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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Unwise" data-source="post: 5735380" data-attributes="member: 98008">Hmm good question, I think they could come from a variety of sources:- Interrogated enemies (I liked that idea a lot)- Epic sagas that everyone knows, but are rather poetic and useless. A little research is required to track down earlier versions of the poems/songs. Does the party have a bard? If so that works very well.          - Imagine the tale of Beowulf. Everyone knows it a little and it is easy to get a hold of. What if you found it was based on a true story? How would you go about tracking down the oral traditions and writings to try to get to the core of the truth behind the tale.- History rolls, have them fail, but tell them that they can get bonuses from researching in a great library, like the one at *****.- Wierd dreams that any Raven Queen followers get while near the stone.- Occassionally the powers just manifest without the PCs doing anything at all. For instance, they find a murdered merchant. The dead guy suddenly speaks to them, telling them who killed him, then de-animates. With arcana/religion skill they can learn more about this power once seeing it in action.- I just thought of another cool manifestation, if somebody touches the stone and they have innocent blood on their hands, their hands come away stained red. It never washes clean, no matter what they do. "out damn spot out!" It could drive them mad Lady MacBeth style eventually. Don't have this happen all the time, just once unexpectedly, so that they research that power.- Maybe the stone holds within it the grief of a god? Maybe being near that gives people real palpable grief. The stone itself gives a vague impression of what must be done to set things right.- Stories of Hercules using a special rock to smite the unkillable beast of XYZ, these stories all come up so often that the PCs wonder if their is a grain of truth to them.- As the campaign progresses, it is a good way to get people to the Shadowfell to research with the locals there. Also Eladrin have the oldest libraries, so a trip to Mithredain is on the cards too.- They should find out that the item is very sacred to Gruumsh followers. A bit of interrogation reveals that it might not be a bad idea to go talk to the orcs, they seem to know a lot about it. This can be great roleplaying, walking into a town of traditional enemies, earning their respect and convincing their shaman to share knowledge. Oooh just side tracked myself with an idea. As you said, the stone is the focal point of the first murder and the symbol of the Raven Queens greif and loss. It is a great burden and empathically cries out for release/closure. Upon investigation, the PCs find that the Raven Queen did not just go away idly and become the godess of death. She became the godess so that she could be with her beloved. She has trapped what little remains of him and stopped him passing on to the great beyond. She cannot bare to let go. It is however against the natural order of things, even for a godess to do this. It is against her appointed duties. If you play in a campaign where gods have contracts/duties that must be obeyed and fullfilled, this is a good opening for somebody to push for the Raven Queen to lose her power. It can also be used to blackmail her, as it has the power to release her love to the great beyond. Also, if they have been hired to retrieve this item, how do they end up keeping it for themselves? I would likely have them succeed and give it to the tiefling, then go on about their lives, one or two adventures later, they come across him as the bad guy behind a plot, using the stone as a focas for somethign naughty. They kill him and retrieve it, having become curious about what it really is.</blockquote>

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