The Orglara

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This holy “book” has seen much service down the centuries in feast halls and palaces—as a beautiful and valuable food serving tray. Though this may seem an ignoble use for a revered sacred item, such usage has helped keep the fragile “tome” intact down through the centuries. The Orglara is a fan-shaped platter of polished, iridescent abalone shell that is fully two feet across by three feet long. Spells appear on its concave surface only if it is laid on sand where seawater can lap or roll over it. (On a beach is one choice, though it would function as well if placed in a tidewater pool or in a tub of seawater, whose liquid contents are then agitated by paddling or some other human agency. It will work even if just held under the waves of the open sea by someone dangling over the edge of a raft or boat.) It bears no special identification markings—though abalone pieces of such size must be rare indeed. No being even needs to be present to activate the roster display of The Orglara, if circum¬stances cause it to be submerged in moving seawater, and once the roster is visible any creature can cause a spell to appear on the shell by touching the spell’s name on the roster. At such a touch, the spell list shimmers and reshapes itself into a complete spell, remaining there until moving seawater is no longer present on the surface of the shell or until a living creature touches the bottom of a finger-sized oval depression at the center of the concave surface of the shell. (This causes the roster to reappear. As long as seawater is moving over the face of The Orglara, the only way to make it go blank again is for the bare flesh of a living being to touch and move across multiple spell names on the roster at once, by the sweep of a hand, for example.) This ‘Shell of Spells” is one of the most little-known holy items in all of Faerun; even many Umberlant clergy have never heard of it. Its origin is unknown. Holy writ holds that it was created by the hand, of Umberlee herself, of course, and swept into the hands of a ship-borne Umberlant priest by a storm wave, after he cried out in supplication to the goddess in his dire need. Just who this priest was, and the nature of his peril, remain mysteries to this day If one can trust the record set down by Arthaeuil Nrensam, High Trident of Onthalasp, in his autobiography Words on a Wave, The Orglara was in use by the faith, and considered to be ancient, by 1016 DR. (Onthalasp was a temple to Umberlee that vanished with the tiny isle it clung to in the great storm of Umberlee’s Displeasure, in 1226 DR. Onthalaspan Isle was in the northerly reaches of the Nelanther.) Arthaeuil writes that the Green Priests of Shell House held that it was “a sacred mystery” (another vanished temple) in Ilyaport. They used it in priestly initiations and rites of passage to higher ranks, leaving clerical supplicants alone with it in a walled, “sacred cove” on moonlit nights. The Green Priests believed that if Umberlee favored a candidate, he would be able to read freely from The Orglara and master at least one spell before falling asleep. False or detestable clergy, however, would die before the night was through, torn apart and partially devoured by “horrors of the deeps” sent by the goddess. The Orglara is believed to have remained at Shell House for over a thousand years, until the destruction of that temple during the “Rage of Wizards” in 1142 DR, a season-long orgy of spell-battles and wanton destruction that raged along the Tashalar (and all the lands of the Tashtan Coast). That challenge ultimately failed to win any archmage rulership over so much as a single throne, and indeed, cost most of the perpetrators their lives in vicious treacheries and magical traps. While the Green Priests may have died in the tumbled ruins of their holy house, The Orglara was not destroyed with them. Ere the temple collapsed, it was sucked out to sea in a great scouring wave (of the sort the faithful term “by Arm of the Goddess,” who believe that Umberlee often sends powerful, precisely aimed waves ashore to snatch away things she covets and foes she wants to drown). By the grace of Umberlee, the piece of shell did not sink, but was borne along on the waves until it found its way onto the deck of a drifting derelict, the Lady Haulaeber (a “ghost ship” whose vanished crew disappeared hastily abandoning their ship in a fore-storm and as the result of any fell magic or monster attack). The Lady Haulaeber was found adrift in 1144 by Jorist Archneie, a young and ambitious Umberlant priest and seamaster (ship’s captain), who boarded the vessel he had seen crossing his wake a dozen times or more in the previous year and ignored . . . until he concluded that Umberlee’s magic was all that could possibly keep such a craft afloat and clear of shoals and shores for so long. Armed with The Orglara, Jorist promptly challenged the ranking Umberlant clergy of the day and began an internal priestly struggle that at once weakened the church and made its survivors stronger and wiser. The process was so tempting and so valuable that it has been repeated many times ever since, and even acquired a formal name in Umberlant belief, “the Scouring Storm.” Jorist rose to head the Church of the Deeps at Tharsult, then the mightiest temple of Umberlee. (It is now no more than a sacred ruin to which Umberlant clergy make pilgrimages.) Ambitious and forceful to his dying day, Jorist soon sank into blustering decadence. Becoming a gluttonous mountain of a man, he styled himself Sealord of All Faerun and ruled Umberlant far and wide like a tyrant king, all whim and soft- tongued spies and swift, bloody punishments. He fathered so many sons with various priestesses of the faith that upon his death in 1206 DR (carried out to sea by a wave so strong and high that it swept unerringly through the high windows of his tower, more than a hundred feet above the shore-cliff, but left the nearby chambers below untouched), the priesthood of Umberlee was wracked with armed strife between the many sons (and grandsons) of Jorist. In all the fighting, a lesser priest of the faith stole The Orglara, carrying it north along the Sword Coast and into hiding. For over a century it served as a splendid serving platter in the feast halls of various petty lordlings and wealthy city nobles from Neverwinter to Yallasch until 1314 DR. In the fall of that year, the staff in the kitchens of Lord Anthanlas of Murann was preparing a grand feast. (Anthanlas was not the ruler of that city, merely the patriarch of one of 14 merchant families whose patriarchs had taken unto themselves the title “lord.