Topic: Treasures from Literature (Read 1,930 times)
Finarvyn Administrator Dungeon Master member is offline
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Treasures from Literature « Thread Started on Apr 1, 2008, 3:28pm »
In the Men & magic board there is a thread which essentially asks: if you had only the M&M book, how would the game be different?
A couple of us mentioned that treasures would be less generic and more specific. Swords would have a name. Books would have a title. Magic would have some history, and probably not just be "sword +1" from a random table.
So, how about if we started a list of magical items from literature (along with specific powers if the reference is too obscure). I'd think mainstream fiction would be the best starting point, but if someone has a real favorite they can add it anyway. Also, picking fiction based on a game (such as DragonLance) might be interpreted as cheating since that book might not have been written if D&D hadn't come along....
Here's a start of some famous magical items: Stormbringer (soul-stealer sword from Elric)
Excalibur (King Arthur)
Orcrist and Glamdring (Orc bashing swords from LotR) Sting (shortsword/dagger from the the Hobbit) Rings of Power (the Hobbit and LotR)
Marv / Finarvyn DCC playtester (2011) C&C playtester (2003) I'm partly responsible for the S&W WhiteBox Builder of the TrollBridge Master of Mutants; MA since 1976 OD&D Player since 1975
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Re: Treasures from Literature « Reply #1 on Apr 1, 2008, 3:35pm »
I would immediately add The Luggage from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Although it, too, might not have been written without D&D; Terry used to run the game as I understand it, although he had his own unique take on it. I haven't been able to find any more information than that.
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Re: Treasures from Literature « Reply #2 on Apr 1, 2008, 9:36pm »
I'm partial to Greyswandir, Corwin of Amber's sword. It was a magical runed silver sword. I would make it +3 to hit, double damage vs summoned/magical creatures. Maybe even give the wielder a plus to save vs spells
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Re: Treasures from Literature « Reply #4 on Apr 2, 2008, 6:09pm »
Quote:
I'm partial to Greyswandir, Corwin of Amber's sword. It was a magical runed silver sword. I would make it +3 to hit, double damage vs summoned/magical creatures. Maybe even give the wielder a plus to save vs spells
For that matter, how about the Trumps? Magical and unique...
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Re: Treasures from Literature « Reply #8 on Apr 3, 2008, 9:47am »
Quote:
*THE* Vorpal Sword (Decapitating sword from Through the Looking Glass)
I love that poem:
"One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back."
I'd be galumphing back with a Vorpal Sword as described in D&D as well. I wonder how one might describe it with no Gygaxian influence, though. I like Gary's take on it. It's the accepted form of Vorpal Blade, even though it was derived from a non-sensical poem.
Mythological influences could be taken into consideration, as well. A few more off the top of my head:
Mjolnir The Golden Fleece Flying Carpets Medusa Head The Wicked Witch's Mirror from Snow White Magic Beans ala Jack (sounds like a culinary delight), the Harp, the Goose. Crystal Balls Clive Barker's Cube (an adventure unto itself) The Wardrobe (Narnia, as above) probably quite a good amount of magic items to lift from CS Lewis that I'm forgetting. Ruby Slippers (Oz)
Seems that there would be tons of quaint magic from fairy tales, but I'm drawing a blank.
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Re: Treasures from Literature « Reply #9 on Apr 4, 2008, 10:13am »
Siegfried as he appears in the Nibelungen-Saga has a sword of which I think was called Balthung. I tried to search it in the web but could not find it. I guess I heard it in school back then. One can imagine that it has to be a very special sword since it belongs to a hero with the charisma to command armies, the guts to challenge a valkyrie (Brunhilde) and slay the Grendel.
Re: Treasures from Literature « Reply #10 on Apr 4, 2008, 12:02pm »
Quote:
Siegfried as he appears in the Nibelungen-Saga has a sword of which I think was called Balthung. I tried to search it in the web but could not find it. I guess I heard it in school back then. One can imagine that it has to be a very special sword since it belongs to a hero with the charisma to command armies, the guts to challenge a valkyrie (Brunhilde) and slay the Grendel.
The sword isn't really considered treasure in the Saga, though. The only thing that is really characterized as treasure by the poets is the Nibelungen Hoard. The view of many swords as magical treasure is more the product of contemporary romantics than the poets and authors of the period. For example, in the Nibelungen Saga (which is itself a revision of the Volsunga Saga), Siegfried's sword was just a sword, albeit a very fine one. It was the man who was magical (impervious to wounds, according to some folklore).
