Something for the Mantel

Question: What are some especially memorable Trophies your Bands have gathered from the fallen forms of their formerly fearsome foes?

Despite your exciting alliteration, this question doesn't really have an exciting answer. Trophies are, unfortunately, pretty inconsequential and even boring most of the time in our games, whether we use the ones from the books or try to invent something appropriate on our own. The Trophies of fallen creatures and enemies are occasionally useful, but they really only go through three phases of player interest: the phase where the high Intellect characters care because they want to identify them, the phase where craft-oriented characters care in case they can turn them into something else, and the phase where someone puts them into a bag, forgets about them and eventually loses them when they use Skin-Shedding or run through a lake of fire or something. The only person we've ever had with a fourth phase is Terminus, who has a museum-slash-junkroom in his Sanctum where he hoards any and all items with even a hint of magic about them.

The most memorable moment for a Trophy in my recollection, however, was very early in the Better Next Time game, when the band killed the first giant they'd ever seen. They were able to identify that its heartsblood would give them some kind of physical bonuses, but nobody rolled high enough to really figure out specifics; when Chuck tossed one back to buff himself in combat, it dropped his Intelligence below zero and he went instead through a fit of insane, ravening berserker rage while the other PCs sort of panicked and ran around avoiding him. The days when +/-2 bonuses and penalties to things mattered are long past for that band, but they still refer to giantsblood as "Chuck Clark Juice".

The problem with Trophies is that they can never compete with relics; they're always going to be so limited and underpowered by comparison that most PCs don't bother with them (especially if they're particularly large or otherwise a pain to transport). They're fantastic for crafting-oriented Scions, as they make great raw materials and bases for creating relics later, and especially at Hero-level can be good buffs in specific situations, but they use their utility pretty quickly. And that's actually really okay with us; they shouldn't be able to compete with relics, which are a much bigger deal and more difficult to get, but neither are they earth-shatteringly badass. They're more like incidental magical objects Scions might pick up along the way than things that end up being important or featured.

Trophies that Scions take to creatively weave into their own legends are way cool, though, such as when Geoff absconded with a fallen giant's bone club (pretty standard giant femur with minor combat bonuses) and eventually had it forged into his sword Hvitingr. A Trophy's primary purpose is to give the PCs fodder for cool stuff they want to do; more often than not, they won't need or bother with it (unless you're tailoring monsters to directly appeal to them), but the few times they do it's usually worth the whole shebang.