Amulet of Dependency: Difference between revisions

* In traditional stories, werewolves were witches who commonly transformed by wearing a wolf-skin pelt or belt, and without the skin they were powerless. As in the ghost story, destroying the skin could have serious consequences.

 

* In ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', [[Ring of Power|The One Ring]] is both an [[Artifact of Doom]] and a [[Soul Jar]], but it deserves special mention here because it confers such powers on the user it is very tempting to use it to try to defeat [[Big Bad]] [[Evil Overlord|Sauron]]. Many of those tempted to use it don't understand that the Ring itself can never be used to defeat Sauron, as the Ring and the Dark Lord are one and the same. Plus, anybody with enough power to wield the Ring to even a fraction of its full potential will inevitably be corrupted by it. Sauron would still use other people's lust for the ring (like Saruman's) to his own advantage. And he ''did'' play a deep game with the ''other'' rings of power—giving great power to the elves and dwarves, but thereby making them vulnerable to his control through the Ruling Ring.

** All the Rings are fundamentally Amulets of Dependency in their concept.

* Voldemort's [[Soul Jar|horcruxes]] in the ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' series are an odd example: obsessed with the idea of immortality, he intentionally [[Our Souls Are Different|tore his soul to pieces]] [[Murder Is the Best Solution|through multiple acts of murder]] so he could hide them safely away inside specially-chosen objects. Ultimately, doing so has given him a critical weakness: if he ''ever'' feels so much as a shred of genuine remorse for his actions, his shattered soul will recombine, [[Cool and Unusual Punishment|an experience so painful that it could well kill him.]] (This turns out to be the merciful option, as dying otherwise will condemn him to a [[Fate Worse Than Death]].)

* Zelazny's ''[[Chronicles of Amber]]'' brings this trope up a number of times, especially in the second half as it can then be tied into the concept of using raw power to cover for sloppiness and lack of forethought as habit-forming. Here using these stays as a viable if deprecated option.

* The vampires of 19th century fiction are commonly tied to something of significance to them. Dracula was forced to sleep in contact with his native soil, Carmilla had to sleep in a coffin filled with the blood of her victims, and the brothers Ténèbre revived from repeated deaths by regenerating from within their tombs.

 

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

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[[Category:Applied Phlebotinum]]

[[Category:Magic Items Index]]