I have never used the Nording Keystones as I found them pricey. But I did purchase the much less costly (per volume) product generically known as hydroponic expanded clay pellets / pebbles. Hydroton Expanded Clay Pellets is a brand name for one such product and the one I purchased. It is the same stuff.
The keyword is ‘expanded.’ Once expanded (baked?) in the manufacturing process, the pellets have small holes and channels for absorption. For their intended purpose they can be reused. For pipe smoking I would advise against it: different tobaccos impart different flavors and these pellets absorb. As such, the true flavor of a tobacco may be distorted if you mix ‘n match tobaccos with USED pebbles / pellets from other tobacco blends. And if you’re a wet smoker, well…………..
https://www.google.com/#q=hydroponic+hydroton+expanded+clay+pellets
I was not interested in the absorption qualities of the stones, but, yes, they do absorb moisture from ‘fire condensation’ and for wet smokers Rather, I was on a quest to find the solution for the ‘two match pipe,’ i.e., smoking a pipe from beginning to end with no relights. No one ever confused me with Thomas Edison, but I diddled with these pellets for several months in many different pipes and cuts / moisture levels of tobaccos. My thinking was I had a ‘reverse grate‘ system where the fire was on top and the pellets forming a pseudo grate in the bottom of the bowl. I did, however, have to hammer a bunch of them to create halves as the halves worked much better than whole pellets / pebbles. Sometimes the pellets would block the airway in the bowl but this was rare and easily remedied with a pipe cleaner. The pebbles provided only a marginal reduction in the number of relights. I hardly ever use them any longer.
As Thomas Edison said in reference to the incandescent light filament, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” I was not that ambitious but I, too, did not fail. I found ONE WAY that relights would not be eliminated. Relights are a fact of life for pipe smokers: Live with it; die with it.