10 Rings, Amulets, And Cursed Objects We'd Risk & 10 We'd Leave Exactly Where We Found Them
10 Rings, Amulets, And Cursed Objects We'd Risk & 10 We'd Leave Exactly Where We Found Them
The Power Is Real, So Is the Price
Every cursed object in fiction comes with a cost, and even the most sensible people in the stories ignore that until it is too late. Some of these things have an upside compelling enough to at least consider the terms. Others are a no from the moment you read the description. Here's 10 artifacts worth the gamble, and 10 that can stay exactly where they are.
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1. The Green Lantern Ring
The ring chooses you based on willpower, constructs anything you can imagine in solid light, and comes with an interplanetary corps as backup. The weakness to yellow is annoying rather than disqualifying, and the recharging requirement is something most people could build a routine around.
2. The Eye of Agamotto
Doctor Strange's amulet contains the Time Stone and lets the user manipulate time and see through illusions. The barrier to entry is years of study at Kamar-Taj, but the alternative is living without the ability to rewind catastrophic mistakes, and that seems like the worse deal.
3. The Mask of Loki
The Mask transforms whoever wears it into an exaggerated, nearly invulnerable version of their id, with cartoon physics and essentially unlimited chaotic energy. The risk is losing control of yourself entirely, but the mask also tends to make its wearer impossible to kill, which is a meaningful offset.
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4. The Phantom Ring
Unlike the Green Lantern ring, the Phantom Ring requires no willpower or emotional purity and works for anyone, cycling through the emotional spectrum depending on the wearer's state of mind. The instability is a genuine problem, but for someone who could stay emotionally regulated, the raw power on offer is hard to walk away from.
5. Mjolnir
The worthiness requirement is what makes Mjolnir worth picking up, because if you can lift it you are by definition someone it has judged capable of handling what comes with it. The weather control, the flight, and the recall from any distance compound nicely, and the hammer has never been accused of corrupting anyone who earned it.
6. The Philosopher's Stone
The Stone removes most of the usual limitations of alchemy and can do things that normal alchemy cannot approach. The problem is what it is made of, which is the souls of living people, and most readers find that a dealbreaker, but the fictional characters keep reaching for it anyway.
7. The Cloak of Levitation
The Cloak requires nothing beyond general compatibility, acts independently when it judges action necessary, and provides flight and protection without a recharging requirement or a corrupting influence. It is also apparently affectionate, which is not a quality most artifacts can claim.
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8. The Spear of Longinus (Evangelion)
The Spear exists outside normal physical laws, can penetrate AT Fields, and has the capacity to reshape reality at the highest level of its cosmology. It requires something in the class of an Angel or an Eva to wield meaningfully, but it is among the most powerful objects in any universe on this list.
9. The Invisible Hood's Cloak
The cloak grants full invisibility with no documented curse, no corrupting influence, and no cost beyond putting it on, which makes it genuinely rare company on this list. In a genre built around objects that take something from you, an artifact that simply does what it does and leaves you alone is almost suspicious in how clean the deal is.
10. The Sorcerer's Ring (Dying Earth)
Jack Vance's Sorcerer's Ring lets the wearer cast spells without the usual preparation and memorization that Dying Earth magic demands, which in that setting is a significant advantage. The ring has a personality and preferences of its own, but compared to most items on this list that is a manageable complication.
And now, here are 10 we would leave exactly where we found them.
1. The One Ring
The One Ring is designed to corrupt its wearer toward Sauron's will, cannot be destroyed by conventional means, and has a history of abandoning its bearers at the worst possible moment as a feature rather than a bug. Even Gandalf refused it, and his judgment on these matters is among the most trustworthy in the canon.
2. The Crimson Gem of Cyttorak
The Gem transforms whoever touches it into the Juggernaut, which sounds appealing until you understand that the Juggernaut is not a person with powers but a vessel for Cyttorak, a demon who can redirect that power whenever he chooses. The unstoppable physical force comes with a landlord who has his own agenda.
3. The Darkhold
Every spell in the Darkhold works and every spell costs the caster a piece of their sanity. Wanda Maximoff read it extensively in the MCU and the results were not encouraging, and the comics version has been corrupting sorcerers for centuries with a consistency that should be disqualifying.
4. The Black Vortex (Marvel)
The Black Vortex augments the user's abilities to a cosmic scale but removes their connection to ordinary human concerns in ways that are difficult to reverse. The people who undergo the transformation spend considerable time being talked down from decisions that make sense at cosmic scale and are catastrophic at human scale.
5. The Mandarin's Ten Rings (Original Comics Version)
Each ring has a distinct and powerful ability, but they were designed by an alien intelligence with its own goals and have influenced the Mandarin's decision-making in directions that serve the rings rather than the wearer. Ten simultaneous alien intelligences nudging you toward their preferred outcomes is a negotiating position most people should decline.
6. The Helm of Nabu
Doctor Fate's helmet grants access to the power of Nabu, an ancient Lord of Order, but Nabu is not a passive tool and overrides the will of whoever wears it when he judges action necessary. Several people have put the Helm on and found it extremely difficult to remove, and those who managed it describe the experience as an occupation rather than a partnership.
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7. The Infinity Gauntlet
The Gauntlet with all six Stones grants omnipotence, which sounds ideal until you consider that omnipotence with a human nervous system has consistently required universe-scale intervention to correct. Everyone who has wielded the full set has made decisions that reflect the limitations of the holder rather than the limitlessness of the object.
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8. The Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (Evil Dead)
The Necronomicon is bound in human flesh, inked in blood, and reading from it summons Deadites with no off switch once activated. Ash Williams has been dealing with the consequences of one encounter across multiple films and a television series, and his situation does not recommend the experience.
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9. The Heart of Darkness (DC)
The Heart of Darkness contains Eclipso, a being of divine wrath who possesses whoever holds the gem when touched by darkness, literally or figuratively. The possession is not something the host survives with their personality intact, and the benefit to the host is never clear enough to justify that.
10. The Anti-Life Equation (DC)
The Anti-Life Equation eliminates free will in anyone exposed to it and has been Darkseid's central obsession for the entirety of his existence in DC continuity. There is no version of possessing it that does not end with everyone around you becoming an extension of your will, which is not a situation most people could navigate without becoming the villain.
