Leaves of Green

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This tome looks like a flat oval piece of fissured dark gray bark. It gives the appearance of great age and fragility, but it cannot be broken by any known means. The tree it came from cannot even be identified by the most experienced wood-dwelling creature. To a casual inspection, there is nothing to distinguish this piece of bark as anything out of the ordinary except a triangle of scratched circles on its inner surface (all are a little more than an inch across). To make the true book appear, one of the names of Silvanus (Green Father, Irmider, Orthaum, Shabrathan, Silvanus, or Taoltrathan) must be spoken aloud while the speaker is pressing on the wood inside all three of the rings. This deed causes the bark to grow speedily into the fissured covers of a book whose pages are square, waxy green leaves of lush appearance and extreme toughness. Each face of a page bears a single spell, and there are 16 pages in all. In bark-scrap form, the tome is about 8 inches across, 10 inches long, and about half an inch thick, but it is concave, so that its uncrushed thickness is closer to 2 inches. In book form, it is about 11 inches across and 14 inches long, with rounded corners, and about 2 inches thick. In either model, Leaves of Green is AC -5 and totally resistant to fire, water, heat, light¬ning, and other “elemental” damage (including the attacks of those conjured creatures known as elementals and para-elementals). It cannot be readily cut or torn and seems to absorb all types of spells cast at it—releasing such magic at any being who launches an attack on it, shedding necromantic spells first, and then spells of the alteration school (such magic is launched at the level of the original caster and automatically fails if the spells involve charms or mental influences). No matter what its form, Leaves of Green is almost weightless, yet it cannot be blown away or otherwise moved about except within the grasp of a living being. If released (even unintention¬ally) by someone, it remains exactly where it was abandoned—floating in midair if necessary No action of weather, not gales, not tidal waves, will budge it, and it is neither harmed nor altered by the elements. The only change in its appearance is that if left in book form it will silently revert to the bark-scrap pattern after 2d4 rounds pass. It does not radiate magic in either form, and (of course) absorbs all detection, divination, and identification magic cast its way. No mortal knows the exact age of Leaves of Green. It first comes to light in certain Halruaan writings, described as something old even then, taken from the ruins of Netheril by the wealthy but little-known Darusk family. These claims may be fanciful, but it is known that the Darusk clan settled in northern Halruaa (where, much dimin¬ished in wealth and numbers, folk of the Darusk lineage can be found to this day), and there set about taming the uplands into a sort of vast wooded park, with “wild” plants care¬fully placed, underbrush cleared, and the land sculpted to provide easy walking under giant shade trees and a series of pleasant vistas over tranquil lakes and picturesque valleys. Although these landscapes were soon overshadowed by more spectacular alterations wrought by powerful Halruaan archmages (notably the Esculphions, with their love of cascades and waterfalls), it is not hard to ascribe the rapidity of the Daruskan reshaping to the use of the magic held in Leaves of Green. A rogue son of the family, Rondyl Darusk, is said to have stolen the book sometime around 954 DR when he slipped out of the realm to seek his fortune in Faerun. When he met a bloody end a dozen summers later as the “Bandit Wizard” of Chondath, living as a brigand, harrying the trade passing between the Vilhon and the lands of Chessenta and Mulhorand, the book was lost. Leaves of Green does not reappear in the lore of Faerun until 1167 DR, when the Gray Druid of the Ash Circle tried to sweep away all walls and buildings (with the folk dwelling in them) in what is now Amn, raising an army of treants and forest beasts to accomplish the task. The druid was defeated early in his campaign of destruction by the Wild Helms adven¬turing company from Waterdeep (an informal group of younger noble sons and their drinking companions), they cut the book from the old madman’s dying hands and hurled it away. Of course, it stopped in midair the moment it left the gauntlet of the young Waterdhavian who threw it, and drank the fireball that his fearful brother mage cast upon it. Convinced that it was an item of great power, the Wild Helms gingerly closed a strongchest around it and carried it back to Waterdeep for examination. There it was seized by the priest Angluth Eriduth, Watcher of the Seatrees Shrine (the name then in use for the city’s Shrine of Silvanus; it has since been called “the Green Garden,” “the Quiet Place,” and “Oakenshade House,” among others). Angluth declared the tome to be a holy item of the god Silvanus (the first time it had been identified publicly), but his taking of the book was not readily accepted by at least two of the noble families whose sons had brought it to the city. There was a nasty confrontation between the agents they sent to the shrine and the aged priest. Angluth survived (though stabbed with many daggers) by using the spells of the book and thereby demonstrated the support of Silvanus for any “rightful possessor” of Leaves of Green. This did not stop a Waterdhavian thief from stealing the tome almost immediately. If (as Angluth and some citizens have always thought) this was done at the behest of the foiled noble families who had failed to gain the tome by open force, the thief double-crossed them, selling the book in Calimport to Torast Haeluth, a wealthy collector of magical curios whose vast estates were guarded by animated, tireless, prowling stone lions (reportedly some kind of gargoyles). They tore apart no less than two dozen thieves and adventurers in the month that followed Torast’s acquisition of the tome (twice what they normally slew in a year of guarding the sprawling estates against intruders), but an unknown mage who opened a gate into Torast’s very bedchambers stole the tome along with many other magical items—and Torast Haeluth’s life. Angluth of Waterdeep sponsored many searches for the sacred book of Silvanus in the decades that followed its loss, but beyond uncovering the unfortunate fate of the jovial Torast of Calimshan, no sign of Leaves of Green came to Angluth (or any other scribe or diarist of record) until 1212 DR, when the Grand Old Druid