The Tome of Torment

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This holy book resembles a book-shaped sculpture of hair (some observers have mistaken it for a folded blanket, or a bundle of horsehair bound for a weaver). Like most books, it is rectangular and flat, three feet long, one foot wide, and six inches thick. Its covers are of black, matted horsehair tacked to slim ebony panels, but the boards are actually a slip case. When removed, they leave behind a bundle of horsehair, which unfolds into a tunic or “hair shirt” whose inside is studded with small hooked metal barbs, and whose front and back are covered with large, shieldlike horsehide panels. After the hair shirt has been worn continuously by a priest of Illmater for a full day (who typically suffers 1d4 points of damage in the process), a spell roster list appears on the front panel of the tunic. If the name of a spell on the roster is touched with a finger moistened with holy water, a tear, or a drop of blood (the latter two substances must come from the owner of the finger), that spell appears on the back panel of the tunic, remaining until another spell is so selected or until two days have passed (whereupon both roster and spell fade away until the hairshirt is worn again). If the hair tunic is worn by any other being than a priest of Ilmater, no writings will appear. Any attack on the Tome of Torment causes it to teleport away to a random location, anywhere on the surface of Toril. The “hairshirt tome” is the most holy of the sacred books of Ilmater (although the one- spell Book of the Holy Scourge, the reading of which causes spectral whips to strike at foes far away, is perhaps the best known and most useful of the Ilmatari tomes), and its recent disap¬pearance has caused an uproar among Ilmatari faithful. Priests of the Suffering God are on the move in Faerun with more energy than in many a year, poking and prying into affairs everywhere in search of their missing book. In the process, they are earning themselves numerous enemies among the suspicious and those who either love privacy or have some¬thing to hide. Anyone who openly displays possession of the Tome of Torment soon acquires an insistent escort of Ilmatari who politely but firmly try to purchase or trade for the Tome. They will seize it through an overwhelming spell attack if the owner tries to damage it, make it inaccessible, or sell it to someone not of the Ilmatari faith. (When this befell the Book of the Holy Scourge, no fewer than 20 high priests of Ilmater appeared from distant places all over Faerun, by means of magic, and hurled slaying spells against the book-thieves, who, despite much personal power and a desperate struggle, could not survive the massed onslaught.) At the present time of writing, however, the Tome remains lost or hidden. It was not always thus. Ilmatari lore holds that Ilmater himself brought the Tome of Torment to his faithful in the year 848 DR, leaving it on the altar at Carathryn. “Holy High Carathryn,” the “Lost Home” of the Ilmatari faith, was a flourishing Ilmatari town that stood on the coast at the seaward end of the Dragonstail, a low and serpentine peninsula that snaked out into the sea from the Purple Hills. The peninsula is now sunken entirely, and Carathryn with it (its presence is why the Purple Shore is so deadly to mariners, the bottom of many a ship has been torn open on the drowned Dragonstail). Certainly the hair shirt appeared on the altar one morning in 848 DR, but there is some dispute about who put it there, or crafted it in the first place. The Tome quickly became the most venerated treasure of Carathryn, hailed by the High Priest Ilnger Obskoth as “the hand of holy Ilmater made manifest among us.” It saw wide¬spread use in the southern Sword Coast lands for three centuries, even after the storms of the Teeth of Talos in 1123 DR that smashed fishing fleets and sunk the Dragonstail, but was lost to brigands several times. One of them, a successful rogue by the name of Bredisker, finally took the Tome east to the Thornwood when fleeing the Ilmatari in 1177 DR. Soon tiring of constant Ilmatari harass¬ment, Bredisker sold the Tome to a priestess of Loviatar who was willing to endure the pain of using the Tome to get access to its spells. This priestess, Lalaskra of Ormpetarr, became known as “Leatherskin” for