how to destroy an artifact of true cold?

[Bohandas]

Why would you want to destroy it? All power plants operate on an energy gradient; build a generator around it and kickstars an industrial revolution with free energy.

And on the fantasy end it could be useful on a spelljamming vessel. You could actually keep your torches lit in pholgistonic space

[Buufreak]

Essentially, your artifact is a hole in the universe. What if to stop it, the party had to enter it?

Yea, the more I'm reading about this, the more it sounds like a self contained black hole.

Well, good news is that until it reaches a volume of the moon, it isn't going to be catastrophic enough to become a self sustained vacuum of doom. Bad news is, unless it reaches that size, it will blink out of existence within millionths of millionths of a second, because that's just how quickly these things work, and it will run out of resources in measurements incomprehensible to most humans.

That is, of course, your game gives a crap about actual real world physics.

[Chronikoce]

Don't try and use any answer that involves an idea based on physics because this item is complete nonsense physically (side note: entropy increases to cause heat death, not decreases. Maximum Entropy = heat death).

So pick a really cool story/quest. Maybe you've got to convince/defeat the deity that created it before you can dispose of it properly.

You could also make it a quest to obtain an artifact that does the reverse (reduces entropy to zero, I. E. The big bang) and have them cancel each other out. Maybe this requires gaining the favor of a greater deity, but you've got to solve his problems first.

[Thurbane]

Have it thrown into a furnace in the palace of the ruler of the City of Brass?

[Bohandas]

If an intelligent item, perhaps if it found true love

[rferries]

People joked about using the Positive Energy Plane, but I'll suggest it seriously. The Negative Energy Plane is the plane of entropy/destruction, so an artifact of entropy should be destroyed in the opposite plane (alternatively, a plane of Law, for the entropy = Chaos interpretation).

[Bohandas]

cold is lack of entropy.

[Westhart]

Hmm, Do you have any smith style gods? If so take it to their forge... or maybe an ascended dragon's fire?

[daremetoidareyo]

Actually if there is an artifact that somehow make energy disappear in nothingness throwing it into the sun is probably a bad idea.
Black holes would be a better idea since it would slow down considerably(due to the distortion of space time caused by the black hole) the artifact basically making it stop having effect.(ps: it works on other artifacts too unless they somehow pertain to the time or eats black holes or is a black hole or some other silly thing artifacts do)

What a black hole slow down and become a star?

[Calthropstu]

What a black hole slow down and become a star?

Yes, it would become a star and hang out with other stars in space hollywood and audition for parts in a galactic comedy.

[Westhart]

Yes, it would become a star and hang out with other stars in space hollywood and audition for parts in a galactic comedy.

Awesome, where do you find tickets for its first movie :P

[Chronikoce]

cold is lack of entropy.

This is misleading. The net entropy of the system increases by a large amount in order to cool a single item to very low temperature.

For example, to cool a crystal to extremely low temperatures (micro Kelvin) requires a massive expenditure of energy in a laboratory environment. That massive expenditure of energy is a huge increase in entropy in order to achieve the very low temperature and entropy in the crystal.

Anyway, physics and d&d don't mesh well together. I'd stick with it being an artifact of cold and don't try to bring any physics logic into the solution.

[Bohandas]

This is misleading. The net entropy of the system increases by a large amount in order to cool a single item to very low temperature.

For example, to cool a crystal to extremely low temperatures (micro Kelvin) requires a massive expenditure of energy in a laboratory environment. That massive expenditure of energy is a huge increase in entropy in order to achieve the very low temperature and entropy in the crystal.

That's a non-sequitur (or at best a tangent), the part that's actually cold lacks entropy

[ericgrau]

Center of the earth and/or heart of the plane of fire perhaps. Or special location in the plane of fire. The great forge in the city of Brass or some such. A flaming pit found in the 9th layer of hell. Etc. Besides center of the earth these are all made up btw.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Clearly you need an artifact of True Hot to cancel it out.

[Thurbane]

Clearly you need an artifact of True Hot to cancel it out.

Maybe the Vest of Fabio?

