Operative's memory crystal

The operative's memory crystal is a stone that stores memories, in the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World"). The mercenary mage Manfred told the band of adventurers that he had listened to it and thrown it into the sea, then admitted on the road that he had not, and would hand it over once in the city. It had not come from the house of the noblewoman Rozanna, as his first telling suggested, but from the agent or assassin who had been killed while hunting him. He had left it with a friend at the Sarı Yol, a small tavern in the Tail Quarter, and did not know where it was now kept.¹²³⁴

Manfred described it as a coded store of memories, loaded and read by magic; a skilled arcanist could reach other records in it as well, and the man who carried it, being no mage, could not have changed what it held.³

The reading

In a hut by the Explorer's Harbour Manfred took the cloth-wrapped stone from his bag and gave it to Finli, who, thinking it dangerous to open on the road, opened it inside with his arcane knowledge. Those with magic in their blood reach its contents easily; others can open it through learning. The stone carries the operative's chosen, broken memories and his perceptions: his surroundings are clear, his own words blurred. Words in a tongue he understood can be grasped by one who lives the memory, though their shades of meaning are lost. He was no arcanist and recorded poorly, choosing memories that would be of use if he died and was found. The stone can be emptied and filled again, and the memories can be watched again, though each viewing wears them, and after a few it may become unreadable.^567891011

Spoiler: What the memories showedRevealSpoils: Yeni Dünya #26 · Say what you have read

The operative's name could not be learned from them. In an upper room of a restaurant he took orders from Deimos. His first work was talk and spying in the city, and he met at least five times with a legionary of captain's rank named Aetius. He met again and again with a woman called the Queen of Whispers, and one glimpse, outside the otherwise ordered run of the memories, showed her lying in blood on a table. He traded with various captains and made journeys south, took a large wooden chest about the size of a double bed from the single-masted sloop Orka, and on a green plain where wild horses ran, gave gold bars to a tall, grey-skinned, bald mage in return for an ornate wooden box that rattled like coins. At last five Deimos, their faces covered, gathered and gladly received the box.^{8121314151617}

Finli set down what he had seen in a written report, and in the morning gave it and the stone to Travis, who noticed the name Aetius and took the stone to study it, promising to return it. In a shared dream-like vision the band later passed through, the crystal lay in Finli's bag, and nothing in its images resembled the place where they found themselves.^18192021