her habit of always wearing the hairshirt. She only removed it during Loviatan rituals, when she walked slowly through her followers as they scourged her with all their strength. During one of these occasions, someone stole the Tome, covers and all (despite the fact that the covers were stored in a back room in Lalaskra’s quarters in a temple nearby). With Lalaskra’s towering fury goading them into frenzied searching, her Loviatans scoured the entire southern Vilhon area for the Tome for a decade following its disappearance in 1211 DR, but never recovered it. They broke off their search only after Lalaskra was killed (in a battle between two lovelorn wizards, who were fighting each other for her hand in marriage). It now seems likely that the thief of the Tome was the young sage Athorton of Nleeth, who wrote so much in later years about the little known magical power of the generally ridiculed Ilmatari— secrets he may have gained through covert use of the Tome. The elderly Athorton befriended a local priestess of Ilmater, Beromchess Ilthyn, and after his death in 1264 DR she brought the Tome of Torment to the House of Holy Suffering in Mussum in secrecy. It was then, as now, a major Ilmatari temple. There the Spontaer, senior Sage-Priest of the faith (his successor as historian of the Ilmatari uses the title Keeper of the Old Faith), prayed to Ilmater for almost a year. In visions, the god gave the Spontaer certain powerful enchantments to place on the Tome, to make it usable only by clergy of Ilmater (previous to this, its spells could be displayed by anyone willing to undergo the pain of wearing it), and therefore render it less attractive to thieves. The Spontaer worked those magics and sacrificed his own life in the process. Upon his death, despite his express instruc¬tions to the contrary, the leader of the temple, Exalted Sufferer Shrymaun Beldaerth, refused to send the Tome to the most important Ilmatari temple in all Faerun, the House of the Broken God at Keltar in Calimshan. In those days, the Father of the House was Archsufferer Bloirt Waelarn, a proud and supercilious man who called upon true Ilmatari to cast out “all the heretics of the degenerate House in Mussum” from the faith, and treat them as victims of advanced diseases of the mind. A few ambitious minor priests obeyed him, journeying to Mussum to “cleanse the filth” from its halls, but they found them¬selves under attack as “false clerics, subverted by evil.” They were set upon by holy knights of the Companions of the Noble Heart, enlisted by the priests of Mussum to be their defenders. In response, the enraged Archsufferer called upon the Holy Warriors of Suffering, the Knights of the Bleeding Shield, and the paladins of the Order of the Golden Cup to make holy war upon the “unclean ones of Mussum and all who stand with them.” This resulted in the bloody battles of Holy Hill Farm (1266 DR), Bronsheir’s Charge (1267 DR), and Weeping Rock in the fall of that year whereat Lord Sir Jargus Holenhond of the Order of the Golden Cup declared that this bloodshed of “true Sufferers all” must end, that the Tome of Torment was to be taken from Mussum to Keltar, and that the Archsufferer of the House of the Broken God, as “the cause of all this needless, evil slaughter,” was to be cast out of office and sent to a hermitage to live out his days in solitary devotion. The weary paladins agreed to this, and it was done. The chosen hermitage was a cavern on the tiny, windswept isle of Falconsrise, which climbs alone out of the sea west of the Singing Rocks. It is too small to be shown on most charts, but it boasts a tiny fresh¬water lake, and has had no predators since the previous hermit, the saintly Onthaer of Athkatla, wrestled a rock cat to death with his bare hands. The former Archsufferer, now simply Brother Priest Waelarn, showed his true nature by using spells to slaughter most of the crew of the ship that took him there. The Ilmatari priest on the ship used the brief time, bought by a locked and barred cabin door (before Waelarn broke in and slew him), to magically contact a certain bearded archmage of his acquaintance. This mysterious avenger plucked Waelarn from the ship and forcibly placed him on the isle, transforming him into a misshapen collection of bestial parts akin to the crea¬tures known as mongrelmen, so that the hermit could