[OracleofWuffing]

Is the artifact feeding off the entropy being messed with in all this, or is it just straight-up obliterating it? I guess figuring out how the artifact works is easily part of a quest line hook, but if it doesn't cause the thing to get any stronger or faster, some doofy set up with a Decanter of Endless Water and a Sphere of Annihilation could at least keep the artifact busy with a constant source of "stuff" to work through before it hits the world at large- just epic-ify water for whatever suits the tone of the quest, lava, pyrotheum, blood of innocent orphans, whatever. And even if you do want it to feed off of what it drains, containment is at least an option for a brief quest while you get a more permanent solution.

I also kinda wanna move it to a plane of ice, because I mean, really, are they gonna complain about me turning that plane into an arctic wasteland?

[arkangel111]

I say whatever you do make it a super epic adventure and then pull a m knight shyamalan, have it be stopped by holding it over a candle.

[Knaight]

cold is lack of entropy.

This is a terrible definition for a few reasons, which will be detailed below.

That's a non-sequitur (or at best a tangent), the part that's actually cold lacks entropy

It's also low enthalpy, low internal energy, low average molecular velocity*, generally low ionization, low high-energy electron orbital fraction, low volume, and otherwise displaying a whole host of traits different to a hotter object. If you're going to pick one of them as actually counting for the definition of cold it might as well be temperature - entropy might sound more scientific, but it's a vastly worse definition. Among other things, there's fun cases with mixtures where you can make higher temperature mixtures colder by that definition. Even more fun is phase change - a bunch of 90 C steam has way more entropy than a bunch of 100 C water, but it's still clearly colder and to suggest otherwise is flatly ridiculous.

*Different ways to average things have a tendency to wildly proliferate in more complex physics and chemistry, so there's a lot of these that are subtly different.

[Calthropstu]

Place it in a cube of force making sure the edges touch the artifact. No matter what the artifact does, it can't break the cube of force and since corners are always 90 degrees, the artifact will warm up.

[Nifft]

Place it in a cube of force making sure the edges touch the artifact. No matter what the artifact does, it can't break the cube of force and since corners are always 90 degrees, the artifact will warm up.

The artifact decides to cool down the corners anyway, and suddenly across the universe right angles become wrong angles.

[Svata]

Throw it into the 9th layer of Hell -- let it be a cold day there.

Nah. Chuck it in the 8th layer. Cold enough there they wouldn't even notice.

Carceri is also always an acceptable solution. NOTHING gets out of Carceri.

[Chronikoce]

That's a non-sequitur (or at best a tangent), the part that's actually cold lacks entropy

My point is ditch the word entropy for this artifact because it's being used in a completely non-sensical way. People like to use the word entropy because they think it sounds more scientific but it's pointless if it's just being used incorrectly.

The artifact isn't cold, it's cooling everything around it. This means it must be using an absolutely absurd amount of energy from somewhere else to achieve the cooling.

Now if you want to ditch science, call it entropy, and solve with cool story reasons, then go for it. But trying to use science to counter an artifact that doesn't function based on science doesn't make a lot of sense.

[Seto]

Throw it into the 9th layer of Hell -- let it be a cold day there.

What? No!!
Do you have any idea how much **** is supposed to happen at once "when Hell freezes over?"

[Dr_Dinosaur]

What? No!!
Do you have any idea how much **** is supposed to happen at once "when Hell freezes over?"

New BBEG idea. Self-proclaimed "agent of chaos" trying to freeze Hell in order to upend the laws of probability

[Knaight]

My point is ditch the word entropy for this artifact because it's being used in a completely non-sensical way. People like to use the word entropy because they think it sounds more scientific but it's pointless if it's just being used incorrectly.

Some of them cross beyond pointless and get into actively detracting from the work by being wrong (e.g. defining cold as a lack of entropy). This is generally true of thermodynamics - blather about "laws of thermodynamics" by people who don't understand them has a tendency to look much more exciting than equation representations of said laws (other than the third law, which is just establishing a standard zero point to make state functions easier to work with regardless of how one spins it).

*Because the sign conventions there actually make sense.