Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Forum administrators, Interface administrators, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
116,480
edits
Public Domain Artifact: Difference between revisions
m
grammar/usage
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (→Judas' 30 Pieces of Silver: added example) |
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) m (grammar/usage) |
||
| (14 intermediate revisions by 3 users not shown) | |||
Line 98:
* ''[[Filmation's Ghostbusters]]'' features Excalibur, conflating it yet again with the Sword in the Stone. Here, it's used to set up a [[Stable Time Loop]] in the stone age—they get it stuck in the stone that Arthur will pull it from.
===
Durandal—Sword of the Hero Roland, knight of Charlemagne, as well as Hector of Troy. Supposedly he threw it into a "poisoned stream" in order to protect it from the Saracens; this seems to have occasionally given it a "Darkness" element in fiction and games. It could also be associated with evil or [[Marathon Trilogy|insanity]]. [[Bungie|One game studio]] has not only used it, but also the inscription on Ogier the Dane's sword Curtana, which read My name is [[Halo (series)|Cortana]], of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and [[Marathon Trilogy|Durendal]]. In ''[[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]'' Durandal ''is'' Excalibur, having been stolen by Orlando/Roland and renamed to not arouse suspicion (because even he knows it was kind of a dick thing to do). [[w:Durendal#Local lore|A sword embedded in a cliff face in Rocamadour, France is claimed by local folklore to be Durandal.]]
==== [[Literature]] ====
* ''[[The Song of Roland]]'', [[Trope Maker|naturally]].
* In L. Jagi Lamplighter's ''[[Prospero's Daughter]]'', Eramus carries it.
* The holy sword ''Esperacchius'' in ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' is Durandal, albeit reforged to look like a cavalry saber. Like the previous example above, it also has one of the Nails of the True Cross worked into it.
==== [[Live-Action TV]] ====
* ''[[Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger]]'': A duplicate of Durandal is forged for [[Monster of the Week|Dora Knight]]. The process requires some of the hammering to be done by a child whose birthday it is (Bandora had him kidnapped, of course), which becomes important later because the sword can't harm its maker. The sword is incredibly powerful, able to damage the Zyurangers' Legendary Weapons and even the sword of their [[First Church of Mecha|god]] [[Humongous Mecha]].
==== [[Video Games]] ====
* In ''[[Marathon Trilogy|Marathon]]'', Durandal is a ship AI. ''Marathon's'' [[Spiritual Successor|spiritual prequel/sequel]] ''[[Halo]]'' features an AI named Cortana.
* In ''[[Fire Emblem]]'''s [[Fire Emblem Elibe|Elibe canon]], Durandal is the [[BFS|absolutely enormous]] sword used by the legendary hero Roland in the Scouring. In 6 it serves as the [[Infinity+1 Sword]] and can be used by any sufficiently skilled swordsman, while in 7 it's a [[Sword of Plot Advancement]] usable by [[The Hero|Eliwood]] in the final battle.
Line 120:
* You get this sword by supporting the French forces in Bladestorm: The Hundred Years War.
▲=== Aro(u)ndight ===
Aro[[Spell My Name with an "S"|(u)]]ndight, which may or may not have been Lancelot's sword.
Line 134 ⟶ 133:
===
Less frequently, you will see other legendary Western swords such as Cortana (which actually exists as part of the Regalia of Great Britain), or Joyeuse. They do show up in ''[[Castlevania]]: Symphony Of The Night'' and all the portable 2D Castlevanias that follow it. You can find a huge amount of named armor, swords and artifacts—from Joyeuse to the Masamune to Death's Scythe. The most powerful sword in ''[[Castlevania: Chronicles of Sorrow|Aria/Dawn of Sorrow,]]'' the Claimh Solais, apparently comes from Irish mythology... odd for a Japanese game about vampires.
Line 165 ⟶ 164:
=== Stonehenge ===
Stonehenge is a real place (and it's not the only such circle in Britain, either), but it gets ascribed all sorts of mystic powers in fiction.<ref>Of the many theories of its purpose, on of the most widely believed is that it was used to tell what time of year it is. That's right, it's a ''calendar''! To be honest, keeping track of the seasons was incredibly important in the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural ones.</ref> Nor
==== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ====
Line 204 ⟶ 203:
==== [[Video Games]] ====
* ''[[Ancient Domains of Mystery]]'' uses it. You can't go seven leagues in a single step though, but it does improve your movement a bit.