not hope to easily fool passing ships into taking him to the mainland as a “rescued shipwrecked sailor.” The replacement of one hand with a lobsterlike claw and the other with a paw like that of a raccoon also made working spells difficult for the Hermit of Falconsrise, and he went mad within the year. The new leader of the House of the Broken God, Althea the Abased, announced that neither she nor any ranking priest of the faith was “worthy” to use a sacred item so obviously placed among mortals by the god as a means for unbelievers to be drawn into the faith, and for “the low and truly needy” Ilmatari clergy to use to “further the will and work of Ilmater in the wilderlands and perilous places of all Toril.” Accordingly, upon the occasion of her First Suffering, she was bound onto a rack and dragged behind mules from one temple or shrine of Ilmater to another, all up and down the Sword Coast. She was to be struck “(once, but vigorously” with a consecrated threshing flail by a nonbeliever whenever the mules were rested. Althea chose a knight of the Holy Warriors of Suffering, one Blaermon the Blessed (so-called because he survived one hopeless battle after another). She commissioned him to take the Tome off into the “wild places” of Faerun and give it to the first “needy and worthy” Ilmatari he should meet whose engagement in adventure was to better the lot of the common folk and to further their faith (and “not merely for the personal gain of a small band of thrill-seekers”). Blaermon did so, handing the Tome to one Flaergon of Glister in 1268 DR. Flaergon was a tall, ascetic man who devoted his time to making the lives of miners and caravan- workers in the frozen Moonsea North safer. He used the Tome (and his hands and brain) wisely and well, establishing hostels, shelters, and well-marked trails for some 30 years. He often led small bands of novice warriors and Ilmatari priests into battle against the predators that inevitably gathered along such routes to seek food—in the form of warm human meals. In 1299 DR, Flaergon fell to his death in a rocky chasm near Whitehorn. One of his devoted companions, the warrior Daern of Hawksroost (a village that stood south of Ilinvur and was later swept away by ogre attacks), brought the precious Tome across half of Faerun to present it to the High Mistress of Worthy Suffering in Keltar. Althea, who had survived many Sufferings but won from them countless scars, misshapen half-healed bones, and the need to walk with two canes, was moved by Daern’s devotion (which is where Ilmatari derive the phrase “long and strong as Daern’s devotion”). She made him an honorary Brother of the House. He served as her personal bodyguard (in reality, body carrier) as the aging priestess grew steadily smaller, more wizened, and more frail. When Ilmater claimed her in 1341 DR, the sorrowing Daern was appointed Guardian of the Tome. He enjoyed this ceremo¬nial post for less than a year, however: A “half-man, half¬monster” murdered him one night and seized the Tome. It was the one-time Archsufferer Bloirt Waelarn, who had escaped his hermitage when storms drove a pirate ship out of the Nelanther aground on Falconsrise, and crept into Keltar seeking revenge. The elderly Waelarn was still given to bouts of “barking, capering madness” and spent most of his time as a half-man. Whenever he used spells (which Ilmater still granted him) to regain his own shape, his flesh slowly lapsed and flowed back into the bestial form the archmage had forced upon him. He failed in his attempts to command the loyalty of Ilmatari he met on his flight inland (he seems to have been heading for Mussum) and tried to coerce them to his service instead. At Thorlor’s Well (a campsite north of the western end of Ankhwood) he was halted by Sir Guth of Ormpetarr, a knight of the Order of the Golden Cup, who challenged him to “holy single combat under the watching eyes of our god.” Waelarn accepted the challenge and, without pause, used a cairn spell from the Tome to bury the knight. Then he took an axe and a pick and calmly dug away at the cairn, severing any arm or foot revealed by his digging. Satisfied in the end that his foe was dead, the priest took up the Tome and continued east, but Ilmater was watching. His manifest grace caused the slain knight to rise, knit together, and follow Waelarn as a zombie, a