The Black Book

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This volume takes the form of a traditional book, but has different proportions than most: It is four feet tall, but only one foot across. The Black Book is bound in the hide of a black dragon, with all of its edges capped in black metal, and has pages of fine white vellum—but it bears enchantments that make it radiate continual darkness for an inch all around itself. Only someone who is touching it can see anything of its contents (for them, the darkness does not exist). Its layout follows the traditional, with the front and back pages bearing the symbol of Beshaba, and the 13 pages between them each bear only a single spell each. The book radiates a (nondamaging) coldness, and whenever it opens, emits a single echoing toll of a deep and distant bell. It smells of fear, seaweed, and death when open—but has no smell at all when closed.
The Black Book first comes to the attention of Faerunian sages about 360 years ago, and may not be much older than that. The only clue to its authorship is the word (thought by some to be a name) “Rendaunt,” which has been tooled into the surface of the dragonhide covers of the book at the center point of its bottom edge, about a finger thickness in from the metal edging.
Who or what Rendaunt is or was remains a mystery, but there are teachings in the Church of Beshaba that some brilliant and magically gifted mortals gave themselves completely to the service of the Maid of Misfortune in the days after the fall of Myth Drannor, and in return received long (and ultimately tortured) lives—careers that some of them spent crafting magic to the greater glory of Beshaba. This book is one such item of fell power.
There is even a dark rumor that The Black Book keeps its creator in existence somewhere as a crumbling demilich by stealing energy from everyone who opens it—and indeed, any living creature must save vs. death magic upon first opening the tome or permanently lose 1 hit point (win or lose, this peril need not be repeated, the first opening of the book is the only time this draining can occur). Undead who open this book must make the same saving throw, success means they suffer 1d4 points of damage, and failure means they are destroyed. Disrupted undead are visibly sucked into the tome, but where their energy goes and how the book disposes of it, are also mysteries. Several Beshaban priests have written of hearing faint, ghostly voices in their heads after studying the book for long periods of time, but there is no record of the tome asserting any control over those who possess or read it.
A Beshaban underpriest named Thalaxas first saw The Black Book in a dream-vision bidding him to undertake a holy quest to find it. That striving earned him a casting-out (for his superior did not believe the young acolyte’s tale of the tome) and then exultation: He found the book floating above a blackened, twisted area in ruined Myth Drannor that he later asserted must be the “birthplace” of Beshaba. When Thalaxas returned to his temple in Murpeth with the tome, he was attacked by the upperpriests—but they were destroyed by a black-tentacled manifestation of the goddess, who spoke to all the faithful there, bidding they now revere and obey Thalaxas as her “Servant Supreme” in Faerun.
Those who obeyed flourished; those who did not soon died in mysterious ways, and the reign of Thalaxas the Tyrant began. He decreed that the temple in Murpeth was “decadent” and abandoned it, striking out into remote places to found new temples of Beshaba. He kept The Black Book with him always, and so it moved from place to place as he did. When at last he died in the Battle of Slaughterwyrm (where the newly founded temple of Arlast Halungh was torn apart by a family of blue dragons in 1090 DR; all of the combatants perished save a pair of young dragons), the book was found by the priest Nemmerus, who soon lost it to the ambitious priestess Alass, who feigned love for Nemmerus and then strangled him in their bed. Alass rose to lead the mighty Dark Horns temple in the Snowflake Mountains (she is still said to roam its ruined halls and caverns as a lich), but an orc horde sacked the proud Seat of Beshaba in 1117 DR, and The Black Book was lost.
It has been sought by devout followers of the Maid of Misfortune ever since—followers goaded by tantalizing appear¬ances of the tome in the hands of a succession of crazed human mages whom Beshabans now regard as “creatures mind- touched by Lady Doom” to serve her as a means of testing the mettle of her devotees.
The most famous of these “Wizards of the Tome” was Jaulothan Marlyx, who appeared in the center of Arrabar in 1346 DR accompanied by two beholders, and blasted most of that city to ruins before being destroyed by tanar’ri summoned by desperate local mages. The Black Book vanished again in the tumult that followed (when the tanar’ri in turn had to be hunted down and destroyed), but was paraded around at a recent MageFair by a wizard who has not been seen since, Oshalon Drhee—so it still survives, hidden somewhere in Faerun, bringing danger (if not misfortune) to all who possess it!
According to the temple clerk Evalus of Carragar (another now-vanished Beshaban Temple that stood somewhere north¬east of Ormath), the 13 spells in The Black Book are as follows: Cause light wounds, creeping doom, darkfire (a spell detailed below), detect poison, dispel magic, doomtide (detailed below), find traps, flame strike, free action, goad of misfortune (detailed below), pass without truce, speak with dead, spell immunity, and whip of woe (detailed below).