Nuime (soul artifacts thing)

[DanielH]

I’m not sure even a Miles would be able to get one that early; it sounds like it takes a few hours and a couple tries, but I don’t know why he wouldn’t have one by age five to ten.

Did he not have an Ivan? That actually sounds like it might slow him down on some of the dangerous stuff.

[Kappa]

I'm not sure if there's a strict age limit on when you're theoretically able to make an artifact, but there's definitely an age limit on when it's considered a good idea to make an artifact, because no one wants a two-year-old running around with a shiny rock that will cause them to suffer unspeakably if anyone else touches it. Taliar was probably breaking a mild-to-moderate taboo by making one at seventeen.

Thinking about it, I think I'm going to say that there is an age limit on artifact creation, and it approximately coincides with daemon-settling. Different for everyone, happens sometime in teenage years. But there's no visible sign that you've become able to make an artifact until you try it, and teenagers with artifacts is considered unwise, so very few people actually know when their artifact creation capacity arrived, they just know that children who try to make artifacts never succeed and teenagers rarely succeed and, these days, if they give it enough tries, adults basically always succeed.

Reasons why an adult might not want their very own soul artifact include, but are not limited to:

• You suffer unspeakably if anyone else touches it.
• It constantly broadcasts an accurate summary of what kind of person you are to anyone who can see it.
• It gives you strong hints about what kind of person you are, what kind of person you aspire to be, and how big the difference is between the two, maybe not constantly, but certainly often enough to make some people uncomfortable.
• The Soul Wars left behind a lot of cultural trauma and as the artifacts-per-capita ratio rises, everyone gets slightly more nervous.
• Some people actually don't want magical powers.
• You suffer unspeakably if anyone else touches it.

There isn't an Ivan planned for Nuime at this time.

[PlainDealingVillain]

It gives you strong hints about what kind of person you are, what kind of person you aspire to be, and how big the difference is between the two, maybe not constantly, but certainly often enough to make some people uncomfortable.

Yeah, I'd probably not have one for a long while if I lived in this world. Or else get one immediately because knowing what I aspired to be would be better than the uncertainty. I'm not sure which.

[Alicorn]

An Ivan would not want an artifact, but Ivans actually like the middling along thing they do quite well so he'd probably have a surprisingly good one if he had one. Not exceptional, just, 'wow, I didn't realize you could aspire to be ordinary like that but it seems to be working for you pretty okay'.

[Kappa]

What you aspire to be can also change, mind you. And it can be vague. Your artifact might not be as informative/helpful as you could hope. But it'll be some amount of informative.

Aww, Ivans. <3 <3 <3

[DanielH]

I feel a bit sorry for an Ivan who ended up with an artifact, then; it seems like creating the artifact would, as a side effect, make him less the person he aspired to be.

[Alicorn]

Well, yes, he wouldn't want one. It just amused me that if he had one this would happen with it.

[Ezra]

If for example some mad plot of Taliar's required Ivan to manifest an artifact?

[Alicorn]

"This plot is too mad."

[Kappa]

Taliar is kind of shocked and horrified at the suggestion that he would get his hypothetical Ivan so deeply in trouble that he needed an artifact to get out again. He would definitely not do any such thing on purpose. Putting someone in a situation where they might have to make their artifact when they haven't already decided to is, like, bad. Esarkan did it to Taliar and Taliar was okay with it on balance only because it directly led to a large number of people not being tortured/murdered/etc who otherwise would have been. There is almost no conceivable situation where hypothetical Ivan in particular would have to make his artifact to get such an outcome, especially not with Taliar in the same universe, and if such a situation arose anyway, Taliar would point it out to hypothetical-Ivan really awkwardly and if hypothetical-Ivan didn't bite he'd proceed to find a different, better way to fix it.

Setting notes: An artifact-wielder is called a soulbearer. This is a pun in English ('bare your soul') and I haven't quite decided whether or not I want the pun to coincidentally exist in Nuimena or other languages of the setting. I also haven't decided what they tend to call the process of creating your artifact. They definitely call it something less clunky than 'making your artifact'. I'm going to have to either go for the pun or think of something, and I don't think I really want to go for the pun.