Part 2. How to Use

You have paid the varying price and are now the proud possessor of a sparkle stone.
You hold it in your hand.
Out of curiosity, you can /show it. If this is your first time using a sparkle stone, the stone will be dark; otherwise, you will see a number on the stone.
You /use the stone.
You hear yourself think. "[Your name here], go, go, go!!!" you think to yourself, accompanied by three dings.
The stone disappears from your hand, and you are free to equip something else. An axe, for instance, or a moonstone.
For the next 8 Puddleminutes (2 minutes ooc), the sparkle stone will remain active. You will see a number in the air, occasionally accompanied by colorful sparkles.
After 8 minutes, you will see a number glow on the sparkle stone, and it will either crumble and reform, or simply disappear.

Part 3. Observations

The sounds that you hear during the activation period indicate how much your score has risen. (See below for what sounds match what increments.)
The sparkles you see appear to be just random distractions and encouragement.

Healing someone results in a jump in score.
Killing something results in a jump in score.
Falling to something results in a jump in score.
Moving sometimes but not always results in a rising score (usually not a jump).
Sitting still rarely does anything.
Boosting has no effect.

The number you /show on your stone is your personal high score for the year. The year is either a calendar year (Winter 1 to Winter 1) or a trailing zodical year (i.e. the last 12 Zodiacs rather than the last 4 Seasons). If your stone crumbles and does not reform, the next stone you buy will show the same high score number. If you give your stone to a friend, the number glowing on it will be different - it will be his or her high score.
You will be notified when you get a high score. At the end of the 8 minutes of sparkle stone activity, when a number glows on the stone, it will be accompanied by "-- her (his) highest this year!"
The stone appears to reform after you've achieved a high score more often than not.
"Score" may not be the correct word. It's never explicitly stated by the stone. The words you see are "-- her highest this year!" The missing word might be something else, like "accumulation." See postulation below.

Location (where you are in Puddleby or its surrounds) may or may not matter. Nothing's been proven one way or another. (A note about the Monastery in this regard.)

Profession does not seem to make a difference. All exiles see the same types of scores.
So far, what you're killing doesn't seem to matter, and it doesn't seem to matter whether you kill it yourself or merely help. Aughra bricked and lured Myrm for me (thanks, Aughra!), which I slaughtered and helped slaughter, and after 14 I achieved a final score of 9,977, which is substantially higher than what I've achieved just running around a sn'ell, even though they were just slaughters.

Part 4. Conclusions and Hypotheses

Because of the (apparently) false readings from the Monastery, it appeared that location made a difference.

(1) Hypothesis: The Monastery traps and hold Mystical energy (it being one place - and an enclosed one at that - where boosting occurs over and over again, in the training rooms).
Experimentation and conclusion: Setting off a sparkle stone in another place where Mystical concentrations could be expected to occur brought no unusual results.

(2) Hypothesis: The Monastery is the site of a concentration of something, possibly ether. Having no reports of any ether readings taken in the Monastery, it seemed plausible.
Experimentation and conclusion: WorldWalker and I set off sparkle stones in an area reported to have high ether activity. Neither of the scores was in any way significant, and they were different from each other, which suggests that it has to do with something other than location.
Note: Later we were told that ether readings fluctuate, often rapidly, so the ether map we were reading was probably inaccurate. Regardless, the experiment stands; the connection between location and sparkle stone score is still tenuous and, if it exists, is more subtle.

WHAT are these stones measuring?? or IS it a measurement? Instead, is the stone "sucking something up"?

(1) Hypothesis: Is the "something" lifeforce?
Conclusion: Given that the things that seem to make the numbers jump involve someone's health dropping (the fallee's, the healer's, the critter's), this seems plausible.

(2) Hypothesis: Is the "something" ether?
Experimentation and conclusion: Wangah Rah graciously set up an experiment with me that involved measuring ether levels and activity before, during, and after sparkle stone use. Result: ether did not appreciably diminish in the area (so it was not being eaten up by the stone).

Note: This hypothesis was formed before we realized that the score is a personal score and not intrinsic to the stone. If lifeforce is being sucked out of the air and stored - does that mean that it is stored in the person? It doesn't seem to be stored in the stone.

Postulation: Exiles absorb some substance (let's call it lifeforce for now). But we do not absorb it without an active sparkle stone to help. Perhaps it works like this:

The stone measures the accumulated stone-enhanced lifeforce you've collected.
You activate the stone.
The stone-enhanced lifeforce you have previously collected gets transferred to the stone.
You dash around collecting as much as possible.
At the end of 8 minutes, the stone compares what it is holding with what you have accumulated.
If what you have accumulated is more than what the stone is holding (i.e. if you have beaten your previous high score), then you keep that lifeforce and the stone uses the lifeforce it was holding for you to reform itself.
If what you have accumulated is less than what the stone is holding, then the stone transfers the lifeforce back to you and disintegrates.

Because of the possible connection with ether (which Wangah Rah's experiment disproved - but then, we are still learning about ether, maybe there's another aspect of it that ties in with the sparkle stone?), I set off a sparkle stone when an ethereal plane portal was opened south of town. The portal was opened unexpectedly, and its duration was longer than expected (approximately a Puddlehour and a quarter). The stone behaved as though the portal weren't there; the numbers were not unusual. However, the portal disappeared at the moment that the sparkle stone deactivated and disappeared. -Coincidence?? If it's not coincidence, then it's possible that the sparkle stones can help us in our quest to control the ether. The sparkle stone may not have been measuring any ether activity, but perhaps it somehow counteracts the portal? Or fills it so that it closes? (with what?? accumulated lifeforce??) (If interested, you can view a visionstone of the event.)

Written by Taladwy, Apprentice Mystic, her hand, Winter 89, 546. (May 25, 2002.)

Plea for feedback
I am interested in collecting as many personal experiences with the sparkle stones as possible. If you have any that you would like to share, or if you have any observations or questions about the above, please send them to me, Taladwy, by the Puddleby Post Office, Box 1919; or by messenger. Or as a last resort, you could actually talk to me. <Taladwy grins.> Please do!

Thanks!
Thanks to All who helped compile this information: Kirth Gersen, WorldWalker, Wangah Rah, Tyranis Calgar, Aughra, Lucio, Raymond Shifter, Michael Aridfox, and T'erril.

Note about the Monastery: When sparkle stones were first introduced to Puddleby, exiles tried them out in the Monastery, with astounding results. The scores were off the charts. Kirth Gersen has a sample visionstone on his page. However, such high scores no longer appear when sparkle stones are activated in the Monastery.

Raymond Shifter postulates that in fact it does matter what foe you're hitting - that the greater the foe, the higher the score when it's vanquished. And that when the stones first came to Puddleby, they were confused about the dummies - that they thought they were foes of infinite strength, instead of foes of null strength. The stones appear to have corrected their error. Hitting a dummy does give a jump in score, but only a small one.

1:	click
2-3:	whiff
4:	ch-h-h
5-10:	quack
25-50?:	ding
1,000:	piano slide
...	(etc.)