Full Item Description

The Stone of Mys is a large sapphire the size of a good sized egg.  It lightens in color in the center, being almost clear.  A faint glow or shimmer seems to emanate from it, and everyone who has seen it in person seems certain there’s something terribly significant about it, although they don’t know quite what.

History

Mys was a scholar and magician of middling talent.  He had done nothing particularly grand in his life, but he made a comfortable living.  When he died, his heirs duly went through his belongings.  Most of them were either sold or divided amongst various relatives or friends.  But there was one, an exquisite blue stone, that mystified everyone who examined it.  It was magical, there was no question about that, but no one was quite sure how.  It was finally given to a master mage who was thought to be the greatest in the land.

From there, the stories and reputation of the Stone only grew.  Word got out that it was a great treasure, that it could shape the destinies of men and nations.  Inevitably, it was taken from the master mage, “for the good of the kingdom”.  It was carefully kept in the treasury, and guarded well. 

Throughout the intervening decades, the Stone has changed hands; stolen by exiled royalty, taken in wars, looted from noble tombs.  Everyone is quite sure that it’s of great importance, but they still don’t know how so.  Generations of mages and wizards have tried to fathom its secrets, and all have failed.

Possibilities

1. The Stone is truly an artifact of great power, but not in the way that people believe.  Mys was a follower of chaos, and created the stone as a way of formenting instability.  It is spelled to be desirable and to make people want it, to the point they’d do anything to have it.  Much like the Golden Apple in Greek legend, it exists solely to cause discord between the powers that be.

2. The Stone is one of a pair; they were separated when Mys’s belongings were divided.  The sister stone is black and seems wholely unremarkable.  The two stones are a sort of magical amplification system: the black stone absorbs ambient magic, and stores it in the blue stone, where it can be accessed by one attuned to it.  The glow of the blue stone depends on how much magic it has in it.  Given the amount of time that has passed since the secret has been lost, it is unlikely that anyone will learn how to attune to it.  But the black stone still absorbs magic around it, and it’s entirely possible the blue stone will eventually overload…

3.  The Stone does nothing.  At all.  It was created by Mys in a fit of drunken pique.  He was angry about the condescending way that other mages treated him, and decided to show them all.  It’s not even a real sapphire, it’s glass.  Mys created it to show up other mages.  He had a master craftsman create the gem, then laid just enough enchantment on it to make it seem like it was magical.  The glow is one part illusion, and one part the way the glass was cut to create it.  Most of the residual magic has worn off, leaving just the glow and a magical aura.  People think it’s special now because it’s the Stone of Mys, of course it’s special.