Except that Ioun isn’t about ‘academic knowledge and libraries’, she’s about knowledge and truths and sharing that knowledge out to the world, making at accessable for everyone, which is what bards do, the story telling of bards actually being the original way to share knowledge before books became a big thing. And Percy isn’t one to ‘share’ his knowledge, for very good reason he mostly keeps what he knows and has learned to himself rather than sharing.

           

enderon

And also, yes, Sprigg’s focus on Scanlan is very important, as things like that don’t just happen for no reason, not in this story. The connection there is less about Sprigg being left alone, but that emphasis that he RAN AWAY and his companions suffered for it, something we know Scanlan feels guilty for doing, also the tidbit about Sprigg’s companion being killed by hobgoblins, a little parallel to Scanlan’s own mother being killed by goblins,

         

enderon

a moment that severely messed him up. Also, Scanlan isn’t an idiot. Percy is the ‘smart one’, but there have been many times where Scanlan has been called to for information because, as an older, wl traveled bard, he has quite a lot of worldly knowledge. And this is not the only time Scanlan has used his Ioun stone. He used it before to find Kamaljiori, a server of Ioun, who also, lo and behold, was the one that gave them Mythcarver, the vestige that Scanlan uses.

Ioun isn’t exactly the goddess of streetsmarts either. Scanlan is knowledgable, but as a traveller rather than a scholar. Any time he was called upon for a knowledge roll, he knew stuff because he picked it up here and there, not because he actively went out looking for it.

His way of being a bard is also usually more about being an entertainer, singing and performing, rather than sharing stories. That’s also not what Dr. Dranzel’s troupe seemed to be doing. And the entertainment part of Bard-dom has an entirely different deity assigned to it. Or should have, at least. As I mentioned, the amount of gods mentioned in the story is very slim compared to what is actually available in D&D.

I also said that the parallels between Sprigg and Scanlan are very on the nose, and pointing those out is valid… I just don’t find it very compelling and almost forced, in a way. I know people feel the same way about what happened with Pelor and I disagree on that count. Now Sprigg’s performance was beautiful and the entire sequence was amazing, don’t get me wrong, but all the similarities between Scanlan and Sprigg don’t really tie into Sprigg’s connection to Ioun, either, or at least not in a way we have been told about yet.

Yes, Sprigg is the key to her and so kind of everything about him is relevant in regards to Ioun in a way, but I don’t think the parallels between him and Scanlan are in any relation to his role as the key. The only things actively hinting at his role were what Pelor told them about (person living in the area), the fact that he had a house full of books (the contents of which he also wasn’t exactly happy to openly share with people), and seemingly a disdain for the goddess, hinting at a history with her he hasn’t talked about yet. 

And Percy has researched things with the intent of sharing them. He was the key reasearcher and source of information when it came to the trip to the 9 hells, and his knowledge check brought them on the track towards Raishan again. He was allowed to roll for knowledge throughout the campaign just for being a nerd.

So Scanlan used the Ioun stone once or twice, an anon said he also used it around a dragon hoard, and I think I faintly remember something like that happening when they were looking for Umbrasyl. That is literally fewer times than Pike’s armor has been activated, and that didn’t exactly make her a champion for Pelor, either. Partially because she was already taken, true, but Pelor didn’t even allude to that.

(Scanlan just being handed his vestige by the Sphinx (whose name was, by the way, figured out by Percy) may or may not be relevant, but the fact that there was no additional somewhat personal quest required to get it is one of the biggest problems I have with the story at large. Because I do agree that Scanlan got the short end of the stick there. Not the shortest, that one goes to Vex, but a very close second.)

If anything, when it comes to sharing knowledge and keeping secrets, I don’t think the scales are tipped towards either of them, which is why the most compelling point to me here is Whitestone and the de Rolo’s connection to Ioun – the same connection that made Vex get her patron.