== Egyptian ==
Line 238 ⟶ 236:
* In ''[[The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest]]'' there is an episode centered around the stone. The bad guy wants to use it for his own greedy purposes, but fortunately there are other mystical forces around to help the Quest Team stop him.
The Voynich Manuscript, an untranslated medieval manuscript of a seemingly occult nature, sometimes appears in fiction as a [[Tome of Eldritch Lore]]. A list of some works featuring it can be found [http://www.ciphermysteries.com/the-voynich-manuscript/big-fat-list-of-voynich-novels here].
The Pied Piper's flute usually appears in that character's possession in stories or plays, but turns up on its own (as the ''Pipes of the Sewers'') in the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' RPG.▼
▲The Pied Piper's flute usually appears in that character's possession in stories or plays, but turns up on its own (as the ''Pipes of the Sewers'') in the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' RPG.
== Finnish ==
Line 288 ⟶ 286:
* ''[[Colonization]]'' lets you discover it as one of random bonuses. It makes several units of eager colonists appear in European port. Amusingly, it doesn't limit how many times you can discover it, so a player who explores thoroughly can find dozens of Fountains of Youth scattered all over the Americas.
==== [[Web
* The webcomic ''[[Oglaf]]'' parodies this, with an explorer discovering the [http://oglaf.com/fountain-of-doubt/ Fountain of Doubt], the [http://oglaf.com/fountain-of-death/ Fountain of
==== [[Western Animation]] ====
Line 480 ⟶ 478:
* In ''[[The Song of Roland]]'', the Durandal is said to contain numerous artefacts in this vein embedded in its hilt.
===
The Holy Grail: The cup which Jesus Christ supposedly drank from at the Last Supper and/or the cup used by Joseph of Arimathea to capture the blood of Christ at the crucifixion. First popularized by [[King Arthur|Arthurian Legend]], and used absolutely everywhere since, from ''[[Monty Python]]'' [[Monty Python and
The history of the Grail is rather complicated. Ostensibly the cup that Jesus drank from during the Last Supper, brought to Glastonbury by Joseph of Arimathea, it's a [[Celtic Mythology|Celtic invention]] that was unknown on the continent before the Arthurian mythos brought it there. It first surfaced in the late 1100s, in an incomplete poem by [[Chrétien de Troyes]] (whose contributions to Arthurian canon were action-packed and unconcerned with spiritual matters), in which a naive Welsh knight named Perceval meets the [[Fisher King]]. A grail appears as part of a larger and quite bizarre mystical procession and is referred simply as "a grail" with no holy context, apart from carrying a host wafer. Perceval fails in his quest by not asking the Fisher King what the hell's going on (making this story the first ever [[Sierra]] adventure game).
Line 487 ⟶ 485:
Over subsequent centuries, the Holy Grail grew into the entire ''raison d'etre'' of the entire Arthurian Court, when originally the Grail Quest was so singularly dangerous that there was a special chair at the Round Table reserved for those who dared attempt it, called the Siege Perilous. By giving the knights a single sacred focus rather than having them [[Walking the Earth|stumbling around Britain]] falling ass backwards into [[The Quest|quests]], this transformation made the sprawling tangle of stories more coherent, and elevated the moral standing of the knights.
The Holy Grail itself also grew hugely in significance, in some cases taking on parts of various other magic hamper and cauldron myths, which created a [[Continuity Snarl|mythological snarl]] whose origins modern scholars are nowhere close to deciphering (compare to the several lucid theories about the Sword in the Stone that have cropped up in modern scholarship). By the first decade of 13th century, in ''Parzival'' by Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzifal's calling to the Grail Quest is explicitly a calling to a higher and better world than the normal quests of Arthur's court. The text claims that the Grail itself was the stone the neutral angels of Heaven stayed in during the war against Lucifer. By the 15th century, Malory depicts the Grail [[Cosmic Keystone|as so powerful]] that when Galahad (the most pure and dedicated of all the knights) succeeds on the Grail quest he [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence|instantly ascends to Heaven]]. It is the archetype behind an entire subvariety of [[The Quest]], the [[Grail Quest]] (which, despite its name, is not always about finding ''the'' Grail.)
==== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ====
Line 493 ⟶ 491:
** Though at least in the [[Nasuverse]], it's explicitly stated that there are dozens of artifacts which claim to be the Holy Grail, and that whether that particular one had anything to do with Jesus is irrelevant considering its power. Turns out {{spoiler|it was made from scratch in the 1800s}}.
* As previously mentioned in ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' it is the Holy Grail that transforms Sailor Moon into Super Sailor Moon. That being said it may not be ''the'' Holy Grail as in the manga, and the videogame ''[[Sailor Moon: Another Story]]'', there's ''two'' of them - Sailor Chibi Moon has one as well.
