Solars starting the game with Artifacts

[glamourweaver]

I asked about whether Arms of the Chosen will touch on this in the developer thread, but I'm curious what people's experience at their own table has been. It's easy enough to justify the personal arsenal of starting Dynast PCs, or Deathknights, or Sidereals. Even the Lunars, though they have less infrastructure than those, have the Silver Pact which might specifically pass on something that belonged to the PC's previous incarnation, or receive a gift from a mentor, etc.

What about Solars though? Plenty of character concepts call for starting the game with your signature daiklaive, or powerbow, etc. But how do you narratively explain how a brand new Solar came into the possession of such an artifact? Does everyone just go with "visions led you to the tomb of your First Age incarnation", or have you found more diverse answers to the question?

[KymmetheSeventh]

I've had people who were given their golden weapons and arms by a 'mysterious traveler who knew many things'. Basically just a Gold Faction Sidereal who was sitting on a dead Solar's stuff and waiting to give it back when a new incarnation showed up. Also, a few players in my games just stole their starting artifacts from other gods/Exalted.

[Leetsepeak]

Got it from a tomb. Stole it. Killed somebody for it. Found it on an expedition.

The usual places you find them, just your Solar did it off-screen.

[WalkingEye]

My past incarnation stored it in the elsewhere in a cache egg. I was able to summon it to me and then the cache egg shattered.

My past incarnation asked a god to hold onto it and give it to his next incarnation. He found me and gave it to me.

[Verzio]

If you specifically want your previous incarnation's daiklaive, you of course have to find some way for it to have come back to your character . . . but with the reported 3rd edition/Arms approach to magical materials, it's perfectly reasonable that a Usurpation Dragon-Blooded took your incarnation's weapon and gave it to his son, and then after the Great Contagion it was dug up from his grandson's grave and used by a succession of outcastes and exigents and (maybe) God-Blooded until you took it from the rogue who was using it last, or found the hidden treasure trove of bandits slain a century ago.

If you don't care about it having been yours, well, everything's wide open. After all, your Solar can use any magical material, so any lost daikalive from any origin could be the one you managed to get your hands on.

Back in 2nd, it was convenient that the Dragon Kings had orichalcum as a favored material. Even if they only "rarely" used it, there were originally 150 million Dragon Kings, of whom about a quarter would have been Raptok with their human-like hands and human-scaled tools and weapons; orichalcum weapons of Raptok extinguished fighting the Primordials could potentially be found anywhere. Of course, that origin is still viable origin for your character's weapon, even if we're now rather hazier on how many Raptok there would have been; perhaps a sinkhole that opened up near his home exposed one that's been buried for thousands of years in the mud where it fell.

[The MG]

Remember that chargen Solars have been Exalted for up to a year. That's plenty of time for background adventures, any of which might put a daiklave in your hands or armour on your shoulders.

[TheCountAlucard]

Artifacts in my game have largely been granted to the PCs, on either a permanent or temporary basis, by powerful beings for doing some important task. Or occasionally taken off a foe's corpse.

In fact, none have been the result of finding one's First Age tomb.

[*End]

Yeah, mine took hers from a Demon-Blooded would-be warlord, whom she slew when she was Chosen. It can be pretty much anything, depending on what the needs of your story are.

[Lioness]

In 2e I was fond of the fact that Short Daiklaves were stated to be small enough to be used as ordinary swords because as much as Exalted likes its oversized signature weapons I have a soft spot for the idea of taking an old sword to Deckard Cain in order to learn its true properties. On that note I'd also welcome the Horadric Cube.

[Kim]

In the game I'm DM:ing, the scene where one of the players exalted at the same time as he unlocked the secret containing an old sword was the culmination of the first phase of a decades old conspiracy between mortals, gods and exalted, that started in the back-alleys of yu-shan

[Sagara]

There's a couple of situations, but most of them will boil down to:

A) Looted from a battle pre-story
B) Found in a tomb/ equivalent.

The most original approach I've seen is a PC in an edited (even more xenphobic) version of Gethamane. There's an academy where scavenged artifacts are studied for mortal uses. One of the un-used Artifact was a very small essence weapon, that the PC studied for her end-of-studies report, and Exalted during those studies (she's Craft-heavy, you see). She had to run because shenanigans, and kept the weapon.

Oh, and there's always the old "amnesiac with an unknown weapon" standby.

[LadyLens]

And I created a character with artifact armour and four different weapons: daiklave, powerbow, infinite chakram, and smashfists, justified as the greatest treasures of the house to which she was a retainer, taken at the order of the Lady of the house to keep them from their enemies' hands when the house fell.

[The Wizard of Oz]

That's something a bit different, I like it.

I've always been a fan of the old "there was a daiklaive stuck in a rock and only the Chosen One can pull it out". And you did.

[Mr Rage]

In addition to the stuff mentioned already (I particularly like "artifact passed knowingly or unknowingly down a family line"), I'm a big fan of mundane objects ascending to Artifact status without any intentional (re)forging process, and Exaltation is as good of an example of the very special circumstances necessary for that to happen as any. Plus, with all the Artifacts forged in the lost mists of yonks ago, a "newborn" one provides some interesting counter-play.

[limaxophobiac]

Well if it's jade, a simple 'took it from some DB who attacked you for being anathema' works.

For orichalcum, one idea I've had but not used is an ancient artifact kept as a ceremonial sacred weapon for a remote tribe, said to have been wielded by some mythic hero in ages past. Cue a young warrior of the tribe who one day starts glowing gold picking it up and wielding it, hailed as said hero born again.