The legendary weapon used by the hero to slay the ancient evil steadily grows more powerful until it becomes a danger...

Nier. Emil is a super weapon created through experimenting with magic that came from an alternate universe. Later on Emil fuses with his sister, who was also a super weapon, and becomes pretty much a god as he gains use of all forms of magic in the Nier universe. At some point aliens invade and attack Earth, and Emil is the only one left to fight them, so he uses his magic to create an army of himself to kill all the aliens

>The holy prophecy sword slays the ancient evil
>...
>Wants to do it again
>Now it has to engineer the goddamn ancient evil, pain in the HILT

>the sword of legend awaits a hero to save the world from destruction
>no, it's not for fighting those invading orcs
>no, you can't use it to wage war against other humans
>it's only 150 years old, calm down

the world will keep spinning regardless of if your kingdom gets conquered, stop being so petty

>Reforge weapon every X years to reset it.

I did that once, although it was in Rogue Trader so they players (and their characters) figured out what was up pretty much immediately.
They were visiting some planet that was effective Mad Max style post-apocalyptic world, and the chief of a tribe they met offered to give them their holy relic (STC fragment) in exchange for helping them find the legendary weapons known as the Fire Lances, said to have been wielded by the gods of old and possessing the power to burn the land and boil the seas. Long story short, the PCs went through a "dungeon" consisting of an ancient underground military complex and discovered a sealed chamber containing rows upon rows of these fuckers, all ready to be fired at pre-set coordinates, waiting for a launch order that never came.

iirc, Emil is such a force to be reckoned with and kicks so much as alien ass that they use his weird face as an effigy worshiped akin to a god.

FUCK OFF

SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED IF I WANT A SWORD THAT SNEAKS OFF IN THE NIGHT AND EATS PEOPLE YOU CAN'T STOP ME

So, since weapons don't kill people, you're to blame for all these murders?

There's a few ways to do this.

>Weapon blindly makes the wielder an unstoppable force
This is just a matter or power falling into the wrong hands. To truly be a threat, it must make the user not only destructive but nigh immune to even concentrated attacks by large groups.

>Weapon has a mind and a will, and becomes twisted
Be it originally a force of good, a bound demon, or simply a mind of singular purpose, it has outgrown its original design and intent and enforced its own purpse on the world by means of an ally, controlling a puppet or just has the raw power to move and act independently.

>Imbued power has grown and become overwhelming in a large area
Rather than being a threat as the weapon it was created to be, it's energy is directly growing and causing harm. Suppose a weapon was given a touch of power from the divine realms, and is now weakening the barriers between heaven, hell and earth as all manner of conflict and chaos pours forth.

SHALL
NOT
INFRINGE
I launch them someplace they won't harm any people. Norway.

literally Numenera but don't tell /pol/ or /v/ that

>the ancient evil was actually good

Using the right prayers, tools and gestures to summon down the wrath of Odin. (Odin in this case being a series of satellites capable of launching tungsten rods from space, the Orbital Defence Initiative Network.)

>sword has so much magic in it that it gains sentience
>evil sword
>possesses hero
>the hero actively tries to resist
>sword is the villain now

or

>sword has so much magic in it that it basically creates a black-hole effect but with magic
>the event horizon is growing
>it threatens to destroy all magic

The one thing i don't like in Numenera is actually how it presents its artifacts. There's just not enough suspension of disbelief to think of them as ancient forgotten technology because stuff they do goes straight up to "okay, at this point this shit could possibly be actual magic".

It doesn't help that 90% of cyphers are actually lazy reskins of D&D magic items

My mortal engines nigga

>corroded and leaking
Enjoy spreading radioactive waste everywhere in the flightpath, if they even reach the target

Unless it literally disintegrates along the way there isn't much radiation exposure possible from the flight path. It just isn't enough material or enough time. Bombs don't have quite the same kind of heft of material that a reactor would.

My nigga

That's kind of a given in 40k - DAoT tech is incredibly durable, and there's all sorts of things that get uncovered, and their military complexes have absolutely horrific defences - finding/waking up shit that should be long dead is par for the course, usually with INCREDIBLY good reason.

