> This is a commonly asked question, despite being dealt with in the online documentation for Murkon's Refuge. I think the problem with the empty stone is its strange name. Sure, you can immediately recognize its counterpart, 'broken item' as being useless, but an empty stone? When I first found one, it conjured up an image of a geode in my mind. I suspect it is really just one of the magical stones that has been drained of its power (kinda like the gemstones in GOAT) and has been discarded. What do you think?

That's *exactly* what it is. In the original UNIX version of the game, whenever you use a one-time item, it turns into a "Broken Item" or, if a stone, an "Empty Stone," mirroring the behavior of magical gemstones seen in my novel, which was mirrored in Duel of the Ages and Game of the Ages.

For the web version of the game, dropping all the broken items and empty stones was far too tedious with the page loading delay between moves, so now used items just disappear. The Broken Item and the Empty Stone remain in the game for flavor and, apparently, to make people ask questions.