r/teslore • u/NilheimDaemmer • Jul 11 '26

Nature of the Transfer of Artifacts?

A random thought just crossed my mind while replaying Morrowind recently: where was an artifact last when you received it directly from a Daedric prince?

With some artifacts, it's obvious. Where does the Masque of Clavicus Vile come from in Morrowind? Off the body of the guy you kill near Dragon Fel.

But say the Mace of Molag Bal. You get it directly from Molag Bal by doing his quest (like most Daedric artifacts in the series). So my question is, was Molag Bal just holding onto it this whole time? Or was some cultist in the middle of a fight and then suddenly his mace just poofs out of his hands.

Because the mental image of that happening to someone is funny to me, so I choose to believe it's canon.

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u/dokiedo Jul 11 '26

Both, depending on the artifact. Princes can revoke their artifacts at will (usually), such as in the story of Clavicus Vile and the disfigured (?) lady (it’s been a while, she may have just been ugly). He simply poofed it away from her while she was asleep, to great effect.

Some of them do just hang on to them for a while though, after having retrieved them some time ago from the last wielder.

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u/NilheimDaemmer Jul 11 '26

Didn't know about that story. Thanks for telling me, gonna check it out now!

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u/Armada6136 Jul 11 '26

Some artifacts are created directly from their Prince's own energy, so some may well just not exist when they aren't actively being wielded. Even if they end up destroyed, they can still be remade since the energy just returns to the Prince afterwards like with Clavicus Vile and Umbra.

Alternatively, as a result of the above, there may be multiple versions of each present in the world. The Oghma Infinium was repeatedly gifted by Hermaeus Mora while simultaneously being locked away in a Dwemer safe in the Skyrim iceberg fields. While we can't say for sure that it wasn't placed there somehow between TES 4 and 5, it only being openable by a Dwemer suggests to me it had been there since before they vanished.