The Moonweb

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Few non-Selunites even recognize the Moonweb as a “book” of spells, for uninitiated eyes see only four separate silver rings. All of them are simple, unadorned, apparently identical bands, all treated with everbright enchantments, but they are differentiated by the names they bear on the insides of their bands: Amglaer, Enthandas, Shelmroun, and Tilithar. The four rings radiate faint enchantments, but repel all attempts to reforge them or damage them (magically or physically). Attempts to discover their uses magically reveal only the name and holy symbol of the goddess Selune. The rings have minor magical powers of their own, which can be called upon only by a wearer who is a faithful worshiper of Selune (mentally, the rings make the wearer aware of their specific powers, which are unleashed by a silent act of will). One power can be called forth from a ring every other round (powers that require the presence of another ring only “count against” the ring that actually issues them). Unless otherwise noted, these powers conform in all respects to the priest spells of the same name, and operate at the level of the priest wearing the ring, or as if cast by a priest of 6th level if the ring-wearer is not a priest (yes, this means spells above 3rd level cannot be unleashed by a nonpriest): Amglaer: Accelerate healing (a spell detailed in the Tome of Magic sourcebook), moonbeam and true seeing, and, if any one of the other three rings is also worn by the same being who is wearing Amglaer, air walk. Enthandas: Dispel magic, water breathing, and water walk (only while natural moonlight is shining on the water), and, if Shelmroun is also worn by the same being who is wearing Enthandas, neutralize poison. Shelmroun: Efficacious monster ward (a spell detailed in the Tome of Magic sourcebook), heroes' feast, and moonmotes (identical in all respects to the wizard spell magic missile, unleashing six missiles at a time), and, if Tilithar is also worn by the same being who is wearing Shelmroun, heal. Tilithar: Fire storm, remove curse, and remove paralysis, and, if Amglaer is also worn by the same being who is wearing Tilithar, restoration. If a being puts on all four of the rings at once, they will all cease to operate, and a flame strike instantly comes down on the being if he is not a faithful worshiper of Selune. If the wearer is a Selunite but does not put the rings on properly, nothing happens except an automatic resist fire/resist cold effect, a feather fall protection (operating automatically, identical to the wizard spell of the same name), and a +4 bonus on all saving throws. Unless instructed or forced into discovery through misadventure, the wearer may not even be aware of these properties. These benefits are also enjoyed by a Selunite wearer who dons the rings in the correct sequence. However, the proper arrangement makes the wearer mentally aware of all of the rings’ powers and how to access the spells they store. The proper placement is as follows: all four rings on a bare left hand. Amglaer on the little finger, Enthandas and Shelmroun on the middle finger, with Shelmroun at the base and Enthandas toward the tip, and Tilithar on the thumb. The rings alter size to fit any digits on which they are worn. If this is done on the wrong hand, or the ringed hand is not held so that some part of it is touched by moonlight, only the spell roster can be learned. If worn correctly and in moonlight, the rings empower their wearer to make the spells appear by a silent act of will. All spells silently appear on intangible floating “pages” formed by glowing air that resembles moonlight in its shade and brightness, one spell at a time. These pages can be moved about as the ring-wearer wills, floating by themselves at MV F1 21 (A), and remain in existence until the ring-wearer wishes them gone, takes off one or more rings, or they are “touched” by sunlight or by a non-Selunite. The rings that make up the Moonweb first appear in Realmslore individually, given to devout Selunites by the Shards (servitors of the goddess) in the dark years after the fall of Netheril. They served as minor magical aids and as focal points for prayers to the goddess. Eventually (around 616 DR, it seems, though accounts are vague), two of the rings were unwittingly brought together when Selunite clergy met to plan the future of the faith at Manystreams. (Manystreams was an inn run by half-elves that stood in a steep-sided, lush, wooded valley near Mount Hlim, into which many streams fell, and operated as a meeting place for the beneficent and powerful. Both valley and inn vanished together around 1011 DR, when fell magic caused a mountain to shatter and fall into it.) Selune appeared in the dreams of all the assembled priests, telling them of the four rings and bidding them seek the two missing ones. (She imparted the names of the rings, but no other clues that might aid in finding them.) The