Spirit stones?

[Bergtorp]

Hi.
I was wondering if somebody has any thoughts about this?
How would a spirit stone affect you?
I see it as some kind of "possessed" item, but what would you gain from it? Psychic powers?
How would you use it? Focus on it? If you're a non psyker from the beginin?

[MarcoSkoll]

You should look at Inquisitor Balorodin in the Thorian Sourcebook. He's a non-psyker with something called the Soulwatcher helm... basically a Spirit stone in some arcane technology that he uses to grant him psychic ability.

Different risks to normal, but still... risks.

[Bergtorp]

Yeah, I've read that.
But that is when you've integrated a spirit stone with technology. I was wondering how it would affect someone carrying it around with you?
In the novel Farseer there is a psyker that gets a Farseers spirit stone "glued" to his forhead. It is a pity that they didn't continue that book, but they were able to change spirits. The other spirit just had to sit there and enjoy the show.

[Myriad]

Spiritstones.  Rare, of course, but you can run across them.  They basically just hold a soul, most often an eldar one.  Without being attached to some kind of technology (wraithguard, say), I don't think most souls have particular power and, in most eldar fluff, have some trouble maintaining focus on the material world.  I guess a soul that happens to be a powerful psyker might retain some of those powers, and there's always the possibility that a demon might get bound into one.

To most people they're just shiny rocks, but I guess a psyker may well be able to communicate with, even make some use of the skills of, the trapped soul.  It seems from Bergtrop's post as if there's also precedent for someone in direct contact with a spirit stone being exposed to the soul.  This would probably carry a health warning though (exposure to these materials may result in the loss of the emperors grace and burnination by his loyal subjects), and would run the obvious risk of the stronger soul gaining control.

I think it's been mentioned here before that they are an eldar technology, and the consequences of use by other species unclear.

[Kaled]

I would imagine that most humans would gain no benefit from carrying a spirit stone - more likely the opposite. For one thing the Eldar are keen to get their hands on any lost stones and their rangers are likely to follow up on any whisper of a human having one. And I imagine daemons would find him unusually interesting as they seem to treat spirit stones as a delicacy. Or maybe after carrying it for a while the soul in the stone might attune itself to the bearer and whisper to him constantly in an alien tongue, slowly driving him mad...

[InquisitorHeidfeld]

A spirit stone (waystone) is simply a psychic matrix designed to hold a consciousness, a mind, the soul of a fallen Eldar. In and of itself it is nothing more, it even needs additional circuitry to capture that soul in the first place.
While the Eldar are significantly more psychic than Humanity, even the most blunt of them being able at least to 'hear' the workings of the Infinity circuit, the majority of waystones which hold a soul will carry no more than a nine to five office worker (or rather its equivalent).
IIRC of course most of those in the hands of humans have never been used.

However, even an inhabited waystone is little more than a processor for the Infinity Circuit, having one without the proper circuitry is like having a Pentium i7 with no computer (not a direct analogy as the waystone contains memory and a "bios" too but...)
Fitted to suitable circuitry one could interface with the soul within, gain access to their life experiences, their mind... and it's possible that, if the individual within were a powerful psyker, just a small chance of use of their psychic ability. But a powerful psyker is a powerful will to contest. The appropriate circuitry might give them a chance to go home via your body and it would certainly expose you to their voice and their thoughts whenever they were "awake".