*thinks for hours about the ontological implications of sentient artifacts in magical settings*
Result: "What if you could handfeed your companion weapon treats.."
Follow
I might actually read Moorcock's Elric stuff if someone told me he gives his angstbound soulsword pettings and little snacks now and again.
Worldbuilding/Ontology Nerding
Really though I've been working on-and-off on a fantasy setting and thinking a lot about how this kind of stuff interacts with object distinctions and cultural systems of categorisation
How bonding with an item implies one party brings a system of categorization that defines the boundaries of the item..
Like, a sword doesn't inherently have sword-essence any more than separate [blade, hilt, bindings, crossguard, pommel] essences. A bag of pebbles or a woven garment could have one essence or many, depending on PoV.
So either you have a sort of Platonic Essence system where Objects innately have Object-ness, or it's in some way imbued by surrounding cultural context, either that of the object or the person who ensouls/awakens it.
If its personality and essence are shaped by that, that then raises further questions. Does the local culture's idea of what stone is like affect a carved stone sculpture, or does the carving change its object-essence and remove that kinda class inheritence? Would the sculpture have a personality like 'sculptures', 'stone', the thing it depicts, or some combination thereof?
This is the kind of thing I was up at 3am thinking about, hi