Finding an Ancestral Weapon

[Balasar]

So my Blacksmith player is thinking about taking his skills Cross-Archetype to Stalo, which means he’ll probably end up with Ancestral Weapon. Soul-bound Strike with an ancestral weapon — god help me lol. Anyway, I was wondering how some of the norns put there have approached granting an Ancestral Weapon that a character doesn’t start with.

I don’t want it to just be “oh look, a shiny new, tailor-made sword has appeared in your inventory, woooow!” That’s boring. Some of my ideas:

One of the crafting related deities, like Eitri, Iduna, Hyrrokkin, etc. comes to him in a dream and helps him forge a weapon unlike any other he’s ever made. When he awakes, he’s clutching the weapon in both hands. My only hesitation with this is that he just had a forge related dream sequence in a DnD game where he’s getting ready to multiclass to Forge Domain cleric (seeing a pattern in the stuff he plays?). I don’t want it to seem repetitive or like I’m plagiarizing our friend, who DM’s that game and plays in my FOTN group.

Idea 2, which is the simplest, is that he feels compelled to craft something, and doesn’t even know what it is until he’s done forging it. He doesn’t even seem to have conscious control over his body, and he’s in a feverish haze as he works. When he’s done, a weapon lies before him, fresh from the forge. He then uses only that weapon for 2 levels, as explained in the skill’s description. On the other hand, for the kind of QR of an ancestral weapon, that would take hundreds of not thousands of units of crafting materials — way more than he has.

Idea 3: he visits the grave of an ancestor, and finds the weapon there. It seems to call to him, to want him to take it. He feels certain that this is what his ancestor wants, and that it isn’t desecration.

Idea 4: one of his ancestors roams the world as a vampire-like creature, and when the party kills it, the blacksmith can keep its sword as an ancestral weapon. What kind of creature should I use for a vampire? Would that just be a Haugbui with some slight homebrew tweaks?

Do any of you have any better ideas? Am I overthinking this? Should I be asking him what he thinks?

[andrew]

I like all of those ideas!

Idea #2 was actually a scene in Seith & Sword and worked very well.

[Balasar]

I guess great minds think alike lol