Item Description:
These are normal gemstones except for the ball of light contained in its core that alternately swells and contracts. For ages humans have remained ignorant of the true nature of these cores. It was through pure chance that the truth was discovered by a noblewoman with minor magical powers- that such balls of light are in fact slumbering Sprites. Soon, when her magical prowess had unexpectedly progressed to a surprising level, others were alerted and thus the truth of the spritestones became known.
Item Properties:
As the sprite within the stone refines its own affinity to the core energy or elemental force that gave it life, the elemental force stored within the stone is in a constantly state of flux. If a mage could get a spritestone in his/her hands, they could further their own understanding of a particular element by observing such fluxing in the element within the stone. This provides a slow but sure way to get a better grasp on how to cast a spell based on a particular natural element. A proven example of this benefit of the Spritestone was found with the noblewoman who first discovered its true nature who had subsequently gained fame in the mage academy for being knowledgeable about a wide variety of advanced spells associated with the element of water even though she had not the actual aptitude for becoming a Great Mage herself.
It later became known that prolonged contact with a spritestone can open up the possibility of communication with the slumbering sprite itself. It might be a very disorienting experience at first as the sprite's mind is so completely alien to the human's and it would tend to coach everything in terms of very complex concepts that are conundrums to even the most learned mage. However, once one learns to master over such difficulties, sprites are generous friends who are willing to share a great deal in terms of knowledge, information, contact with other sprites and even their own memories experienced in first-person perspective. According to those few who were privileged enough to be gifted with the last mentioned afore, it truly was not a task for the faint-hearted or the inpatient. One might be subjected to long hours of gruelsomely mundane aspects of humanity that some sprite found fascinating or else get fleeting glimpses of truly breathtaking moments of a crucial turning point in history. Yet, the potential reward from such experiences were truly astounding no matter how flimsy the chance of attaining it, as one would expect given the stock of wealth in information that would inadvertently be gathered by the sprites in their almost infinitesimal lifespan. Among these blessed (or maybe cursed) individuals, the most successful and shrewd in cultivating the fruits from such encounters was certainly the one came to be known as Alexanos Sprite-friend. He ran a thriving business in selling off the information he gleaned from the Sprites to the right parties.
Finally, the slumbering sprite has strong reactions to the element that makes up its own core within a limited radius. In this way, this makes particular spritestones prized to even non magic users as a talisman that could act as an alert of natural disasters or magical battles.
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? Responses (10)
Interesting. What I don't understand is that if these are sleeping sprites, how are they awake enough to talk to the mage holding them? Reading this I thought of a lungfish which covers itself in boogers and hibernates. If hibernation makes the sprite my powerful why aren't they hibernating all the time?
Good questions all. This is one of my work that has been held up for a long long time by Mathom that I finally get tired of and kicked out so there's bound to be some loose ends with it. Anyway, my answers are:
1. To tell the truth, I do not have a genuine answer for it as many of the wordings just come to me while I was finally settling down to finish this piece. Doing a logical extrapolation on this first aspect, one could take it that these sprites somehow have moments of lucidity during this Deep Slumber that provide chances for communication or else that while their active consciousness shuts down in the Deep Slumber, they have some kind of 'secondary consciousness' that is still active in a kind of fuzzy way (the mages might not be aware of this peculiarity of the sprites though) that is able to be communicated to.
2. To enter this hibernation state, the Sprite itself has to reach a certain threshold in terms of its own powess so this excludes the case of them forever hibernating.
I like this, it's a good flavor piece for a setting that can be used in many subtle ways. Any supernatural source of information becomes a good means of bringing things into the game, whether it be clues in the form of a riddle or something that requires effort on the part of the PCs to acquire.
Very useable. As Mystic said, very useful as a flavour piece.
Nice Item, give it 4/5 willing to punch that up if you give up a little more
I like the fact that they react strongly to whichever element makes up their core. Nifty. Also, as others have mentioned nice 'flavor' here. Fairy-tale-ish in a good way.
I actually like this as a way to have a familiar without the bother of actually having a familiar. You get the supreme power of nigh infinite power in one element one the one hand, on the other you get a spirit that finds the intricacies of the bovine gastrointestinal system utterly captivating.
When I wrote up this sub, I was thinking more like MM but what you suggested about the sprite becoming a 'de facto' familiar is certainly an interesting direction to take this in.
This is neat, though the sprites appear to be vulnerable to abuse.
