Steve Hatherley
The stone fragments are at the bottom of a shoebox filled with stone arrowheads. The arrowheads have been collected from Anasazi indian ruins by archaeologist Dr Rachel Smith. She is auctioning them along with her other finds because she needs to raisemoney fast.
She found the stones of doom in a previously undiscovered Anasazi chamber, but forgot about them. They have been lying in the shoebox with the arrowheads for years, quite forgotten.
1 The stone is an ancient Anasazi fertility symbol. Originally steeped in the milk of Shub-Niggurath, when assembled (and bound together so that it cannot fall apart) the stone causes everything in the immediate area to become fertile. Everything - plants flourish, insects swarm, rats and mice are everywhere. Milk sours overnight, creeping mould is rampant and weeds overrun the garden.
The stone affects humans as well - curing infertility and increasing the liklihood of twins and triplets.
2 The stone is an ancient Anasazi curse stone. The curse inscribed on the stone can be translated only after painstaking research. From what is left to be translated, the curse appears to have been put on a woman who was unfaithful to her husband. Whether the stones had an effect cannot be determined, although the Anasazi indians took their curses very seriously and held their shamen in high regard.
3 The stone is an old deep one device. When the pieces are assembled the symbols emit a bright light. The stone fuses together into a single piece, and starts sweating. But it appears to do little else.
The stone is a shoggoth leash, used by deep ones to protect themselves from the terrible shoggoth attacks launched at them by the elder things during the war millenia ago. The stone itself causes any shoggoth that comes near to lose control of its mass, reducing itself to bubbling ooze until the holder of the stone moves away. The deep ones have lost the means to create more leashes, and would be interested in recovering the stone (should they learn of it) to rediscover that lost art.
Quite what the stones were doing in Anasazi ruins is a complete mystery, however...
Copyright (c) 1997 Steve Hatherley
Steve Hatherley is the creator of Tales of Terror, and has written for both Chaosium and Pagan Publishing. He also has a number of other websites, including www.great-murder-mystery-games.com and www.mylowerbackpain.com.
Steve lives in Yorkshire, England.
Click here to see Steve's other Tales of Terror.