bearers of the rings Amglaer and Shelmroun were Randar Rheligonther, Moon Priest of Neverwinter, and Amtheiera Summerdusk, Lunequeen of Danthaldown (a now-vanished Selunite monastery), respectively. They set forth together to scour all Faerun for the rings, going with only a handful of companions to keep their mission as secret as possible from other faiths. Their adventures together were long, hard, and perilous, and in the end the two high clerics fell in love and pledged their troth in a moonlit meadow somewhere deep in the wilderlands. The next morning they awoke to find a burial barge floating past them down a stream, and on the finger of the elf corpse in the vessel was the ring Tilithar. Though they spent the rest of their long lives in a perpetual search for the missing fourth ring, Randar and Amtheiera were destined never to find it. They are revered among Selunites as the “Great Lovers” in service to Our Lady of Silver, and the writings they left at various Selunite temples in their travels reveal their growing knowledge of the power and purpose of the rings, imparted to them by the goddess in shared dreams. At their deaths (in the summer of 686 DR), the Great Lovers were buried together in the same casket at a secret, moonlit spot in the Sword Coast North woodlands, and the three rings taken carefully to the Selunite temple at Evershed (destroyed by an orc horde in 1256 DR, it stood southeast of the present inn known as the Calling Horns). There the rings were used in rituals as the years passed, and the quest for the Fourth Ring became more a matter of legend than urgency. It was not until drow raided the surface Realms up and down the Sword Coast in 942 DR that the missing ring Enthandas appeared—on the finger of a young, wild-tempered farm girl from the Moonshaes. Emurra Scaradath came to Waterdeep with her family to trade away two ships full of furs, only to find two things: The first was the faith that would rule her life, in the form of the priestess Engalathae, Moonseer of Waterdeep. The second was capture at the hands of the drow, who came boiling up out of the shadows the first time the Scaradath family took a coach outside the city walls by night. Engalathae had glimpsed the ring on Emurra’s finger, and that night her dream-visions confirmed that it was the fabled Fourth Ring. When she found the coach torn asunder, she used spells to trace where the missing occupants had gone, and followed the Scaradath family down into the Underdark. Slavery was their common fate, but Engalathae used a word of recall spell to send Emurra and her mother to Waterdeep, and despite the stifling radiations of the deep caverns, the spell succeeded, powered by the ring on Emurra’s finger. Emurra stormed through the Selunite faithful of Waterdeep like a vengeful whirlwind, practically dragging them bodily into an expedition down into the Deep Realms (using her ring as the promised reward). Led by six senior priestesses of the Moon, the expedition freed Engalathae and Emurra’s father and brothers, carrying them back to the surface world in triumph. The four rings were soon united, creating the first “Moonweb,” a spectacular pattern of interwoven shafts of gleaming moonlight that touched every Selunite present at the occasion, healing all of their hurts and hatreds, and confirming Emurra as a priestess of the goddess. This event gave the rings their name and awakened the spell storing powers the goddess has given them. She also granted those clergy who were present at the manifestation of the Moonweb the ability to trace each other, whatever the distance sundering, for the rest of their lives. They were known as “the Touched,” and became the heart of the Selunite faith. As the years passed, Emurra and Engalathae rose, to no observer’s surprise, to lead them. Except in the sky, at the close of the Time of Troubles, the Moonweb has never manifested since, but Selunite legend says it will someday be sent by the goddess again, in a time of great need, to empower new heroes who will lead the Church of the Moon to victory and a bright future. The goddess seldom gives her worshipers longevity beyond the norm, and with the passing of Engalathae and then Emurra, the four rings passed into the hands of many successive priestesses of Selune. Separated by church policy so that no one attack could take from the faithful all of the “sacred rings of the goddess,” the rings were held in temples and shrines and holy fastnesses all over Faerun for four centuries. Then, one day in Mirtul, 1344 DR, Most High Moonpriestess Thurlara “Old Bones” Shaulauna failed to come down to prayers. She was also not to be found anywhere in the temple complex. She was never seen again, although a severed hand found on a roadside rock some 40 miles distant was probably hers. Its middle finger (on which priestesses of Selune customarily wear magic rings) was missing and so was the ring, Shelmroun. The alarm was raised, but no one in the remote Selunite monastery