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Progress on textures and showing the color scheme I'm going for the eltonbrand variant, a material along the lines of the staff and blue wrap (probably darker than this, have to see how it looks ingame first).
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The design really is "Sharp" so to say, haha sorry.
This is a good oportunity for me to explain my opinion on the matter of lore so lets get to it. What it was meant to be during development matters little, as that is external to the game itself. the fact is eltonbrand is a weapon in the game that you sort of upgrade from Goldbrand, in an odd way but you do. For example the uesp wiki considers it in a similar manner saying: "The sword is said to have a more powerful form known as Eltonbrand, which lends its wielder stamina and greater skill in battle.".
In any case Im not going to debate whether easter eggs become canon or not, many goldbrand mods have included eltonbrand, many people expect it and variants is always nice. Also you can think it this way: I'm adding a sword named eltonbrand which has zero to do with the easter egg and no specific back up in canon, so what? Every single mod adds something that wasnt canon, thats the point, expanding the lore in a manner that makes sense and doesnt directly contradict it, and thats precisely what Im going to do. Take the facts, i.e. you sort of upgrade goldbrand into eltonbrand with the help of a mage called Sirilonwe after completing a quest for her in which you kill a guy called Shashev and retrieve some key, Ive seen weirder quests that weren't easter eggs. Those are the facts of the game and thats what Im going to build from. Lore is essentially a logical interpretation of the facts of the games. I will ignore that it was made as an easter egg same as I ignore game mechanics; lack of unique models on certain "uniques" (in the Walking Staff of Boethiah for instance); lack of crossbows in oblivion; the misterious dissapearance of spears... Because these things dont add anything positive to the lore, eltonbrand on the other hands does, it opens possibilities to create something new and cool, that ideally fits those facts mentioned.
Similar thing happens with adding fearstruck, according to the lore it was destroyed by the dragon but artifacts come back from being destroyed all the time so I'm changing that. Of course the mod isnt canon, no mod that adds something is, mods are lore-friendly at best.
Regarding the end of your third paragraph: 1.) Lack of Unique Models/Meshes: Remember these are Bethesda games; unique models are few and far-between because the devs are lazy (so lazy that they leave bug-patching up to the fans); 2.) Removal of Crossbows & Spears: Morrowind was one of the earliest, major RPGs to feature crossbows and spears; most other games I've played don't feature these weapons; in fact, one game I played only had nine different weapon types: longsword, greatsword (a.k.a. claymore in Scotland; also called claymore in all The Elder Scrolls games prior to Skyrim), (war)hammer, dual-daggers, (long)bow, dual-double-blades, dual-chakrams (doughnut-/bagel-shaped throwing-discs of Hindu origin in the real-world), staff, and sceptre (wands, actually; I've no idea why they called them sceptres); another game I played didn't have two-handed blunt weapons until its sequel, and featured only harmful (i.e. elemental/debuffing) and healing/buffing magics. Very few games that I've played feature spears and crossbows as weapons usable by the player(s): the only games that I've played that feature flails (spiky, metal ball attached to a metal chain attached to a wooden handle) are The Elder Scrolls: Arena, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, and Baldur's Gate*; the only games I've played that have crossbows are Baldur's Gate, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim with Dawnguard installed and loaded; the only games I've played that include spears as playable weapons are The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and an obscure JRPG from Sony that was released exclusively for the PS3 called White Knight Chronicles (Shirokishi Monogatari in Japan), along with its sequel, White Knight Chronicles II.
Regarding your last paragraph: The ability for certain magical items to disappear from their owner's possession and reappear possibly thousands of miles away and many decades, even centuries, later, very suddenly, is an unique trait among unique objects in The Elder Scrolls universe, and one of the things I like about the series, as it can lead to all kinds of unique story-telling opportunities (such as the aforementioned use of Goldbrand by either Emperor Titus Mede I or his son, Emperor Titus Mede II, even if it's something only mentioned in passing in one book that only appears in one TES game). This ability for highly magical items to wander the space-time-continuum would especially be true of Daedric artifacts, since Daedra, and anything imbued with their souls and/or magical energies, simply reform from Oblivion's Azure Plasm upon death/destruction/being drained of magical energies/whenever the controlling Prince/Mistress so feels/etc.
*I've yet to play any of the other Infinity Engine games; I've also never played Neverwinter Nights or its sequel, so I can't speak for the equipment selection in those games.
Ignoring that, yes spears are a scarce thing in rpgs, ironic since they have been the primary melee weapon in history, yet films and more importantly games are often sword-centric. In any case the point of me mentioning that is that there are many aspects of a game that are not really canon as is the weapon types due to time constrains, gameplay mechanics, etc. So its pretty often open to interpretation, I'm fully aware eltonbrand was an easter egg and the easter egg itself, ie a reference to real-world person obviously isn't canon. But the fact is the weapon was there, obtainable, whether being part of an easter egg (which is something relative to the development and external to the game itself) makes it non-canon is debatable as is whether the whole text about the story of Lyrisius is actually "true" within TES world or it's just a tale. But the fact again, is the text is there and both scenarios i.e. it being true and it being false are within the realm of possibility. So I don't consider either of them to be non-lore-friendly and therefore I'm not going to make a version excluding any.
Eltonbrand is a very clear example because the way to obtain it was particulary obscure but devs put references to real-world matters very often, for example, is Witcher 3's Dettlaff van der Eretein (main character in a DLC) non-canon because his name most likely comes from one of the concept artists at CD Projekt RED which is named Marta Dettlaff? (https://www.artstation.com/sturmmayer) I stumbled upon this profile in Artstation and thought "Oh, like Dettlaff from the Witcher" then read "Concept Artist at CD Projekt RED" and I refuse to believe that's a coincidence...
Couple notes, I believe eltonbrand was a reference to a basketball player actually, check this: http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Eltonbrand
Regarding goldbrand, Elderscrolls Legends' story has altered a bit it's lore, particulary the Titus Mede wielding it part.
I really hope when TES6 rolls around we'll be able to have all of your models make the jump into the new engine too, since I don't really think Bethesda will able to do any better than these.