salt and stone.