of Corthoun, in the woods south of Loudwater, paid much attention. They were busy with horrors of their own. It seemed that dopplegangers had replaced many of the senior clergy a tenday or more earlier, and had been busily slaying lesser priests whenever they could be caught alone. High Moonlord Evren Thildaran was among those replaced by the imposter-beasts . . . and the ring Amglaer was gone. The pitched battle between priests and the shapeshifters ended with the monastery an empty, looted ruin, and the uproar in the Church of the Moon continued to spread. In Waterdeep, the ring Tilithar was hidden by the Priestess of the High Moonlight, and a replica substituted for it. The real ring was taken to Blackstaff Tower, to be bound about with guardian spells by the Lady Laeral. However, dark magic led the senior priestess who took it thence astray, and the “Blackstaff Tower” she entered was an illusion. She disappeared forevermore, and at the moment of her disappearance, the false ring in the temple shattered in the midst of a solemn ceremony. Hysterical priestesses in their hundreds called on Selune herself for guidance, and were told to guard the last ring well. Enthandas was then floating in its usual place, in a crystal bowl on the tranquil waters of Moonshaft Pool, in the great natural cavern that houses the Selunite abbey at Tharynd, in the moun¬tains west of Dolphingulph. Yet that very night brought a raid of feywings and darkenbeasts and gargoyles down the Moonshaft itself, and in the tumult that followed, the Last Ring vanished. A great gloom fell upon the faith, and lasted unbroken until the fall of that year (1344), when Selune manifested as moon radiance in every holy place of the faith, and spoke to her worshipers, telling them that henceforth the “rings of the web” were not to be held in temples and by ranking clergy, but were to wander the Realms in the hands of adventurers and trav¬eling priests and common folk, changing hands with the whims of fortune, to spread the influence of Selune in all directions. And so they have, hunted by Selunites as a sort of endless game, not to seize them, but merely to keep track of them, recording who uses the rings and for what. Many priests set a personal goal of possessing and using at least one of the four rings once in their lifetimes, and so the rings of the Moonweb command high prices for anyone who offers them in the right manner, to the right Selunite. The power behind the seizures of the rings was a cabal of Red Wizards of Thay who thought that the Moonweb held much more power than it really does. They had hoped to challenge and destroy Druxus Rhym, the Zulkir of Alteration. However, he learned of their plans and smashed them utterly, condemning each and every one to an eternity spent in a crippled, altered shape. In their frantic and doomed attempts to escape, the archmages took the rings of the Moonweb all over Faerun, ultimately discarding them, despite their minor magical powers, out of fear that the Zulkir was able to trace them. The rings of the Moonweb still wend their separate ways from hand to hand across the Realms. Collectors who attempt to keep one hidden, or gather more than one together, are warned that doom seems to befall attempts to keep all four as a set for long in the possession of a single being—Selune must want them to keep moving on. They seem to spend most of their time in the Dalelands and the Sword Coast North, but are endowed with a teleportation power not yet described in sagelore or holy writ, that sends them (always separately) to random spots without warning, to fall and be found by someone who was not seeking them at all, and knows not their use or value. The spells the Moonweb (that is, the four rings together; there are rumors that a single ring can call on six to ten spells from this roster, but if this is so, the means of doing so remains secret to all but a handful of senior clergy and Selune herself) can call upon are as follows: Anti-vermin barrier (a spell detailed in the Tome of Magic sourcebook), augury, call upon faith (Tome of Magic), choose future (Tome of Magic), create campsite (Tome of Magic), create holy symbol (Tome of Magic), cure disease, cure serious wounds, detect evil, detect poison, dispel magic, faerie fire, find the path, fire purge (Tome of Magic), helping hand (Tome of Magic), hold monster, invisibility purge (Tome of Magic), invisibility to animals, invisibility to undead, know alignment, know direction (Tome of Magic), miscast magic (Tome of Magic), moon blade (a spell detailed in the Faiths & Avatars sourcebook), moon path (Faiths & Avatars), moon rising (a spell detailed below), moon shield (detailed below), moonfire (detailed below), moonweb (Faiths & Avatars), neutralize poison, pass without truce, raise dead, rapport (Tome of Magic), sacred guardian (Tome of Magic), speak with dead, tongues, wall of moonlight (Faiths & Avatars), withdraw, word of recall, and zone of sweet air (Tome of Magic).