Tome of Hungering Shadow

Wondrous Item, artifact
This large tome is bound in skin embedded with shards of black crystal. It is cold to the touch and it emanates magical darkness in a 5-foot-radius sphere around itself. This darkness spreads around corners, a creature with darkvision can't see through this darkness, and nonmagical light can't illuminate it. Casting dispel magic on the book suppresses the darkness for 10 minutes.
The book is written in the scratchy, angular runes of the Rattar. It is a religious text of the dark rattar's god, The Gnawing Dark, and it describes grisly practices of worship, as well as feverish prophecies about the city of Quan falling to an apocalyptic doom.
It is also a spellbook and contains the following wizard spells:
1st level: cause fear, ray of sickness
2nd level: darkness, phantasmal force, ray of enfeeblement, wither and bloom
3rd level: bestow curse, fear, vampiric touch
4th level: black tentacles, phantasmal killer
5th level: cloudkill, enervation
6th level: eyebite
7th level: power word pain
8th level: maddening darkness
9th level: weird
To copy one of these spells into your spellbook, you must be able to see the tome for the entire duration of the copying process. At the end of each 2 hour period of copying, you must also succeed on a wisdom saving throw or take 2d6 psychic damage and become frightened of the book for 10 minutes. While frightened, the copying process is suspended. The DC equals 10 + the spell's level.

Magic Item on D&D Beyond

Item type

Book / Document