Pirate Queen’s Pearl

Wondrous item (requires attunement), artifact

The continent that held the first human empire sank beneath the waves countless millennia ago.

The antediluvian people of this great empire were renowned for their mastery of many types of magic, one of the most distinctive being the arcane crystals known today as ioun stones. Long ago, a rare crystalline masterpiece, unheard of by modern scholars, survived the fall of the first empire. It lay buried for untold centuries under an island that was once part of the lost continent. An underwater earthquake dislodged the long-hidden stone and it sank down into the depths of the ocean. The Goddess Queen of Piracy became aware of this remarkable underwater treasure and a giant mollusk swallowed the stone. The divine influence of the Pirate Queen intermixed with the magic of the stone, working to create an odd-shaped pearl of great size.

When the Pearl was fully formed, the Goddess sent holy visions of it to many of her faithful followers.

One of these devoted pirates retrieved the blessed pearl, but died bringing it to the surface. The Pirate Queen’s pearl, a lustrous pearl figurine shaped in the image of the Goddess herself, became a legendary prize of the Pirate Isles, passing from the hands of pirate to pirate, usually with violence. The Pirate Queen does not play favorites and if a pirate cannot keep ahold of a plundered treasure, then that is hardly her concern.

The Pearl eventually ended up in the hands of a pirate captain named Malika who possessed an iridescent spindle ioun stone, which she often used to dive down to loot sunken ships. The first night Malika held the Pirate Queen’s pearl, she felt a strange compulsion to orbit her ioun stone around the figurine’s head. The stone was absorbed into the statuette, which took on an iridescent shine and conveyed the ioun stone’s power to whoever carried the pearl. Excited by this discovery, Malika began looking for more ioun stones in earnest, but only found one more stone—a dark blue rhomboid—to add to the pearl, before being killed and the pearl claimed by a new owner.

Formed from shimmering pearl, this 1-foot tall statuette has the smooth stylized form of a female human (or possibly half-elven) pirate. The Pirate Queen’s pearl functions as a holy symbol of the Goddess of Piracy, usable for spells and class features requiring a divine focus. If your patron deity is the Goddess of Piracy, then your caster level counts as 1 higher when determining the effects and number of divine spells you may know and cast. You also gain a +1 bonus to spell attack rolls and spell save DCs.

Once per day you can ask whether taking a particular ship by force is worth the effort. If the you and your crew could defeat the ship, and it is a valuable enough prize to be worth the risk, the statue glows a bright white for several seconds. If the ship meets neither of these criteria, then the pearl turns black as pitch for the same length of time, and if the ship only meets one of the criteria then the pearl does nothing. Treat this as a divination spell with a 10% chance of failure, but if the percentage roll fails then the pearl does nothing, and you don’t know whether this was because the percentage roll failed or because one of the conditions of the question wasn’t met.

If you attempt to orbit an ioun stone around the statue’s head, the stone spirals inward and sinks into the Pirate Queen’s pearl. The statuette takes on a color tone reminiscent of the color of the absorbed stone, blending with any other colors already present. The Pirate Queen’s pearl can absorb up to six stones in this manner. Anyone with the statuette on their person gains the benefits of all these ioun stones. The pearl also augments these ioun stones granting the bearer a supplementary power for each stone. See Table 3-02: Known Supp lementary Powers for a list of known powers.

You can remove an absorbed ioun stone by holding the statuette and touching it to your forehead. The absorbed stone comes out of the pearl and takes up orbit around you. The Pirate Queen’s pearl currently has a dark blue rhomboid and a clear spindle inside, giving it a glittering sheen and a cerulean tinge.

Destruction. The Pirate Queen’s pearl is destroyed if a pirate captain who, of their own free will, truly renounces their piratical ways, surrenders their ship and crew, and gives the pearl to a lawful authority opposed to piracy. The pearl cracks apart when this occurs, releasing any absorbed ioun stones.

Random Properties

The Pirate Queen’s pearl has the following random properties:

• 1 major detrimental property
• 2 minor detrimental properties

Table 3-02: Known Supplementary Powers

Table 5-05: Navigating the Sea

Name	Effect
Clear spindle	Grants a +1 bonus to Wisdom (Survival) checks when using the skill to forage for food and water.
Dusty rose prism	Grants a +1 bonus to AC against attacks of opportunity.
Deep red sphere	Grants a +1 bonus to two Dexterity-based skills.
Incandescent blue sphere	Grants a +1 bonus to two Wisdom-based skills.
Pale blue rhomboid	Grants a +1 bonus to two Strength-based skills.
Pink rhomboid	Grants a +1 bonus to Constitution ability checks.
Pink and green sphere	Grants a +1 bonus to two Charisma-based skills.
Scarlet and blue sphere	Grants a +1 bonus to two Intelligence-based skill.
Dark blue rhomboid	Grants a +1 bonus to Wisdom (Perception) and Wisdom (Insight) checks.
Iridescent spindle	Protects against underwater damage caused naturally by terrain effects (for example, water pressure).
Pale green	Once per day you may use the regenerate spell.