Recorder stone

Recorder stones, also known as sensory stones, were a variety of enchanted gems unique to the Society of Sensation planar faction of Sigil.

"We collect memories here at the Civic Festhall. We buy them from the citizens of Sigil, from the peoples of a hundred strange worlds, from the endless stream of planewalkers who pass through our city between exploits. We store them in enchanted recorder stones, so that we&mdash;and any who desire&mdash;may know experiences the like of which were never dreamed possible."

- A Sensate in the Civic Festhall.

Description
These stones were small, round in shape, and made of many semiprecious minerals.

Powers
Recorder stones allowed people to encode or "record" upon them their experiences, in the form of single or set of sensations. It usually took about an hour to record an experience, though long or complex ones could take an entire day to encode.

Once an experience was encoded upon a recorder stone, it could be accessed and experienced by anyone just by activating the stone, which required physically touching the stone and focus one's thoughts, though it was possible to enchant a recorder stone to only provide access to a specific user. Once a stone was activated, its user would lose all sense of reality and become engulfed in the sensation(s) of the stone.

Generally, whenever a recorder stone was removed from the sensoriums of the Civic Festhall, they would revert to unenchanted rock. Though there were some exceptions to this. In addition, it was possible to become addicted to the experiences provided by recorder stones.

History
In, Ayryn Farlight held a scrying session for select members of the Society of Sensation, using her sorcerous gift to observe and record activities of various deities of Toril on to recorder stones. When she attempted to scry the goddess of luck Tymora. Her magic sight was redirected by the goddess to observing Jasmine and Joel of Finder Wyvernspur's Band. Eventually, her sight was focused on Milil who was delighted to have an audience. The deity used magic to affix the scrying and performed the following songs: the Baker's Daughter, a jaunty hin tune - Pipeweed Dreams, a lengthy ballad - the Seven Sisters, followed by Three Thayvian Roses, the Purple Dragons of Cormyr, and a number of Faerunian folk songs about such mundane things as milking cows, weather, and crops. Eventually, the Sensates started getting bored of the performance, to what Milil responded by starting to sing an opera - the Fall of Myth Drannor. The long and torturous performance was a punishment for trying to record activities of gods. The entirety of this event, like all scrying gatherings of the Sensates, was ultimately encoded upon recorder stones.

Groups

 * The Society of Sensation had millions of sensory stones stored away within their Civic Festhall on Sigil, containing experiences from people all across the planes, including those of devas, humans, fiends, and tieflings. Entry into their faction required contributing five worthwhile experiences to recorder stones, each focusing on a different sense, or one substantial experience that featured all five senses to some extent. They were also willing to pay 500 gold pieces for any sensations not already in their collection, especially anything they could use against the Fated and their factol, Duke Rowan Darkwood. These and all other recorder stones were kept within two grand halls of the Civic Festhall&mdash;the Sensate Sensorium, which was only accessible to members, and the Public Sensorium, which was open to the public. In the latter, individuals or groups could pay a fee of 100 gold pieces to partake in a specific sensation or experience, three times per day for up to four hours each.

Individuals

 * Fall-From-Grace, a succubus and Sensate in the city of Sigil, operated a brothel that provided its working women sensory stones for use as diaries. These stones were all kept in one room and attuned to their individual users, making it impossible for others to access the experiences that they contained.
 * The Nameless One, an amnesiac immortal being, used the Civic Festhall's sensory stones to help him rediscover his forgotten memories. He later returned to the Civic Festhall and recorded all the experiences he had gone through in the meantime, including the Faction War.
 * Phineas, a member of the Society of Sensation, traveled to the city of Samargol on the Prime world of Toril in 1374 DR in search of exotic resources. When a group of adventurers managed to achieve all the resources he was after, Phineas gifted them the Namless One's sensory stone, having somehow not lost its enchantment despite its removal from the Civic Festhall.

Appearances

 * Novels
 * Tymora's Luck
 * Video Games
 * Planescape: Torment • Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir
 * Card Games
 * Blood Wars