Hey gang.
I’m running a campaign where the players are looking for eight magical items, once owned by eight powerful mages representing the eight schools of magic.
Right now – through the power of Plot™ – they’re looking for those items for an influential but shadowy collector. They’re supposed to deliver the first batch of three items together. When that happens they’ll find out that they were inadvertently helping a criminal collector. A representative of a historical society will tell them that these artifacts belong in a museum.
And here’s my problem: I want them to have these magical items, which of course have cool powers. And I don’t know how to do that.
My plan right now is, that the museum isn’t interested in the actual powers, they just want to display the items for their historical relevance. So they’ll magically pull these items apart into two identical ones, where one retains the power and the other the history of the item (scratches/wear and tear).
I am not completely satisfied with that idea, because it seems far-fetched and I’d like to hear your ideas, if you have any, on how to resolve this.
Thank you and a thousand dm’ly kisses to you all.
I’m skipping the other comments because I don’t want them to affect my thought process.
Your idea makes sense. Lots of IRL museums will put a replica on display, for reasons like value and risk of theft, risk of damage to the item even through regular light and air, or just because it’s being restored or used for research at the moment.
I don’t think they’d be able to create two items out of it, though. That’s basically just cloning an item, though without the magic in the clone. That’s not really something that is done.
I don’t think a museum would be happy with an original artifact walking around. They’d want the original on hand for preservation and future research. Adventurers tend to lose, break, or sell things.
But you want the party to have the magic item, so I think you need to find a reason for them to change their minds and refuse to give up the item. You said it’s a criminal collector, but I don’t think garden-variety theft, smuggling, etc. makes it worth denying them, especially if they pay well for it. Can you make the collector evil somehow? Or at least make the artifacts useful for doing good, and putting them in a museum would mean people go hungry or something?
I didn’t want the items to end up with the somewhat evil collector anyways. As far as I know my players, they’ll side with the museum, even if it means less money – one of them is a librarian/protector of knowledge kinda cleric.
You bring up similar points to the other commenters regarding the safety of displaying originals. That’s definitely something I’ll argue with.
Right now I’m thinking they’ll transfer the magic to something my group can use, use the original (now inert) items for preservation/research and display illusory copies.
Thank you for taking the time to answer so thoroughly!
Is he/could he be associated with the museum somehow? Maybe if his Cleric (order? temple? organization?) is a major sponsor of the museum or something similar they might trust him with those items for that reason with the caveat that he brings them back for scheduled viewings or some sort of thing like that?
I like the idea, but they actually have a very detailed backstory and connecting them to the museum would be somewhat unbelievable.
They were the very bookish librarian of a very small and remote monastery where they grew up and only left because they ran out of reading material.
I’ll definitely stick a mental pin in your idea though, maybe we’ll find a reason for that connection.