Your party is tasked with collecting and returning a memetic artifact that cannot be remembered once you look away from...

Your party is tasked with collecting and returning a memetic artifact that cannot be remembered once you look away from it. How well do you do?

In shifts.

then how does the quest giver know about it?

Hard mode: the artifact is considered contraband and the city guards will try to confiscate it on your return.

BUT HOW DOES ANYONE KNOW ABOUT IT

Well, right now it's in the possession of a blind scholar. He's able to study the thing without suffering it's effects. But there are other ways.

but if he's blind then he's never looked at it, so he could never remember it

Put it in a box labeled "Artifact, don't open"

>obtain artifact, rogue reverse pickpockets it into the Paladin's bag of holding
>Either convince everyone that you have the artifact or everyone gives up after about a week of fruitless searching and return to the city
>city guard accosts you, their evil artifact detection magic is going off
>Paladin and rest of party insist they don't have anything, Circle of Truth confirms since they actually believe they aren't carrying anything.
>Guards search belongings, pull out Mcguffin, everyone including the rogue is shocked, begin questioning if they were carrying it the whole time.
>Captain confiscates the artifact, as soon as a guard takes it out of the room everyone begins questioning what they are doing there
>The party informs that they are looking for a magical artifact
>Captain calls in guards to confirm
>Oh you mean this artifact?
>yes that's the one, now return it to the Kind
>repeat

>put it on a cart
>let always someone sit on the cart an stare at it

Uh... Are you implying blind people have no memories? Or are you saying that since the effect doesn't work on him, he can't study it?

Write the mission and the description on your hand

no i'm just saying that since he's blind he's always looking away from it

What a nightmare. A groundhog day of perpetual bureaucracy.

OH! No, no. You have to look at it, then away. It starts deleting itself once you look, but the memories only vanish when you look away.

But that isnt the quest giver.

SO HOW DOES THE QUEST GIVER KNOW ABOUT IT?

Well once the scholar knows about it he could disseminate rumors. And since people are just hearing about it, the effect wouldn't trigger. I thought that was the obvious part.

This doesn't even need to get complicated. You just need to be able to write.

Receiving the quest obviously involves a description or name for the thing. We carve that into a chest. We get the mcguffin. We keep an eye on it while having a single party member append "We've got it, it's in here" to the inscription on the box. We put the mcguffin in the box. We forget the mcguffin, but we trust our own writing on our own box. We deliver it.

We get paid.

Got a blind monk in the party. It's all him.

So the problem only occurs if someone sees it then no longer sees it.

Don't let one member of the party look at the macguffin. Put it in a bag. Ponder why the quest giver wanted something he will forget about as soon as he looks at it once and then blinks.

put it in the box. remember I have to protect and deliver a box. period.

>SO HOW DOES THE QUEST GIVER KNOW ABOUT IT?
You were the quest giver yourself all along. You just forgot about it.

soooo, like Death Note?

When we find it, don't stop looking at it.
Put it in a box, and have one person who's still looking at it while everyone else is putting it in the box write on the side that the artifact is in the box.
Then tie it tightly shut, and trust that our knowledge of our procedure, and the weight of whatever is inside the box is sufficient to convince ourselves that we've captured it.

because it's the Quest. Quests exist by themselves, intangible metaphysical forces. quest-giver is just a conduit to for a Quest that seeks to be completed.

Such a cock tease webm. I was expecting to be able to add that to my wank bank.

I know this is the same sort of plot-twist that gets thrown around a lot, but in this case I think it's actually pretty interesting and could lead to some very interesting situations.

>get ambushed
>in the scuffle, chest gets knocked open
>everyone sees the mcguffin
>lose fight, villains take mcguffin and close chest on their way out
>come to later
>not sure what happened but you trust your own writing
>get back to quest giver
>chest is empty
>yfw

Have the most honest party member take and cover it.
Then the others who never looked at it can convince him and everyone takes the artifact back while its covered.

Okay there is some seed of genius to this that I am totally stealing for a future world building thread.
Living Quests.. yeah, that sounds cool.

Glitch webms will someday end up in the bin with Advice Dog variants as "something that people thought was funny for probably a little too long".