Tha matter of profane artifacts and their righteous destruction

[Windupboy 0]

Sooner our latermy characters tend to end up with a selection of evil tomes, cursed weapons, evil necromancers stuck in jewels and painting and stuff tainted by chaos. The question is: what are you supposed to do with those? Carrying these profane objects around is neither healthy nor looked upon with friendly eyes by the cult of Sigmar and other. But it is also hard to destroy them. THe solution, a standard one for RPGs, is to hand them in to a temple or wizard academy. But how does that work in the Empire? I can't recall reading anything about the customs of handling objects of chaos. How do you handle this? Do you assume that big temples of Sigmar have a way to destroy or otherwise take care of these objects, or will the church refuse to accept such an offer? Are there certain vaults to contain them (like the light college's in Spires of Altdorf)? And in that case, will all temples/colleges accepte them or just the on in Altdorf? Can they even be destroyed? Any thoughts welcome!

Cheers

Magnus

[Nisses 0]

Mostly, you already touched upon both my choices:

Hand it over to a major temple of Sigmar where it might be destroyed, or buried in a vault deep below.

If it's meant to be destroyed, you could task the party with finding some specific catalysts/items required to safely destroy the profane artifact? And actually make an extended roll (see Reckless Dice podcast about Heroes Call) after they have found the required items. A short freeform campaign like Gathering Storm does.

[Yepesnopes 620]

 In the 2nd edition campaign Path of the Dammed, in the book Spires of Altdorf, you can get some idees on how to destroy an artificat. You can even use the book to covnert any artificat destruction into and aventure itself.

[d6 Evil Men 34]

The Templars of Sigmar (Witch Hunters) have probably created safe methods of destroying such artefacts as have the Wizards. The problem with taking such items to a temple or to the Witch Hunters is that any person carrying such things could be quite suspect in their eyes and would probably need to undergo some sort of rites of cleansing (which could be a good scenario).

I wrote one short and simple method of destruction in this fan supplement: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29503787/WFRP%20Article%20-%20Forbidden%20Blades.pdf

You could make the whole thing into a scenario itself. The characters are looking for a way to dump such items and several different parties learn of their intentions - priests of Sigmar or Witch Hunters, Wizards, Cultists etc. All these parties approach the PCs and volunteer to deal with their problem. The PCs then  have to decide who to trust.

I would also tempt the PCs with the dilemma if, instead of destroying the items, it is okay to use the weapons of the enemy against itself - to fight fire with fire - and risk possible corruption.

 

[Doc, the Weasel 1,777]

I prefer thinking that there may not actually be a reliable way to dispose of such things.

Of course, both the church as well as the colleges of magic insist that they have safe methods of handling such objects. They encourage this lie to keep these items out of the wrong hands. None of these organizations have been able to get rid of them, though. They labor to find a way, but in the meantime these profane artifacts have been collecting in heavily guarded vaults, waiting to be released back into the world.

 

[No:12 29]

Hi,

I'd second Docs suggestion. In our games of warhammer happy endings are hard to come by, and destroying profane artifacts is tough, risky and sometimes the exact methods are simply unkown. Additionally, some of the characters have adopted a severe distrust of orders magickal and religious, meaning they sometimes dont trust simply handing things over anyway...

(minor spoilers from many of the published adventures..)

So far in our games;

The assassin and merchant sold a high elven ward of Azyr to the celestial college for cash.

The assassin kept a necklace containing a necromancers spirit, in case she could broker a deal with him in return for a new body.

A book of forbidden lore was burnt by the entire group.

When the party found the lair of a skaven seer in the sewers complete with ritualistic icons and doo dahs, they pretty much left the whole lot where it was.

 

Omens of war has a reasonable climax offering the chance to destroy a profane artifact. I'll be running that next month, though i may well offer a "forfeit" option, in which both character and demon are released from the contest- however the demon also being released from the weapon....

[Emirikol 436]

 . The question is: what are you supposed to do with those? 

They are to bring them to a Witch Hunter and prepare ones-self for cleansing-by-fire for having handled it.

No, really, I imagine it like a modern day church:  They've got stuff tucked away in the basement that they don't even know what to do with...then the temple gets overrun during a war..and the thing in the basement waits for a scavenging peasant to loot the place. That's how chaos breaks out!

 

jh

[talesind 0]

the light college in altdorf is your most likely bet. They seek out and attmept to destroy profane artifacts and if they cant destroy them they store them,  The temple of sigmar does something simliar but that is open to abuse - that's where Archeon got hold of the book that turned him.

 

The best thing to remeber is that profance artifacts are a huge pain for players - evil people want them, the chaos gods will try to turn you through them and thier power and witchunters will accuse you of heresey and witchcraft at the drop ofa hat if you re found to have any. By the end of the adventure the players should either be dead, insane, mutated or just really sick of the sight of the thing they got lumbered with

 

[reg 10]

 An important point is that how would the players know about the vaults under the light college? Its not the sort on information your average oik from Dumbsville, Uber. is  going to know. Also, the majority of commoner citizens are just trying to get by, and not come to the attention of the authorities (like someone previously suggested, kind of hard to explain to the local witch hunter what your doing with Khornes own nose-picker in your bag). Personally, I suspect most of my players would sell anything remotely valuable for a tidy profit if they could convince themselves they weren't too bad. Failing that, they'd probably drop them down a big hole (which would come back to haunt them in many ways). Now thats an idea!