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I don't know if anyone in the Pathfinder community would remember this, but I am searching for a description of a certain item. The item in question is best described as a mechanical biped eye. It is small from what I can remember and with a command word it wakes up and four legs come out and it moves around. You can send it to find things and more importantly it can read books (i.e.: spellbooks or otherwise). It can then store whatever it read into its memory and come back to its master. It will then psychically (I think) transfer this information back to its master.
I know it was in an issue of a Dragon magazine, but I don't know the issue and I don't know the exact name of the item. I used it in a game long long time ago hence my memory lapse. Anyone remember this?
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I believe I know the item you are talking about. Took me an hour or so of digging to find it. (Picked an issue in the middle of my collection and went the wrong way. Turned around when I went back into 3.0 for a bit.)
The issue is Dragon Issue 350. Item is called a Researcher. Not a biped eye, but an eyeball on eight clockwork legs.
(Hope posting this online in a general sense is permitted.)
The item is a little (Tiny size) animated construct. It requires a fully-stocked library to work properly. Give it a general topic (A single knowledge skill) and it will scuttle off, read what it can (Apparently the little guy is fast, and only takes 15 min.) and then come back to share what it found. This gives a +5 bonus on Knowledge checks (Untyped in the entry) for one hour. Not having any ranks in the knowledge skill means you give no bonus (Or, altered for Pathfinder, still can only make DC 10 checks) as the knowledge it shares is without context and structure, and so requires somebody knowledgeable in the field to make the proper inferences.
I like the description of how you can't be too detailed with your question. Asking for "Every noble house with ties to the Shadowclaws" or overly-detailed questions results in the thing collapsing in a twitching tangle of legs, requiring a minute of soothing words and gentle petting by its owner.
It requires a 3-month bonding period. While not sapient, it needs to attune to its master's thought patterns and mannerisms in order to work its magic.
Trigger Loaded I would like to thank you. This is exactly what I was looking for! This is fantastic!