Inscribed memory stone

The inscribed memory stone is a large object of stone in the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World"), sought by Professor Galevan of the Coalition of Enlightenment. He asked a band of adventurers to bring it to him from people of Fauna's tribe who had found it, warned them that it might be very bright if opened and told them not to open it, and claimed that his research on it could shake the church's teachings about saints and holy objects.¹²³

The errand

In return for Fauna's part in the errand, the professor offered to work towards having her tribe's hunting grounds declared a research area; later he said that he meant to keep the Empire out of them for thirty or forty years, because he found the tribe far-sighted and peaceful. The stone was not to be brought into the city directly but to an abandoned fishing village on the coast south of Aquila.⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸

Fauna did not know what the object was. Her mother kept some sacred things bound up with the tribe's own history, but these were not the same as the stone. On the road someone suggested carrying it in a pocket of another plane, which would have needed preparation.⁹¹⁰¹¹

On the second night at the band's camp, Fauna's brother Karo arrived with wounded tribesmen and a heavy chest wrapped in hide. He said that the wounds came from blundering into a bear's cave, that the object had come to the tribe on the night the red moon was seen, and that their father had gone and brought it while their mother objected. The chest passed into the adventurers' hands.^1213141516

Rival claims

On the road back a woman who gave her name as Sesil wanted to talk about what the band was carrying. She described it as an inscription, hard to read, left by a very old heavenly being, too dangerous to take into the city and in need of magical safekeeping; she warned that it would cause strife if it fell to the Coalition or to either of the two churches, said that her superiors had sent her for it, and offered gold or simple enchanted weapons. A church knight held instead that the text had been left by an angel, that the church was its heir, and that his task was to escort the band and the object to the church.^{1718192021222324}

In the Coalition's hands

The band handed the chest to the professor's men at the abandoned fishing village, where most of the buildings still stood; the professor opened it, looked briefly at the large thing inside and closed it again before anyone could see it clearly. His men took it by sea to the harbour and into the city, where the Coalition began to study it.^25262728

The professor said that he had found the object underground in the hunting grounds of Fauna's family, that it needed their people's own magic to bring it out, and that her parents had agreed to help him after talking it over. In his view it belonged neither to his people nor to hers, and could be a bridge between them.²⁹³⁰³¹

Fauna's family told another story: her father said that they had found the object on a Geroni who had met with an accident, that they had kept it for about a year, and that they gave it to the Coalition partly because they did not want trouble with the Geroni, and partly because the Coalition gave free medicine to the children of nearby tribes.^32333435

Nature

The scholars treated it as an inscription with a memory, and discussed how to reach and record that memory without harming it. Speaking alone with Finli, the professor explained that they believed it stores the memories and the magical energy around it, but did not fully understand how such an old thing works; by their own means they had been unable to add false knowledge to it or disturb what passes in and out. He had heard from adventurers that the duergar use similar materials to carry knowledge.^3637383940

He thought that it could be consumed for magical power, and that broken into pieces it could strengthen many mages; that it carried knowledge from the ages before the Exile and was holy in nature; and that, because of what it is, it could not be moved by magic. After his research he meant to have it examined by open-minded high priests of different schools, and he spoke of sending it to scholars he trusted on the mainland, in the White City.^4142434445

He feared that if the work became known before it was finished, the stone would be taken from him. A dwarf friend of his brought a box whose intricate rune was meant to cut off the flow of knowledge from whatever was inside.⁴⁶⁴⁷

Spoiler: Later eventsRevealSpoils: Yeni Dünya #4; Yeni Dünya #5.5; Yeni Dünya #6 · Say what you have read

A mage named Albus asked the band to find out where the professor kept the piece and, if they could, to bring it to him, and planned to put pressure on the professor so that he would send the stone out of the city in their care. After a tremor shook the house, the band ran down through the cellar into a wet cave of research equipment and found the pedestal inside the warding circles empty, with burned and melted bodies on the floor and a great patch on the wall that might have served as a portable gateway. Shaken, the professor looked at his pocket watch and said that the game had begun. It was Albus who had taken the stone.^{4849505152535455}

Asked whether the killings could have been an accident caused by the stone's power, the professor said that it was possible. He had fitted the stone with something that would let him find it wherever it went, and from his pocket watch he opened a compass that did not point north, which he said would follow it.⁵⁶⁵⁷⁵⁸