Stone of Golorr

The Stone of Golorr is an artifact created to hold secrets. Most recently it has been used to store the location of the Vault of Dragons by Dagult Neverember. 
== Description ==
The Stone is a glossy, greenish-gray stone that fits in the palm of a human hand. Three rounded half-holes sit under slight lips. It seems there are some pieces missing. The Eyes are small, jet black pebbles.
The Stone is sentient with the following stats: 18 INT, 16 WIS, 18 CHA. 
== How it Works ==
When the proper ritual is performed, the Stone magically eliminates a memory or piece of knowledge from everyone on Toril except for the person who is attuned to the Stone.
Communicating with the Stone, receiving knowledge from the Stone, or performing the knowledge-erasing ritual requires the user to be attuned to the Stone. This can be a somewhat unpleasant process as the attunement takes the form of your thoughts slowly becoming compatible with the utterly alien, abolethic thoughtforms of the Stone.
=== The Stone that Sees ===
The Stone of Golorr has three "eyes" the size of small pebbles. These fit in to three matching slots on the Stone itself with a little press if the person is attuned to the Stone.
The Stone is currently blinded, meaning that all three eyes have been removed. 
# Blinded: The Stone of Golorr is inert.
# 1-Eyed: The Stone can communicate but it cannot see or reveal the secrets it once contained. It can, however, describe itself and the way it works.
# 2-Eyed: The Stone and the character attuned to it can scry the location of the remaining eye and its immediate vicinity. The scry always succeeds.
# All Eyes Restored: The Stone of Golorr operates normally.
=== Erasure Ritual === 
The use of the Stone to erase memory is a special ritual-form of legend lore which takes 12 hours to cast. Performing the ritual requires:
* The ability to cast legend lore.
* Knowledge of the ritual modifications to the spell.
* The use of a second abolethic artifact, a small tetrahedron of red jade. (This artifact is still in Lord Neverember’s possession.)
* Special incenses suffused with the blood of an aboleth (2,500gp cost) and four ivory strips worth at least 50gp each.
During the ritual, the burning of the incense causes the four sides of the tetrahedron to unfold, revealing slots into which the ivory strips are then inserted. The Stone is then placed within the tetrahedron and the sides closed around it.
As the ritual completes, the tetrahedron opens once more, revealing the Stone of Golorr as it releases a burst of psionic energy. This energy attempts to refract through the person attuned to the Stone, forcing them to make a Wisdom saving throw with a difficulty commensurate to the scope of the memory or knowledge they are seeking to eliminate. (The memory of something with little significance and known to very few people would have a smaller DC than something of great significance or known to a large number of people.)
A group of people can attempt to perform the ritual together in order to reduce the difficulty of this saving throw by -2 per additional person (by spreading psionic refraction between them). The number of characters participating in the ritual is limited by the level of the character leading the ritual (i.e., a 5th level character could lead a ritual with up to 5 people), and all participants must succeed at the saving throw in order for the ritual to be successful.
On a failure, the ritual member fails to refract the psionic energy and the memory they were seeking to erase is eliminated only from their mind. If a particularly significant piece of knowledge was being targeted, the failure might also invoke a general fugue state for minutes, hours, or days (at the DM’s discretion).
On a success, the knowledge is eliminated: Wiped clean from scrolls and inscriptions. Removed from all living memory except for those attuned to the Stone or participating in the ritual.
Note, however, that:
* This is very specific. For example, Neverember only eliminated the knowledge of the Vault’s location, which is why other lore regarding the Vault (like its existence and the keys required to open it) can still be found. As if reality had become a poorly expurgated book, you can still see where the “text” has been snipped out if you know where to look.
* This only destroys current knowledge, not the subject of the knowledge nor the ability to learn that knowledge in the future. Making everyone forget Bob, for example, doesn’t stop Bob from saying, “Hi! I’m Bob!”
== Secrets of the Stone ==
The Stone has 3 charges of Legend Lore and regains one every dawn. While holding the Stone and attuned, a person can cast the Legend Lore spell. The Stone will share one of the secrets hidden inside it, either through speech or through a burst of telepathic imagery and sensation. The holder can direct it towards a particular secret if they are aware of it, otherwise the Stone will provide a secret according to its whim.
=== Where is the Vault?===
Those seeking Neverember’s Enigma from the Stone will receive that information in two simultaneous streams of information:
* A tangled barrage of imagery: Twisted underground tunnels lit by strange lights. An endless field of corpses. Halls of stone. A golden dragon, aging so rapidly that scales shed from its skin. The sound of a silver hammer striking stone. A beam of sunlight in a darkened room. A chisel carving Dethek (dwarven) characters which transform themselves into two words: BRANDATH CRYPTS.
* A cryptic riddle: Where laid his wife to rest ‘midst bones of son’s blood sealed, there where Anri laid himself to rest lies that which Open Lord concealed.
===Potential Non-Plot Secrets ===
* Any number of horrible racial slurs.
* The elvish word essylathir, which means the beauty of eyes which are the color of a storm-tossed sea.
* The location or functioning of one of the Brass Mechanisms
**They were pieces of an old machine, the likes of which the world has never seen since. The machine was created by Lum the Mad
* The spell banefire, which functions like faerie fire and adds 1d6 points of damage per round for the duration of the spell. The targets are outlined in a flame evoking the caster's choice of damage.
* Some secret from Current Secrets
** The Cassalanters cursed their own children / run a demon cult
*The Kingdom of Otheria, which ruled a demesne from the Sword Coast to the sands of Anauroch approximately 500 years ago.
* The name “Anu-Devan,” which was once the most popular male elven name.
* The location of 16 bars of silver, buried in the rear yard of a tavern in Murann in 916 DR.
== History ==
The Stone of Golorr is an artifact that once belonged to the Abolethic Sovereignty. For millennia it was held in a vault within the ancient floating city of Xxiphu on the world of Abeir, but it was lost during the Wailing Years.
According to some histories, it was brought to Abeir-Toril when Xxiphu first plummeted to the world and settled deep below what is now the Sea of Fallen Stars. According to others, an aboleth who came to Abeir-Toril before the arrival of Xxiphu created the Stone; or perhaps he fled to Abeir-Toril carrying the stone and Xxiphu came in pursuit of their prize. Some versions of the tale claim that the Stone was forged during the primeval battles between Shar and Selûne, in the very moment that the world of Toril was formed.
Whether the Stone predates or co-dates the creation of Toril, in arcane terms this gives the Stone a position of primacy, making it capable of effects which no magic item or artifact created in these younger days could possibly duplicate.
Category:Campaign 2
Category:Artifact