[Edit: The sword was named Gram in the original Saga, revised as Balmung in the Germanic version.]
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Re: Treasures from Literature « Reply #11 on Apr 4, 2008, 7:23pm »
The King's Ankus, from Kipling's Jungle Books:
He stared with puckered-up eyes round the vault, and then lifted up from the floor a handful of something that glittered.
‘Oho!’ said he, ‘this is like the stuff they play with in the Man-Pack: only this is yellow and the other was brown.’
He let the gold pieces fall, and move forward. The floor of the vault was buried some five or six feet deep in coined gold and silver that had burst from the sacks it had been originally stored in, and, in the long years, the metal had packed and settled as sand packs at low tide. On it and in it, and rising through it, as wrecks lift through the sand, were jewelled elephant-howdahs of embossed silver, studded with plates of hammered gold, and adorned with carbuncles and turquoises. There were palanquins and litters for carrying queens, framed and braced with silver and enamel, with jade-handled poles and amber curtain-rings; there were golden candlesticks hung with pierced emeralds that quivered on the branches; there were studded images, five feet high, of forgotten gods, silver with jewelled eyes; there were coats of mail, gold inlaid on steel, and fringed with rotted and blackened seed-pearls; there were helmets, crested and beaded with pigeon’s-blood rubies; there were shields of lacquer, of tortoise-shell and rhinoceros-hide, strapped and bossed with red gold and set with emeralds at the edge; there were sheaves of diamond-hilted swords, daggers, and hunting-knives; there were golden sacrificial bowls and ladles, and portable altars of a shape that never sees the light of day; there were jade cups and bracelets; there were incense-burners, combs, and pots for perfume, henna, and eye-powder, all in embossed gold; there were nose-rings, armlets, head-bands, finger-rings, and girdles past any counting; there were belts, seven fingers broad, of square-cut diamonds and rubies, and wooden boxes, trebly clamped with iron, from which the wood had fallen away in powder, showing the pile of uncut star-sapphires, opals, cat’s-eyes, sapphires, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and garnets within.
The White Cobra was right. No mere money would begin to pay the value of this treasure, the sifted pickings of centuries of war, plunder, trade, and taxation. The coins alone were priceless, leaving out of count all the precious stones; and the dead-weight of the gold and silver alone might be two or three hundred tons. Every native ruler in India to-day, however poor, has a hoard to which he is always adding; and though, once in a long while, some enlightened prince may send off forty or fifty bullock-cart loads of silver to be exchanged for Government securities, the bulk of them keep their treasure and the knowledge of it very closely to themselves.
But Mowgli naturally did not understand what these things meant. The knives interested him a little, but they did not balance so well as his own, and so he dropped them. At last he found something really fascinating laid on the front of a howdah half buried in the coins. It was a three-foot ankus, or elephant-goad—something like a small boathook. The top was one round, shining ruby, and eight inches of the handle below it were studded with rough turquoises close together, giving a most satisfactory grip. Below them was a rim of jade with a flower-pattern running round it—only the leaves were emeralds, and the blossoms were rubies sunk in the cool, green stone. The rest of the handle was a shaft of pure ivory, while the point—the spike and hook—was gold-inlaid steel with pictures of elephant-catching; and the pictures attracted Mowgli, who saw that they had something to do with his friend Hathi the Silent.
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Re: Treasures from Literature « Reply #12 on Apr 5, 2008, 6:11am »
Quote:
[Edit: The sword was named Gram in the original Saga, revised as Balmung in the Germanic version.]
Jdrakeh, thank you for helping out there and setting it straight. What I knew was very vague. But now as you say it, I remember it right - Balmung it was, not Balthung. And what I wrote concerning Grendel was wrong, too. Siegfried was said to have slain some type of Dragon, but not Grendel. This must have been Beowulf then.
Re: Treasures from Literature « Reply #13 on Apr 5, 2008, 12:45pm »
Some versions of the Siegfried lengends have the metal of the sword falling from heaven (meteorite) which to people of tehtime would have made it magical.
Re: Treasures from Literature « Reply #14 on Apr 5, 2008, 2:12pm »
From Cherryh, Morgaine's sword Changeling is interesting. Changeling is a bit of a counterpoint to Elric's Stormbringer, in that, where Stormbringer invigorates Elric as it feeds, Changeling actually draws the energy it needs to work from it's wielder. Cherryh seamlessly integrates technology into her fantasy story, and Changeling's operation is a good example of that.
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