Charges:
3
(regains at dawn)
This slender bookmark is cut from dark red leather softened by age, with a narrow strip of tarnished silver sewn along its edge. Its upper end bears a tiny brass clasp shaped like an open mouth, while its lower end is weighted with a gray pearl clouded by a single black thread. Faint lines of handwriting cover the leather, but the script shifts whenever someone nearby begins speaking. When placed between pages, the bookmark gives a small, regretful sigh.
Hold Your Place
While attuned to the bookmark, you can use a bonus action to place it in a book, journal, or other written work, or simply hold it aloft during a conversation. For the next 24 hours, you can mark one conversation you are participating in. The bookmark records the exact words spoken by each creature during the following 10 minutes, along with their apparent emotional tone. You can end the recording early as a bonus action.
Resume the Conversation
While a conversation is marked, any creature that participated in it can use an action to touch the bookmark and recall the last 10 minutes of the conversation perfectly, including exact wording and emotional tone. This recollection does not reveal thoughts, determine truthfulness, or override magical memory alteration. Once recalled, the mark fades.
The Forgotten Thread
As an action, you can expend 1 charge to cause the bookmark to whisper the last complete sentence spoken by a creature within 60 feet during a marked conversation, provided that creature is still within 60 feet. The sentence is audible only to you and the creature that spoke it. If the speaker is unwilling, it can make a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw, ignoring the effect on a success.
An Apology Kept
When a creature within 30 feet of you is interrupted while speaking, you can use your reaction and expend 1 charge to mark the exact point of interruption. Until the end of your next turn, that creature has advantage on its next Charisma check made to continue or clarify what it was saying, and all creatures who heard the interruption remember the speaker's unfinished words. The bookmark cannot force anyone to listen.
Weight of Unfinished Words
The bookmark is cursed, though its curse is not revealed by simply handling it. If you mark a conversation and knowingly abandon it without allowing the other participants a reasonable opportunity to finish speaking, you have disadvantage on your next Charisma check. This curse lasts until you complete a sincere apology to a creature affected by the abandoned conversation or until the curse is removed by remove curse or similar magic.
Curse.
The bookmark carries the guilt of the apology for which it was made. When its attuned bearer abandons a marked conversation after interrupting or silencing someone, the bookmark grows heavy and imposes disadvantage on the bearer's next Charisma check. The curse is hidden until the bearer identifies the item or triggers the Weight of Unfinished Words property. Remove curse or similar magic ends the curse, but does not erase the bookmark's powers.
Lore
The bookmark was created by the court scribe Ilyra Venn as an apology to her younger brother, Tomas. During a trial that could have saved his life, Ilyra interrupted Tomas before he could reveal a crucial name. He was executed, and the truth emerged only afterward. Ilyra spent the rest of her life recording every conversation she could, terrified that she would once again fail to let someone finish. The bookmark is said to preserve not merely words, but the shape of the silence that followed them.
History
Ilyra made the bookmark from the leather cover of her own first journal and bound it with silver wire taken from the courtroom bell. She gave it to Tomas's daughter on the anniversary of his execution, but the girl refused it and left it in the abandoned courthouse. Years later, a traveling mediator found the bookmark between the pages of a transcript and used it to settle a succession dispute. Since then, it has passed among judges, negotiators, scholars, and people who have said something unforgivable and wished they could begin again.
