The Angyn

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This holy tome takes the form of a polished metal cube “about the size and weight of a goodly warhelm” (as the priest Hothlas of Baldur’s Gate put it—in other words, about a foot on a side and about 16 pounds). The Argyr is fashioned of spell-guarded adamantine plated with electrum and treated with both everbright and blueshine. Its surfaces bear a parallel array of six straight bars that stand out in slight relief and are crested at their centers with metal rings. The rings are affixed so they are lying parallel to the sides of the cube, rather than projecting out from it. As might be expected, these are finger-pulls that allow a user to pull the bars (actually the reinforced ends of thin, coiled sheets of metal), out of the cube for examination. A single spell is engraved on each one. The pulls are magically locked and the only way to open them is for a single being to touch a pull-ring with a bare finger and whisper or speak the Six Secret Names of Gond, in the correct order, thus: Arnaglaerus, Balateng, Daerosdaeros, Klannauda, Mrangor, and Tattaba. Any other attempts to pull on a ring or to open, strike, or use spells on the cube causes it to emit chain light¬ning (starting at 9d6 strength, sent to the source of the disturbance), and then dimension door the cube away in a random direction, leaving anyone or any item touching it behind. The magical defenses of the cube cause it to “heal” itself of any crushing, corrosive, or elec¬trical damage it may take (all other forms of attack fail utterly). For one day after taking such damage, The Argyr will not function, it cannot open, but it does not hurl lightning or move away from anyone attempting to open it correctly until the damage is removed. Knowledge of this property can, of course, be used to keep the cube useless by repeatedly damaging it. Just such a tactic was employed by the Dark Cleric Othorgor, a servant of Bhaal who dwelt in Tashluta some 400 years ago. This was the time when word of The Argyr (evidently fash¬ioned secretly somewhere in Lantan, earlier) first surfaced. The Bhaalists had apparently found no safe way to reach the island realm of Lantan, to spread murder among its inhabi¬tants for the greater glory of Bhaal, and so they hit upon this scheme for luring devout Lantanna into their clutches on the mainland. The cube was seized from a newly established, covert temple of Gond in Calimport, during a raid in which the Bhaalists slaughtered all of the clergy and desecrated their temple. It was borne away to Murder Hall, an unused castle outside Tashluta that the Bhaalists had modified into a huge trap. They took great delight in using its pitfalls, captive monsters, and “shooting gallery” gauntlets to slay all the Gondsmen who, goaded by taunting messages sent by Othorgor, came seeking The Argyr. This practice continued for some seasons, and amassed an impressive body-count. Then the Griffons Away adventuring band of Baldur’s Gate (none of whom worshiped Gond) took on the Hall as a challenge. They slaughtered Othorgor, and spirited the cube (along with several wagon loads of temple magic and riches) away to their citadel—which promptly became a pressing desti¬nation for every Bhaalist in Faerun. Within eight winters, the Griffons were all dead. (However, there are recurring rumors that a young sorceress among them managed to escape into the city sewers where she exists to this day as an insane, creeping drowned undead thing.) Griffonsroost Hall was torn apart stone by stone by the Bhaalists searching for the holy artifact known as the Wandering Knife (said to have been used to work murder by Bhaal himself), and The Argyr. Neither was ever found in the city, though both have since surfaced briefly in the Sword Coast lands before being lost from sight again. The Cube of Gond was last reported in the possession of the sage and collector Maerltyl of Murann—before the strange attack upon his mansion by scores of gargoyles, who tore both Maerltyl and his home apart, and took away all they did not destroy. The gargoyles vanished into the depths of the Forest of Tethir, and have not been seen since (some believe they went through a gate there that took them to another plane, or at least to a distant corner of Toril). In recent seasons, vivid visions of The Argyr, always depicted as floating somewhere above a stone table or natural slab, in an anonymous place, backlit by eerie radiance, have begun to appear above altars consecrated to Gond during temple rituals. Many of the faithful have taken this as a sign from Gond that the cube must now be sought out and recov¬ered at all costs. The mercenary adventurer Hadrar “Hawkblade” Bruynnis claims to have actually held The Argyr for a few moments last spring, in the crumbling room of an underground complex beneath the southernmost trees of the Forest of Tethir. The room collapsed during a battle against wights, and Hadrar lost the cube during his frantic escape. So many beasts came to the surface from the shattered underways that the Hawkblade is convinced the place now lies open to the surface, for those who know where to look. Anyone who finds The Argyr will, according to an ancient priest of Gond, Allard Faerglon, whose writings as Keeper of Records in the vanished temple of Gond in Zazesspur survive today in Candlekeep, command the following spells: From one surface: Command, detect snares & pits, find traps, heat metal, light, produce flame. On a second: Call lightning, continual light, dispel magic, divine purpose (a spell detailed below), locate object, warp wood. The third yields: Blade barrier, meld into stone, repair (detailed below), snare, tongues, water walk. The fourth contains: Control temperature 10' radius, heal, protection from lightning, regenerate, understand device (detailed below), wall of fire. The patriarch of Gond in Chessenta, the learned Uthlan “Wonderseeker” Abardreth, recently reported the finding of a scroll of anonymous authorship in an ancient Gondar cache in Turmish—a scroll whose veracity cannot, of course, be tested without possession of The Argyr. The scroll states that if all the metal “pages” are pulled out of the cube and the secret names of Gond are again uttered (in correct, alphabetical order), an additional hidden spell appears in “letters of light” atop the back of one of the pages, a spell that appears elsewhere in Gondsmen holy libraries (the one in The Argyr may vary slightly from what is given here): the first of Gond. The rare Gondsmen spells found in The Argyr (and nowhere else outside Lantan, it seems) are as follows: