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To amplify a bit: The heroes do a heist sort of thing early on. When this trio of heroes breaks into the villain's stronghold, they find that the thing they expected to steal is not there. But there *is* a different thing they can steal, so they do.

(Keeping a lot vague here, as I want to talk about the #writing and #plotting aspects without giving away too much about the book itself.) 1/10

I want them to be surprised in their heist because it's still very early in the book. Though I want them to have some success (to show that they're skilled and capable), I also need the final result to not be a simple "We did it, yay!", but to have at least some aspect of "Wait, what's going on? There's a mystery we have to solve, or a question to be answered", to draw the reader deeper in. 2/10

So that means I need 2 different plot devices, that both fulfill a few different criteria. But first, let me mention one other thing that's going to happen with this item: once the heroes get back out of the villain's lair, they're going to take a few minutes to: regroup; celebrate their success in getting in, getting out, and getting *some* item; and take a look at what this unexpected item is. 3/10

At the end of that, 2 of the group will agree to hand the item to the 3rd member of the group, either for safekeeping or disposal/destruction, depending on what it turns out to be. This is intended to help establish that guy as a dependable, trustworthy type. 4/10

So the three attributes I need *both* items to have are:

1) Portable: The thing needs to be small enough that they can take it. At largest, it needs to fit in a backpack, if it's not hand-carryable.
2) Deprivable: The heroes need to successfully deprive the villain of the item. So it needs to *not* be something that's easily copied, like practically all forms of information these days.

(3rd and last list item coming...)

5/10

3) Clue-Bearing: It needs to be something that, by analyzing it, the heroes can gain some insight into what the villain's plan is. So, not just "a mystic gem that could provide limitless power for any kind of spell"; if it's a magical artifact, it'd have to be one that could only be used for certain things.

6/10

One of my ideas for the item had been "info the villain can use to blackmail the mayor and/or supervisors", but that fails the "deprivable" test. It's 2024; any villain worth his salt — heck, anyone with a brain, regardless of motives — would have that info backed up in the cloud somewhere.

(And while my villain does have his flaws — obviously, being a villain, he *must* be flawed! — stupidity is absolutely not one of them.) 7/10

And "not easily copyable" is also the thing that requires the 2 heroes to trust the 3rd. If it's just a USB stick or something, they can quickly and easily make a copy, or the 3rd guy can just say, "I'll send you two copies of this as soon as I get home, so we'll all have it." 8/10

But I was wondering if there were any forms of information that *aren't* easily copyable, because I don't want both the intended item and the thing-they-finally-get to both have to be devices or artifacts; that seemed too repetitive. I wondered if there was a way to make information be deprivable... and thought of an entire book. Yes, books *can* be digitized, but not quickly and easily. 9/10

So: the villain has a mystic tome! The heroes were expecting an artifact, but instead they found a magic book... and it can even have a few pages bookmarked!

And I think this may let me move ahead with my plotting and #writing, at least a little. Yay!

Thanks for bearing with me through all of this. Hope you liked my thought process. end/10