Not all artefacts require the use of magical materials. The significance of them is that they can encorporate the artefact into the Exalt's anima and a way of channelling the ingredients' power.

    An artefact ship can move through water without disturbing it as if it were part of the water itself. As the vessel is inhabited by a water elemental or bonded to the anima of a Terrestrial Exalted this is actually true. A vessel of frost jade can move as easily over the frozen sea as snow over ice. A vessel of fire jade can travel through rivers of burning rock.
   Earth jade is extraordinarily hard and requires age of strenuous hammering to craft it into shape. It's far stronger than most tools used to craft it as a result they have to be repaired or replaced frequently. Jade can survive any condition of it's Elemental Pole. It was intended to be the bodies of elementals.
   Artefacts made from jade are the houses of elementals. The Dragon-Blooded are representations of the living things of Creation just as they are descended from their forebears. Their artefacts aren't just objects but living weapons.

    Less powerful artefacts are not made from a compound of a conventional material alloyed with a magical one but are a combination of the two with the magical material instilling it's power in the conventional one. Such 'conventional' artefacts follow my rules (for weapons) of a superior mundane item with a magical material bonus and powers according to it's artefact rating. Artefacts made from a solid magical material are much more rare though they were more common during the First Age, and far more powerful. With such artefacts anything seems possible.
   The scale of powers for an artefact made from a solid magical material are far greater than those made from a combination of a magical and a mortal substance. Use the characteristics in the end of Exalted for weapons and armour, but their individual powers dwarf these enhanced properties.
   Making these artefacts is considerably more difficult. They require far higher skill and a more sophisticated workshop. The ingredients they require are far more powerful and harder to obtain. Also magical materials themselves are rare and gathering enough to make an artefact entirely out of one is an impressive feat.
   Only the huge scale of Creation, abilities of the Celestial Exalted and the infrastructure they made allowed Wonders such as Warstriders (superior to Common Warstriders in the way pure artefacts are to common ones) to be made as anything by exclusive rarities.
   Noble Warstriders were so called because they were the first class of Warstriders to be made entirely from magical materials. Even then they were usually reserved for Celestial Exalted. Starmetal Noble Warstriders were unheard of.
    In lesser artefacts the magical material may be a piece of carefully cut jade in the guard of pommel of a sword or a talisman in a suit of armour. A hearthstone amulet should be just that, an amulet with special powers like Tullaris' Black Amulet. Only the most basic ones would just house a hearthstone and slightly increase the rate of Essence recovery.
   The description of making the Fellblade in the Skaven army book is a good example of artefact construction.

    Only solid material artefacts can contain the energy that the creation powers of a greater magical ingredient gives. No one would waste precious magical material on making a solid artefact just to use the powers of lesser esoteric ingredients. It's the ingredients themselves that give the artefact it's unique powers. The magical material can contain their energy and provide a bonus.

17th April

    The societies in Exalted's setting lack a cultural basis
   Sample southern cultures: arabia, cambodia, south america

    The different societies in Creation need more cultural development.

   Magical materials are often in short supply in Exalted. Artefacts are often made from a combination of a magical material and normal materials like wood and metal. The materials are not mixed but used with eachother in a composite. Using jade on a wooded club makes a goremaul.
   Although they're not magical materials the other parts of the artefact have to be unusual, esoteric components. How unusual depends on the power of the artefact they're trying to create. The definitive part of an artefact like the blade of a weapon, has to be made from one of the magical materials.

    An alternative idea for creating artefact powers: the scale of artefact powers goes up to 10.

    You can use creation powers up to equal the artefact level. It's really down to the players to decide what they want and the Storyteller to arbitrate what level it's powers are and what ingredients it would need. You may think it's best if you are the only authority who decides what esoteric ingredients effects need putting more control in the hands of the Storyteller.

Artefacts

    I think they misrepresented artefacts in Exalted (there's much of the game I don't agree with or want to improve on which is why I write about it so much.) Magical weapons are a case in point. It's easy to use them as an example because they are all variants of normal 'mundane' weapons and have a long string of stats so they have a family of normal objects they can be compared to and their performance can be expressed statistically.
   The thing I think they should change about artefacts, in this case weapons, is the way they differ from ordinary objects and their basic statistical superiority. In essence the problem is they are designed (from a rules point of view) based on the fact that their superiority is a result of the fact they are constructed of magical materials (bloody badly written sentence, someone coughed and broke my concentration.) The two elements of artefact construction are they are made from the magical materials and esoteric ingredients. But because of their aesthetic form and their blatant superiority the esoteric ingredient element of their design is more of an afterthought to making something out of a slab of jade.
   At the real root of the problem is the very existence of rules for magical weapons. Specifically a set of rules that gives specific stats for each one. The artefacts are truly generic with any optional special powers added onto their already potent capabilities. To compare this to the magic items of Warhammer this stands out because in Warhammer there was no such thing as an equivalent to a daiklave. There were a host of magic swords but each one was made by a mastercraftsman, the esoteric ingredients in it's construction were desscribed and each one was unique. True some weapons were made to a common design such as the Runefangs but the unique element of the ingredients used in their construction such as metal heated in the fire of dragon breath were more important than the materials they were made of.
   Before I discovered the artefact weapon section at the back of the book I was giddy with excitement at how such weapons would be superior to their normal counterparts. I'd heard of the bonuses that apply from using the magical materials before reading about the rules for artefact weapons. Now I think artefact construction should be viewed more from that perspective. My idea on how artefacts should be designed follows:
   Use the statistics for mundane weapons as a base.
   Artefacts are invariably made as superior equipment. How superior you can decide when you make them, exceptional and especially perfect artefacts would take appropriately longer. I want to address the rules for making superior equipment as they're a bit fuzzy or incorrect to me.
   The apply the appropriate magical material bonus to the artefact.
   The essential point of creating an artefact weapon isn't that it simply has higher accuracy, defense, rate, does appalling damage etc. but the original powers the maker choses to invest it with. You could simply make it easier to hit an enemy with or much larger and capable of doing more damage but it's real value is in the powers that result from the esoteric ingredients used in it's construction.

   When I was creating Gilius' Staff Ryuk I hit on the idea of using the manse power Sentient as a model for creating him as an entity. Since then I've thought of using a similar system of points and power ranking schemes for creating different levels of artefacts. More will follow once I've given some thought to it.