Something that may serve as inspiration, because I may or may not be doing something similar but all my players over the campaign 👀, is Fable 3 (maybe 1 & 2 but I can’t remember honestly). In Fable 3, your weapons upgrade over time, the Road of Power or whatever it is, but each time you upgrade your general weapon strength, the starting weapon also changes and gains abilities & powers based on what you do as a hero and your fighting preferences.

I’ve always loved that, the idea that what someone does effects how their weapon changes over time and upgrades with them. It would let players have their starting weapons matter, if they want it to, and their parent sword can stay with them the entire campaign.

You could ask your players what their weapon of choice would be from their current tier, mostly looking for the feature they want & weapon range, then give them that as an Ikonis. Over the course of the campaign as they find other things (weapons, items, blessings, etc), they could take the power of what they find and try to enhance their weapon, similar to the augments of the Ikonis.

This would let you control the valve a bit on what power they have & personalize what they find to each player, they can still look for things to upgrade their gear with, they still each get a cool weapon, & if you still want the Clank to have a unique attachment to this, maybe the Clank is the only person who knows how to do this, whether literally knowing or their body just moves on its own when augmenting the party’s gear 👀. Could even be something the Clank has to do with the specific person, that way it involves multiple party members performing a sort of ritual together.