Relic Hunts

Grail, Ark, Spear. The great powers have always dug for objects that shouldn't matter.

From Helena's 4th-century excavation of the 'True Cross' to the Ahnenerbe's Grail expeditions to Otto Rahn's searches at Montségur, powers have funded hunts for charged objects. Documented: the medieval relic economy was industrial-scale — enough True Cross fragments, Calvin joked, to fill a ship — and authentication was impossible by design. The pattern this node marks: objects become powerful because institutions search for them, not the reverse. Every hunt on this map (Ark, Grail, Lance) inherits that inversion.