Do you need to know an ioun stone [b]is[ / b] an ioun stone to use it?

[daimaru]

One of our adventurers picked up some magical "colored pebbles" that no one in the party can identify and put them in her bosom. If these are ioun stones (we don't know yet) and she takes them out and shows them to someone does that count as "releasing" them? Will they start orbiting her head all on their own? And will they give her the bonuses even though she doesn't know what those bonuses are?

My thoughts are, "yes" to all of those but I wondered what people thought.

[Brf]

I assume you would take one and attempt to orbit it around your head. If it falls to the ground, it is not an ioun stone.

[Tacticslion]

I do not think you need to know the ioun stone is an ioun stone to make it work. It's not really activated that way. However, it really depends on what you mean by "releasing" the item. If someone tosses one up in the air, say, to catch it (to be fiddling with something, as I often do when I have a 'toss-able' item), that would count as "releasing" it. I find simply holding your hand open to be potentially more dubious, depending on who you're talking to, but still a possibly-acceptable interpretation. That one, you'd have to clear with your GM.