of Waterdeep was truly ancient. A young supplicant came to him with news of seeing a female half-elf dancing in a fairy ring of mushrooms that shone pearly-white in the dusk (the moon had not yet risen), somewhere along the western edges of the High Forest. She gave her name as “Ghalashalue, Servant of Silvanus,” and the supplicant, one Faerun by name, saw her cast no less than nine spells from “a floating book of bark, whose pages were glossy green leaves.” Angluth declared himself content that the tome was in the hands of a priestess of Silvanus, and died in Faern’s arms. Of course, his bones had barely been buried in the forest with the traditional handful of acorns when half a dozen younger, more ambitious druids of the faith set forth in search of Ghalashalue and the by-now-legendary “Lost Tome of the Father.” They met with little success, finding any number of fairy rings (though none glowed without moonshine), but no book and no dancing woman. Ghalashalue was never seen again, although some folk say she is one of the servants of Silvanus, who sometimes brings the words of the father to those who pray to him for guidance. Leaves of Green reappeared in 1248 DR, when adventurers under the command of the paladin of Tyr Endruth Immister, the “Unicorn Knight” of Westgate, found it atop a moss-covered altar in a westerly woodlot among the Ghost Holds of Battledale along with a huge sword whose blade was a leafy spar of living oak. They bore both items carefully back to Westgate, to the druid Raevarl (who dwelt southwest of the city, in the woods that have now vanished under the axes of woodcutters). Raevarl’s Circle of Silvanite priests examined the tome and the sword carefully, and it is from their notes that we know the contents of Leaves of Green. Unfortunately, doom came to Raevarl and his followers in 1255 DR, in the form of a “Crusade of Slaughter” organized by ambitious priests of Bhaal, which swept bloodily from eastern Amn along the trade-routes to the very walls of Westgate before being broken by hastily hired mercenary armies. Amid all the death, the book disappeared again, carried off by unknown hands to keepers and places unknown until it was purchased in Scornubel in 1314 DR by the merchant trader Augheen of Athkatla. The saturnine Augheen intended to take the tome to Sembia and there auction it to the highest bidder, but his ship was sunk in Suzail by a golem rising up, apparently from the bottom of the harbor, to punch in its hull. In the wreck, the book vanished again. Augheen suspected certain magically powerful noble families of Cormyr of using the golem to seize various magical items from his spell-guarded strongchests, and hired agents to watch and listen for any trace of the missing items in Cormyr, Sembia, and Westgate, but those agents spied in vain. Leaves of Green next came to light in Turmish in 1331 DR, when a nameless forester gambled it away in a game of highcard in a tavern, losing it to the adven¬turer Murkiltan of Ormpetarr. Murkiltan had no more luck in holding on to the much- traveled holy book of Silvanus than his predecessor Augheen—he was set upon by orcs in the Orsraun Mountains the next spring, and lost Leaves of Green, along with his entire backpack of belongings, into a rift that opened deep down into the roots of a mountain. Where the Leaves went next no one knows, but an elven burial barge that drifted into the nets of pirates fishing in the open seas west of the isle of Sarr in 1346 DR proved to contain a fortune in gems, a sword whose blade was visible only in moonlight (or when bathed in gore!), and Leaves of Green. These riches overcame the usual superstitions of the pirates of the Fallen Stars, and they fairly tore apart the corpse of the elf and its slender ship of rest in their eagerness to become men of wealth. The bark- scrap was retained by a pirate named Skirpo as something “that no one else was grabbing, which just might be of value.” It was valued by someone on the Dragonisle not long after, because they slit Skirpo open from end to end like a used wineskin to take it, when he was among the poorest of all that drunken crew. It was evidently sold in Sembia the next spring, briefly surfaced in Ordulin in a merchant’s hoard for which two rival bands of adventurers fought to the death in an inn, and was claimed from the last reeling survivor of that fray by the innkeeper as part payment for the damages done to the rooms. It disappeared again only a tenday later, when ambitious Zhentarim magelings riding feywings tore the top right off the inn to get at anything of value they might carry off while they practiced blasting the angry owners of said items to ashes with spells in the process. After the destruction of Zhentil Keep, a caravan master found the book floating in the ruins. Fearing to examine it too closely, he wrapped it in an old cloak and took it to Arabel on his regular caravan run, selling it there to someone who took it into the Stonelands and was devoured in that place by preda¬tors. The book lay beside his gnawed bones for a winter or more before adventurers found it again and took it to the House of the Morning in Eveningstar to be identified. They reclaimed it then, and set off into the Haunted Halls, never to be seen again. The most recent identification of Leaves of Green was at an inn in Iriaebor in 1367 DR, when a traveling hiresword brought it out to back up a boastful tale of adventure—and then left his room in the dark of night. He was probably out for only a few breaths before a band of hired slayers who smashed in the shutters and left the bed a-bristle with seeking arrows. The hiresword gave no name to his fellow guests, but seemed to be heading for Waterdeep (or at least the northern Sword Coast) . . . but given the past history of Leaves of Green, it could well reappear anywhere in Faerun from Icewind Vale to Var the Golden. All accounts of the contents of the holy book of Silvanus agree that it holds the following spells: Barkskin, briartangle (a spell detailed in the Faiths & Avatars sourcebook), changestaff, control weather, death chariot (Faiths & Avatars), dispel magic, entangle, falling wall (a spell detailed below), fireward (Faiths &Avatars), goodberry, hold plant, jaws of the wolf (detailed below), liveoak, many thorns (detailed below), moss skull (detailed below), mulch (Faiths & Avatars), oakheart (Faiths & Avatars), pass plant, pass without trace, plant door, plant growth, protection from lightning, rainbow, smoke ghost (Faiths & Avatars), snare, speak with plants, starshine, thorn spray (Faiths & Avatars), trans¬port via plants, tree, turn wood, and wall of thorns.