The Lapis Lion

The Lapis Lion
A precious stone found deep in the mines below the Histian Empire, and passed down through over five family generations of history. It began with a miner's family after he had discovered the ancient stone deep within the mines, and from this point it was passed down as a family heirloom, the most precious jewel ever known in the Empire, and worth a great fortune to the family who owned it.
But with every generation that passed, the jewel seemed to bring misfortune and death along with it. Typically, this was in the form of the death of the primary heir of the jewel which usually was the firstborn son of the original owner, but some instances of the jewel being passed down were known to be members of the extended family of the owners of the jewel, commonly by unexpected or unusual circumstances such as vehicular accidents or sudden deaths especially. 
But there was one death that finally ended the curse.
This death took place on the night of April the Fifteenth, nineteen-hundred-twelve.
The Good Intent was a steamer ship on a journey between the continent of Ethlemthos and Rethium. It had left the ports of Atlantis, Ethlemthos' capital city, and was headed for the port city of Charme, the largest eastern port city on the Rethium continent at the time. This was it's seventeenth voyage, making it an old yet still reliable ship, but this same seventeenth voyage would prove to be it's last. Onboard the vessel at the time were more than twenty-five hundred total passengers and crew, and the voyage until this point had been uneventful and calm, save for only one day that had given a small swell to the ocean but had not hampered against the experience of the passengers and crew that day. It was, however, only a small inconvenience when it would be compared to the events that would take place not long afterwards. 
Around twelve-fifteen that night, an iceberg drifted into the path of the Good Intent, and at approximately twelve-seventeen am, the Good Intent struck the berg on her starboard side and was eventually stopped in the water with nowhere to go and with no help available. In a matter of hours, more than two-thirds of the passengers and crew of the Good Intent would be dead. And one of them was Miss Genivive Darlington-Whit. 
Genivive Darlington-Whit was the daughter of Ceanna Darlington-Whit and Julius Pierpoint, who were well-established magnates from Rethium's country of Aswary, who had been on a special business trip to Atlantis following a merger of two metal-production companies, one from Aswary and the other from Atlantis. On this particular trip, the Whits had taken their daughter Genivive, as she had wanted to see Atlantis for the first time in person, and it was known that during her parents' work on this particular trip that she had spent much of her time adventuring the vast city and making plenty of memories as well. She was known to have spent many evenings by the ocean during the week they had stayed in the city, and she was also known to have commented on the futility of human nature and their desires to conquer the world and the elements, despite their inability to do so for so many thousands of years. She was fifteen years old at the time, and had been working hard in her studies to accomplish her goal of becoming a prominent member of society and the influential classes at the time, even with the dream of becoming a member of the government to spread her family's influence across the country. She had only been two years away from graduating from some lower-level classes at the time of the sinking, and it was thought that she would have graduated with honors in her studies if she had survived the sinking of the Good Intent. It was recorded in a book written about the accident that her mother and father also died in the sinking, only shortly before Genivive did. They were last seen in the Grand Staircase of the ship as the ship's glass dome shattered from the snapping of a funnel-securing rope, while Genivive had been left behind on the boat deck under mysterious circumstances. 
When the ship's final plunge began, some survivors said that they last saw Genivive clinging to the stern railing of the Good Intent before it went under and she was initially pulled down with it, before a blast of hot air from the depths of the vessel brought her back to the surface. Some also say that she had entered a lifeboat with an unknown gentleman who was thought to be a suitor of hers at the time, though claims were never satisfied regarding this assumption, and none of the other survivors affirmed that they had known Genivive well enough to have been her supposed suitor. Even more still claim that she was seen with her parents in the Grand Staircase, others say she was visible on the bridge with captain Oceanus Abraham and the first officer, Hezekiah Kirk. One other claim by an unidentified survivor and member of the crew stated that Genivive had ascended either the third funnel or the stern mast and had jumped from the height and into the sea, to commit suicide rather than to die in the icy waters a slow and painful death. 
The only identifying feature of all these claims surrounding the young heiress was that she was wearing a blue jewel around her neck, tied by a silver chain and giving off a strange energy about itself. She was known to have been shy and quiet during the voyage, not talking much to anyone about anything, even when she was encountered alone once or twice on the open deck space of the Good Intent in the days before the sinking. Leading Fireman Absalom Oliver even stated that he watched as a young girl, roughly Genivive's age, ascended the third funnel and jumped into it, disappearing into the bowels of the ship before the final plunge began. This would state that she had died in the deepest sections of the vessel, crushed by water pressure or the destruction of the ship at the ocean floor. Whatever claim surrounding her death is true, it is known that this was the last voyage of the Lapis Lion jewel, and that to whatever end Genivive was delivered, it was the curse of the Lapis Lion and the families who carried it that had brought her onto this fateful voyage. 
The bodies of Julius Pierpoint, Ceanna Darlington-Whit, Genivive Darlington-Whit and the Lapis Lion jewel were never found.

Item type

Jewelry / Valuable