At some point of playing modded Skyrim I started this self-imposed challenge. Right after character creation, as I'm going through MCM menus and such, I would open random number generator on my phone and choose 1 to 13.
As you probably have guessed, 1–12 are months. Each month has a corresponding Standing Stone, according to Firmament. It is an in-game book on, essentially, astrology. A belief that, depending on your month of birth, you have a constellation which influences your character. Number 13 is for Serpent, a mysterious odd fellow, who does not have a direct connection to any of the months in the calendar.
And after I have run a random number, I would check the calendar and choose the corresponding month. For example, 3 = March = First Seed = Lord. So my fresh character would need to travel to a small village on the way to Dawnstar and make their way to the Lord's Stone.
After the stone was chosen, I'd have to keep it forever. Which is very convenient when you're me and struggle to keep focus and remember to use any once a day power. They are also notoriously buggy if you change timescale (make in-game time go slower or quicker).
It is also a nifty way to force yourself get out of the comfort zone of always going for one Stone with an effect proven useful.
Back when I used to play vanilla (= without mods), I would normally go for the Lover Stone. Well, after clicking on Warrior on my way to Riverwood. In vanilla Lover is a very much a one-size-fits-all kind of Stone, increasing any skill progression. By default, leveling up your skills is what you do to level up in general, so it's practical. Nowadays I go for Experience, so my characters needs traveling and quests more than they need skill increases.
My point is, I have always been lazy about switching Standing Stones. When it comes to restrictions, Requiem sparkled my imagination. It has a restriction for choosing stones. Yet its restriction has to do with the classic classes (thief/mage/warrior), and once you have chosen your stone, you can only switch between the stones of that class. At least, that was the case last time I was using the mod.
I, however, wanted the restriction to have to do with lore, rather than player convenience. Plus, as I've mentioned, never liked switching much between the powers anyway. That is how the challenge came to pass.
About at least a year later, probably more, I was slowly preparing a modlist to go on a new adventure. And it occurred to me that I would really love for the process of selecting a stone to be automatic.
That is when Simply One Standing Stone per Life and Simply Random Standing Stone were created. One allows you to choose you stone, but only once, and another rolls that random chance I used to roll manually. Two mods are independent from each other, but can be paired.
But something still didn't feel right. The effects were too beneficial, and I wanted my character to be further nerfed. So I started experimenting with Standing Stones effects... And made Guided By Stars - Standing Stones Overhaul.
This mod is truly a curse to set up upon yourself, and I love that. Each stone has positive and negative effects, and the negative effects are actually severe. And NPCs are affected by them as well. I used what I've learned by making the previous two mods for Standing Stones and combined them with some brutal balancing. Now to actually finish that modlist to go on a proper adventure...