Agreed - we should concentrate on what it is rather than a RQ rules reinterpretation
> Perhaps it could be given a slightly different usage in HW that
restores its value.
After all, how much of its role in RQ was there mostly to allow certain cool magic to
take place?
One point I would make is that its possible that different belief systems or groups have different knowledge and know of different uses for Truestone, depending on their perception of what Truestone is. Do all cultures have the same story for the origin of Truestone? I doubt it.
For Heortling cultures Truestone is fragments of The Spike, the Gloranthan axis mundi.
Heortling culture has the Spike as a hybrid of Garden of Eden, with Orlanth's departure a Fall, and axis of the universe the Norse World Tree, Yggsadril. YGMV.
But such an interpretation makes the spike a wholeness, unity, or
oneness, now lost.
The obvious connection with what we know is that Truestone is 'fruit'
of the tree of
knowledge, drops of the water of the wells at Yggsadrils' roots. So associations with
knowledge seem appropriate fitting with earlier conceptions that Truestone is capable of storing knowledge. That storage would be perfect, without loss, error in transmission or noise. Presumably handling the Truestone enables access to this perfect knowledge, but you cannot 'learn' what it gives as any memorizing of its knowledge will be subject to the imperfection and deterioration of human, postfall knowledge. This ability to perfectly record explains the notion that the LM cult uses them for storage. But more valuable than the rare 'blank' Truestone might be 'filled' Truestone, containing presumably all that the stone has witnessed. The phrase 'if only these walls could talk' could become almost literally true in this context with Truestone a perfect recording of the knowledge to the person who first handled it, up to the point it was filled. A lot of these fragments might be random lives like the Jonstown compendium entries from across history, but even sifting through that knowledge might contain valuable information, older versions of myths and stories. If feats are a theist drawing godtime events into this world then Truestone would record the devotee's knowledge of the godtime myth enabling a theist to draw on it to perform the feat, perhaps better than before due to the more perfect representation of the material. Such knowledge would also allow you to guide others entering the hero plane to perform the appropriate myth to learn such knowledge. Finding a piece of Truestone that gave you a powerful new feat for use against your enemies would be a treasure Truestone could become priceless, imagine a piece filled by Harmast after the Lightbringers' quest and its value to any future Argrath.
I have not really thought about other cultures interpretations and uses. The Storm Bull animist tradition however might be able to unleash powerful chaos trapping powers in such fragments, mirroring the block.
I'm sure we can collectively come up with more.
Ian Cooper
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