“) While washing out a net full of sea-turtles, an astonished undercook awoke the spell display of The Orglara, and the mage of the house was summoned. This bustling, self-important little wizard, whose name is lost to history, guessed that the shell must be a holy item of Umberlee—he was both terrified and inspired to dupe his employer. Crafting a duplicate shell that would also display the names of spells when wet (but do nothing more), the mage spirited away the real Shell of Spells and tried to sell it to an Umberlant cleric in Memnon. Unfortunately, he asked too much for it and was lured into a trap. Arriving at a dockside tavern for a meeting he had insisted upon to receive his price before surrendering the shell, he was ushered into a smuggling-room—whose floor promptly collapsed into a sea-tunnel below, waters that just happened to hold a trio of hungry, underfed sharks. A few unpleasant minutes later, The Orglara had a new owner—Samsryn Dhugar, a cunning but lowly Wavewatcher of the Coral Crown Church of Umberlee. This priest was shrewd, sensitive, and very careful. He kept his “secret spell-store” hidden from his fellow clergy as he cautiously and deftly ascended the church hierarchy. Rising eventually to the rank of Storm Prelate, a roving holy inquisitor responsible for discipline within the faith and reprisals against its foes up and down the Sword Coast, Samsryn became deeply feared and hated in Umberlant ranks. Soft spoken and clever, he always remained several moves ahead of his rivals among the faithful, avoiding scandal and anything else that could be used to discredit him as the decades passed and his star shone ever more brightly. He was on the eve of finally challenging the High Trident of Calimport when a rare moment of arrogance proved fatal. Samsryn arrived at a roadside inn in northern Calimshan in the fall of 1347 DR. Finding all of its rooms full and the best suites occupied by a traveling band of dwarves, Samsryn ordered them whipped out of the place to make room for him. In the struggle that followed, the inn was largely destroyed. All of the Storm Prelate’s servants, bodyguards, and the elite Slashing Tentacles enforcers were slain, and Samsryn ended up as the maimed, helpless captive of the few surviving dwarves. They set about grimly trying to salvage something out of the losses the Umberlant had visited upon them. In the ques¬tioning that followed, just before he died, Samsryn revealed details of his treasures, including The Orglara. The dwarves (six in all, from an unknown clan) wasted no time in seizing everything they could find before ambitious followers of Umberlee learned of the Storm Prelate’s fate and set about the holy work of revenge—and the not-so-holy work of plundering the Storm Prelate’s holdings. One of the dwarves seized The Orglura before they descended into the Deep Realms and scattered, hoping to elude the inevitable Umberlant pursuit. One dwarf was unlucky, but the other five disappeared, and the Shell of Spells with them. It has been sighted and reported in the hands of various owners up and down the Sword Coast of Faerun ever since, in no less than 30 different locales (though some might be spurious). No ranking clergy of Umberlee has laid hands on it, however, or at least, no honest priest of the faith has done so, because there are now standing Holy Orders that any “shell that displays spells when in seawater” is to be surrendered to the Deep Wavemaster at the Seacaves of the Roaring in Teshburl or the Wavemistress Royal at the Cove of the Queen in Mintarn. Some Umberlants, of course, refuse to recognize those clerics as having rightful authority over others in the faith, but it is unlikely that even rebel clergy have possession of The Orglara. The tempta¬tion to use its spells during one Scouring Storm or another would be too strong to resist, and the news would swiftly spread. No such tidings have come to Umberlant ears thus far. It is known that Jorist added enchantments to The Orglara in 1199 DR, which give it the following properties: • Any applications of fiery, explosive, or “disenchanting” spells (such as dispel magic) to the shell cause it teleport without error to a random locale elsewhere on Faerun, taking a single being who is directly touching it safely along on the trip. (If more than one creature is touching The Orglara when such conditions are fulfilled, the one who has cast more spells from it, or read from it, or handled it, for the longest period of time is the one taken. If multiple beings qualify for the same length of “experience” with the book, randomly determine which one is chosen.) The Orglara remains undamaged by the magic that triggered its journey. • The shell reflects back all missiles, enchanted or not, thrown at it to their sources for full effects (from magic missiles to magically hurled weapons and simple thrown axes or at any lone being who is holding or carrying it, if such a creature exists). The Orglara takes no damage in the process. • If grasped and mentally willed to shine, The Orglara glows, akin to a faerie fire in terms of limits, intensity, and priestly control over it (save that it lasts as long as its owner desires, even if that is days later). • If grasped and mentally willed to do so, The Orglara will affect both itself and any one being touching it with the ability to water walk (as the spell, for 24 hours or 144 turns). If more than one being is touching the shell, this ability will not manifest itself. The following spells appear on the spell roster of The Orglara: Age object (a spell detailed in the Tome of Magic sourcebook), battle trident (a spell detailed below), blessed abundance (Tome of Magic), body clock (Tome of Magic), command, control tempera¬ture 10' radius, control winds, create holy symbol (Tome of Magic), create water, dispel magic, draw upon holy might (Tome of Magic), extradimensional pocket (Tome of Magic), fire purge (Tome of Magic), free action, invisibility to undead, know alignment, know direction (Tome of Magic), know time (Tome of Magic), locate animals or plants, locate object, mindshatter (Tome of Magic), part water, probability control (Tome of Magic), remove curse, remove paralysis, repeat action (Tome of Magic), resist fire/resist cold, sacred guardian (Tome of Magic), silence 15' radius, speak with the drowned dead (a spell detailed in the Faiths & Avatars source¬book), speeding trident (detailed below), stormcloak (Faiths & Avatars), striking wave (Faiths & Avatars), thought broadcast (Tome of Magic), tongues, transmute water to dust, water serpent (detailed below), water wyvern (detailed below), waterspout (Faiths & Avatars), weather stasis (Tome of Magic), weather summoning, whirlwave (detailed below), and word of recall.