* [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-little-known-legend-of-jesus-in-japan-165354242/ According to Real Life local legend], Jesus is buried in Shingō, a small town in Aomori prefecture, Japan... the same prefecture where, during episode 4 of ''[[Bakuon!!]]'', Hane helped "clean-shaven Jesus" when he was stranded on the side of the road to Aomori, out of gas, and was given what may well be the genuine Grail for helping him. It's also a rare collector's Suzuki tea cup. Unlike most tea cups, though, it seems impervious to damage... and might be a literal [[Deus Ex Machina]].
==== [[Comic Books]] ====
Line 521 ⟶ 520:
==== [[Web Comics]] ====
* In ''[[Minion Comics]]'', Dingus is convinced that the evil organization he works for is seeking out the Holy Grail, because their leader is German and [https://web.archive.org/web/20120904141136/http://www.meetmyminion.com/?p=218 "Germans love searching for ancient artifacts."]
=== Fragments of the True Cross ===
Line 650 ⟶ 649:
=== Judas' [[Thirty Pieces of Silver|30 Pieces of Silver]] ===
==== [[Film]] ====
* In ''[[The Librarian]]'': The Judas Chalice, they had been forged into a silver equivalent to [[Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade|the Holy Grail]] for vampires.
Line 794 ⟶ 793:
=== The
==== Literature ====
==== Live-Action TV ====
==== Tabletop Games ====
==== Web Comics ====
=== Other Others ===
* Nowadays we have U.F.Os, Area 51 and [[The Greys]], which seem to qualify as the latest Public Domain Artifacts.
** Or, as the quote from ''Angels of Light and Darkness'' states, half of what they say was owned by [[Godwin's Law|Hitler]].
Line 804 ⟶ 825:
* Lemuria and Mu. Mu is a mistranslation of a Mayan codex. Lemuria was a land bridge by Ernst Häckel to explain similarities in the ecosystems of Madagascar and Indonesia [[Science Marches On|before plate tectonics]].
* Some public-domain fictional characters' bits of associated items have attained this status, such as Dr. Jekyll's Hyde-transformation elixer or Dorian Gray's youth-sustaining portrait.
▲* The Hand of Glory is a common item in folklore, a magical relic made from the hand of a hanged man. It can be lit like a candle and provides a light that only the wielder can see. Various other powers have also been ascribed to it in various tales - generally something appropriate for a sneak thief.
▲** [[The Laundry Series]] has Hand of Glories serving as channels from an extradimensional energy source. Not only do they bestow invisibility, they can be used to fire [[Frickin' Laser Beams]], though this causes the hand to degrade. The Laundry usually gets theirs from Chinese political prisoners.
▲** ''[[Hunter: The Vigil]]'' has the Hand as a top-level example of [[They Would Cut You Up|the Cheiron Group]]'s Thaumatechnology. Instead of granting invisibility, however, it grants a light that enthralls all who see it. And unlike other examples, the user needs to have it grafted to their wrist first.
▲** The TV Dresden Files adaptation had a Hand of Glory that could let people walk through walls.
▲** [[Simon R. Green]] occasionally has one show up with the power to open and seal locks, portals and barriers both mundane and magical.
▲** Also appears in a poem by the same name in the ''Ingoldsby Legends'' where it has the power to send a household into a deep slumber.
▲** Also seen in [[Harry Potter]]: It seems Draco Malfoy owns one.
▲** ''[[Labyrinths of Echo (Literature)|Labyrinths of Echo]]'' had the Order of the Icy Hand, who used an extra source of power made of the adept's left hand chopped off and embedded in an enchanted ice crystal. Of course, then they had to take turns guarding those. As one could expect, they were people with great desire to work high-end magic, but little natural "talent" for it, so this inconvenient way to compensate was their only known option.
▲** ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]'' had something very like this made, except from a hand of still-living dude.
▲** ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'', as usual. There are many artifacts known as "hand of X" (often hands of various avatars)
▲*** ''[[Greyhawk]]'' has the Hand of Vecna
▲*** ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' has Hand of Harrowing (it's mostly used to ward a place against undead).
* In L. Jagi Lamplighter's ''[[Prospero's Daughter]]'', there are more public domain artifacts per square inch in the Prosperos' mansion than anywhere else. Several are mentioned above. But they were collecting them.
* The tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi. Some [[expy]] versions use artificial lake of mercury or terracota figurines alone.
| |||