The adventurer’s scion stone is an ‘intelligent item’ that can help any adventurer with knowing about monsters. It’s simplicity and absurd nature makes many experienced adventurers overlook the out-of-place treasure in favor of the more dramatic and obvious magical items. It has always been to the benefit of any adventurer who happens to comes across this scrap of things magical as it has some knowledge of nearly every monster imaginable. The adventurer’s scion stone for game mechanics acts exactly like the Adventurer’s Scion background benefit.
What most people have not realized is that the adventurer’s scion stone is a fake. A deception pulled over the eyes of some of the world’s most legendary heroes by a thirteen-year-old girl by the name of Bella. Bella is nothing but an apprentice to a lowly wizard in a crumbling tower, on the outskirts of a small village, on the outskirts of nowhere important.
Bella had the same drive to become an adventurer like both of her parents. Her parents sent her to the wizard to apprentice in hopes, with time, Bella’s inclination would change as theirs did. The wizard was not at all excited about taking on an apprentice. He had neither the time nor the resources to train her, but he acquiesced when he saw the young girl’s potential. Training, however, was expensive and time-consuming. The wizard spent his next few nights attempting to reconcile his predicament.
To Bella’s chagrin, the wizard spent six months teaching her how to write beautifully with a steady hand, always reminding her that knowing how to read and write magical scrolls will someday save her life. Bella listened. She practiced vigorously. Then to Bella’s chagrin, the wizard led her to his library beneath the cellar of his crumbling tower and instructed her to copy thrice every book. Copies the wizard would then sell to pay for Bella’s further training as an apprentice.
There were hundreds of books. Every morning Bella would walk to the library and take up copying a book from where she had left off the day before. At night, Bella would pull out the sender’s stone her parents had given to her and wished them good night and pleasant dreams.
One night the familiar voices of her parents did not respond to her well wishes, instead Bella heard goblins. She bolted from her room and ran the distance to her parents’ cottage. Her parents were alive, having been to the village for the day. The goblins, however, had ransacked the undefended cottage. They had also overlooked most of the valuable things, but the goblins had found the place where Bella’s parents had hid the other sender’s stone. Relieved, Bella returned to the wizard’s tower the next day.
“Always look at things closely to find your own advantage,” replied the wizard. Bella returned to the library and her work. That day a voice came from the stone in broken common, but understandable. The goblins were under the impression the rock was somehow intelligent and could speak with them. The goblins had spent the day decorating the rock in honorific-magical runes in preparation for their first talk. Bella struck a deal with them, telling them she was a great sage imprisoned in the stone but with a vast knowledge of all things at her fingertips. They agreed to tell her stories and happenings with their tribe and Bella agreed to answer what questions she could.
The library suddenly had purpose for Bella and she studiously wrote down everything the goblins told her creating an intimate story about the Two-Spear goblin tribe. Goblins being goblins, they eventually caught the attention of an adventuring party who scattered the tribe. One of the adventurers picked up the stone and Bella simply kept her part of the charade going. She would be able to go on adventures with them without ever leaving the library.
Years passed and Bella found the stone changed hands very often from adventurer to adventurer to monster and back to adventurer and occasionally to a merchant. She had countless stories told to her that she studiously wrote down and she kept track of the stone’s travels. She, or at least the stone, would sit in far off taverns listening to all the people talk about their adventures. She would even tell some of her own past adventures for the people who now owned the stone. The legend spread about the great sage trapped in a stone who could answer almost any question of just about any imaginable monster.
Bella has had only two great sorrows. She finds herself becoming attached to the people carrying the rock, but their experience always outgrows the usefulness of her library and they pass the rock on or lose it, or something dreadful happens to them and Bella is unable to help them. She has lost many people she considers friends because of these things. Her second sorrow is that merchants can never get anyone to pay more than four hundred gold pieces for the rock. That she finds rude.
