Not the One Ring.

Not the plans to the Death Star.

Not the Sword That Was Broken.

Something else.



Basically, I need to start a war.

This object was stolen, and a bounty was put up for it by an earl or something equivalent to one.

Mercenaries like my main characters have been hunting for it. However, the elves have been accused of stealing it, and many of the mercenaries have not been kind in their search.

A war breaks out, dividing the once solid land in strife.

During this war, the object which the MC's retrieved for the bounty is going to be important. Life or death.

But, it's not magic.

It's not a superweapon.

And I really don't want to say 'it's a sword' because that has so been done...

Does anyone have any ideas?

Capture a princess/queen and then kill her and blame... but wait, you don't want to copy things.

How about a silver leaf from a tree that only has one silver leaf every hundred years? Maybe a thousand? Or maybe a ruby encrusted leaf that the earl wants to give to his bride. (maybe even a real leaf, but a special one that doesn't wilt?) Or maybe a cane that's really a sword but nobody knows it except the person who stole it, so at first your characters go after it just as a simple way to get money, but then find it's really important!

...ever heard of SW high..? Leads to odd and crazy ideas...

"I've got my country's 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder and Guilder to frame for it; I'm swamped."

A no-prize to whoever figures that quote and the line in my sister's post that reminded me of it out.

Princess Bride. That was too easy.

The crown. A goblet. A large, priceless gem. A crown would work, because it could be a symbol of authority. Even though it doesn't actually possess magical powers, it's regarded superstitiously. Whoever wears the crown will be the ruler or something. So when it's stolen from the king it's fought over as a way to gain allegiance. Same thing if you used a signet ring. Or maybe it's an old book that everyone thinks contains some kind of map/formula/spell.

Princess Bride. Very easy. You forget we're pretty much a forum of uber-geeks on here.

I have a Dagger. It ties in nicely with Janin's concept of land-law but hopefully it will end up as un-cliched. I also have a living flower made out of a hard metal that only blooms once every hundred years. It actually doesn't factor into the story but is a great treasure in the land. I liked the idea of a leaf.

eruheran

I've been debating this a lot.

I don't want a Lord of the Rings clone. Or anything that's going to scream Lord of the Rings.

I'm quite concerned about it because I showed my one-paragraph story narrative to a couple people and the first thing they said was 'like Lord of the Rings?' which was a very bad reaction.

There is no magic in this story. There is the supernatural, but not in the form of general 'anyone can get the object and use it' power. Just given for specific purposes.

Everything I've either thought of or had suggested so far goes off in the ranges of LotR when I have it as the main goal of the characters for the first part of the narrative.

So far the only thing that really sounds kinda interesting is an old idea I had laying around in which a bottle of water is thought to be healing, and over the course of the story, the characters discover that it's not the bottle or the water that is powerful, but it's the purpose that is powerful... if that makes sense.

But I'm not sure if even that avoids the cliche! :P

The other thing is that I am treating this very seriously, it's probably going to get a little dark eventually (not Mordor-dark, but fairly emotionally and tonally dark) and that's really hard if the object is slightly humourous. This is serious. There isn't a lot of humour. So the object needs to be very serious where every time you think of it, you realize 'this is important'. Kind of like the One Ring except not.

Thanks for all your thoughts, everyone. Even though the specifics haven't helped me yet, you are helping me expand my horizons of what the possibilities are. Sometimes suggestions spark other ideas.

The Princess Bride is the most quotable movie ever.

And since we're all fantasy nerds, I'm certain we quote it more than most. A group of us could recite the entire movie together, no doubt.

I started a thread for that on scriptfrenzy actually. But I gave up on the screnzy so I never checked to see how far it got.

We could just quote our favorite line(s). In this thread or another if my sister doesn't want us to derail this one.

"You mock my pain!"

"Life is pain, highness! Anyone who says differently is selling something."

Funny but true, which is odd yet cool.

I'd start a thread, but there's really nowhere to put it. (Sorry, I have the feeling we are WAY off topic.)

You could put it in General Discussion.

::shakes head::

I'm not a stickler for being on topic (christianfilmmakers.org broke me of that tendency) but thank you for taking it someplace else.

Well, I think I have picked something. It's a bottle of water rumoured to have healing properties. (except the matter is deeper than that, but when you're writing a 5-sentence paragraph and trying to avoid run-on sentences, you make things short & sweet! ;D)