I do like Pluto as an ancient superweapon though

a good "artifact" would be 1960s millitary reactor like the one they used in Greenland to heat the Ballistic Missiles Early Warning station

>players find someone who knows of an tomb in the far north filled with rare alchemical elements and the fabled "rods of destiny" which can bring great power if raised
>find dusty manuscript which say the tomb was built by the mythical king Sác
>PCs make the dangerous journey to the land of ice, snow and whalefish
>they find and break into the snowed over tomb made of a strange grey rock
>the wizard approaches the fabled rods while the rest of the party are looting nearby
>he raises one slightly
>everyone get a metallic taste in their mouth and the Wizard sees a blue glow deep below him
>the Wizard senses the deep power he is tapping into and pulls it out fully
>a massive steam explosion wells up from below
>once the steam clears the survivors see the Wizard skewered to the ceiling by the vengeful rod of Sác

>DAoT tech is incredibly durable

It's probably more that whatever is left after fifteen thousand bad years is incredibly durable.

5000, but yeah. If you've read FW's HH books, a few times they use Legions going up against long-buried tech in their exemplary battles

Sounds cool, any sources and is it still there?

Yep, but i have an alabi, i was at home, ate dinner and went to bed promptly a candle inch after sundown.

my man eating sword will back me up as a witness.

Sooooo, excalibur from soul eater? Meets the sword from dave the barbarian?

>is it still there?

no it was dismantled in the 70s

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Nuclear_Power_Program

it was part of the Army Nuclear Power program to develop small reactors to heat and power american bases and radar sites in Alaska, Canada and Greenland

excluding mobile reactors the ones actually built were

SM-1 at Ft. Belvoir Virginia
SL-1 at the NRTS site in Idaho(which was destroyed by criticality accident in 1958)
PM-1 at Sundance AFB in Wyoming
PM-2A at Thule AFB in Greenland
PM-3A at McMurdo in Antarctica
SM-1A at Fort Greely in Alaska

the Wizard accidentally pulling out the control rod and getting pinned to the ceiling is based on what actually happened to one of the techs during the SL-1 incident

youtube.com/watch?v=yjljS0aQbCc

So..... Stormbringer?

I played in a PF game where this was kind of a thing, albeit the technology had just been invented. We encountered a smuggler with a pistol in a setting where guns were still a very new concept. The wizard, believing it to be some sort of explosive wand, stole it and reversed engineered it. He later partnered up with a dwarven mechanic to become the first mass producer of firearms.

We are arresting your sword for homocide. You still own him. But he is under arrest.

Unless you're saying it's a nonsentient, in which case you're being charged with at minimum recklessness, if not perhaps even manslaughter, for knowing it was dangerous and not keeping it properly secured.

Welcome to fallout?

Shin Getter Robo?

WELL
REGULATED
MILITIA

You don't need your AK and +2 sword at Panera Bread, dipshit. The only thing you need to worry about there is your blood pressure.

Is that Wizards fanart?

>REGULATED
>regulate
>to put in good order:
I'M MAINTAINING MY SOUL DEVOURING SWORD WITH REGULAR MAINTENANCE AND SHARPENING

Holy fuck it is! I didn't notice his reflection until you pointed it out!

Horizon Zero Dawn?

That's what I named my app for one of the games after.

The guy who got skewered, not some wizard.

...

What about Project Iceworm in Greenland?
Tunnels over an area larger than Denmark, abandoned homes, stores, hospitals, even a theatre...
With randomly strewn nuclear waste and spent rods just abandoned where they lie.
And at the bottom? A leaking reactor that was never properly decommissioned.
Thank the US military.

this movie is a fucking trip

You know they never made most of those tunnels - at Camp Century they found ice shifts too much, and that the tunnels would be wiped out in a few years - the reactor room there already showed signs of it.
And they shipped the reactor back to the US (though they did leave waste)

I'm afraid we'll have to take your sword to Sword Prison for these murders.

Sword Prison is also known as evidence lock-up.

>the legendary ancient dragon-slaying weapons were actually giant robots
>giant robots powered by dragon souls
>built by Dragon Hitler in order to genocide the entire dragon race because they're polluting the planet
>they almost succeed and sleep for hundreds of years
>the PCs awaken and pilot them to fight evil dragons
>turns out dragons aren't actually that evil but Dragon Hitler is still alive and thinks he's the emissary of the planet now
>wants to do another genocide
>the final battle is all of humanity and the dragonbots fighting together against Dragon Hitler by himself because he's insane and the pollution won't actually harm the planet for a few million years anyway

every day i wake up, i realize i'll never be able to run a campaign on that scale again and then cry myself back to sleep