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[Urist McWhatTheHellGuys?]

Well I'm a reasonably new player and so was quite pleased to get my first artefact ever. Then I saw the description:

Zarut Sibosh, "The Insanities of Deteriorating", a lead amulet

This is a lead amulet. All craftdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is studded with lead.
On the item is an image of The Insanities of Deteriorating the lead amulet in rock crystal.


It has an image of itself, which means the image of itself must also contain an image of itself, ad infinitum. Seriously, a know it's called a strange mood for a reason but isn't this taking it a bit far? And how skilled is that damn dwarf?

Also how do I post screenshots.

[MDFification]

It's actually fairly common for this to happen. There was this artifact statue called Planepacked that had dozens of images of itself on itself... in addition to depictions of the entire DF universe several times over.

Posting screenshots is pretty easy; just upload an image, right click it, hit view image, cut the url, and then stick that url between <img> (actually square brackets, but if I post that you won't be able to see it) and [/img], which can actually be added in automatically under the bold button when you post.

[neblime]

Artifacts like this are not uncommon, planepacked was a bug /accidental exploit though so I don't think that counts.  if it was not a "Urist has been possessed!" mood the dwarf should be legendary in metalcrafting!

[Urist McWhatTheHellGuys?]

Just trying to visualise the accuracy of those tools: "Now fetch me the one atom wide chisel head, no not that one, that's electron chisel head, I said atom!"

[Quietust]

Self-referential artifacts have been relatively common ever since detailed art images were added to the game (back in version 0.22.110.23a, just after Boatmurdered started).

What's really going to bake your noodle later on is when you get artifacts that depict future events...

[GavJ]

Self-referential artifacts have been relatively common ever since detailed art images were added to the game (back in version 0.22.110.23a, just after Boatmurdered started).

What's really going to bake your noodle later on is when you get artifacts that depict future events...

It sounds like from the comments it's not predicting the future. Rather, the decorations are in a state of uncertain flux until the artifact is first observed, at which point the ones that settle into reality are past events at the time of observation.

More like a Shrodinger's artifact than a prophetic one.

[MerkerBenson]

Behold, after I mastered the art of artifact construction manipulation and had 60 gems lying around, the artifact depicts itself 6-7 times:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Cheers

[BoredVirulence]

What's really going to bake your noodle later on is when you get artifacts that depict future events...

Thank you for that reference.

It sounds like from the comments it's not predicting the future. Rather, the decorations are in a state of uncertain flux until the artifact is first observed, at which point the ones that settle into reality are past events at the time of observation.

More like a Shrodinger's artifact than a prophetic one.

While the game technically does behave like it were Shrodinger's artifact, from an in-game perspective it makes more sense to think the artifact did predict the future, but the details of that prediction were only observed after the fact. The details were there, but nobody observed them until later.
Of course thats not what really happens, but thats how I imagine it happens. Predictions that lie unobserved until after their prediction comes true seems more fun than a quantum image. Although I'm not sure which is more impressive...

[Quietust]

Artifacts depicting themselves don't rely on the "art image uncertainty" behavior at all - what happens is that the artifact record is created and then the game creates the improvements on the item, and since art images can potentially depict any artifact in your world, they could depict themselves (i.e. if the game had created the 'artifact' record after creating the item improvements, this sort of thing would never have happened).

Mind you, they couldn't depict their own creation, because the history event wasn't created until after all of the improvements were added, but the "art image uncertainty" behavior added in version 0.34 makes it possible for this to happen.

[FallenAngel]

Hey, I got a bracelet covered in details that was worth 90 million dorfbucks with 46 images of itself on it.
It pushed my fortress over 100 mil in value.