shuffling pursuer who patiently tracked the renegade priest, regardless of how many times he smashed or blasted it with his spells. The former Archsufferer finally succumbed to exhaustion near the ruins of Elbulder and was strangled in his sleep by the remains of Sir Guth. The zombie hid the Tome, built a pyre, burned Waelarn’s body, and when it was well and truly ash, leapt into the flames himself (apparently following the will of Ilmater). Visions sent by the Suffering God to a certain underpriest in Mussum, Kortolt Rushtyn, led the young cleric to the hidden Tome, which he took, not to Mussum or Keltar, but to an isolated shrine of Ilmater, Ravens’ Rack atop Tanarspear Hill, west of Hlondeth along the coast road. There he preached of the glory of Ilmater, and used the spells of the Tome to aid the faithful and nonbelievers alike, until the winter of 1343 DR, when brigands slew him and tried to sell the Tome in nearby Hlondeth. They were slain by the enraged citizens, many of whom had come to regard Kortolt as a boon sent by the kindly gods to keep them all safe in times of sickness or wounding. They presented the Tome to Graycloak’s Wolves, a local adventuring band, to take to Master Sufferer Olbedan of the House of the Harmed in Aralent, whom all agreed was a saintly and trustworthy Ilmatari. The winter was harsh, and Irmar Graycloak’s band never reached Aralent, succumbing to the attacks of leucrotta and dopplegangers who were working together to raid small bands on the road. The Tome was lost in the snows, where it was evidently found in the spring by a caravan-guard, woodcutter, or traveler, who carried it away (or sold it covertly to someone who did) into Amn. There it was sold just before Midsummer at a market in Crimmor, for 20,000 pieces of gold, in a stall devoted to “treasures for the adventurous” run by Beguld Thormon, a long-respected merchant who had been murdered and replaced by a doppleganger sometime during the previous summer (as Ilmatari investigators later discovered). The purchasers were Thayan agents in business for them¬selves, who sponsored no less than three shady adventuring bands who dealt in kidnaping, smuggling, slaving, fencing, and transporting stolen goods. They were still in possession of the Tome when an Ilmatari strike force stormed their house in Athkatla in the fall, slew them in a spectacular battle that destroyed the house, and ended in a bloody chase of many stabs and desperate leaps through the city streets by night. Enduring Servant Elisker Hagathan triumphantly brought the Tome of Torment to the House of the Broken God in Keltar before the snows closed in that year, and it remained there (except for the occasional and closely supervised loans to Ilmatari priests accompanying the Holy Warriors of Suffering on dangerous missions and monster culling forays) until 1362 DR, when it was stolen again, by unknown hands. Visions sent by Ilmater confirm that the Tome still exists and is being studied by someone human (or at least handled by muscular, hairy male human hands), in a dark, stone-walled room some¬where in Faerun. Finding it is a task set for all Ilmatari faithful. A reward of 40,000 gold pieces is offered for its intact surrender at the House of the Broken God in Keltar or the House of Holy Suffering in Mussum. On at least two occasions, false tomes have been brought to the Calishite temple—and the perpetrators have been introduced to the holy suffering of Ilmater. The spells known to be on the roster of the Tome of Torment are as follows: Accelerate healing (a spell detailed in the Tome of Magic sourcebook), air walk, animate rock, atonement, barrier of retention (Tome of Magic), blade barrier, blast of pain (a spell detailed in the Faiths & Avatars sourcebook), blessed warmth (Tome of Magic), breath of life (Tome of Magic), cairn (a spell detailed below), call upon faith (Tome of Magic), calm chaos (Tome of Magic), caltrops (Tome of Magic), champion's strength (Tome of Magic), chaotic combat (Tome of Magic), chaotic commands (Tome of Magic), chaotic sleep (Tome of Magic), choose future (Tome of Magic), cloak of bravery, command, continual light, create campsite (Tome of Magic), create food & water, create holy symbol (Tome of Magic), cure light wounds, cure serious wounds, disbelief (Tome of Magic), draw upon holy might (Tome of Magic), efficacious monster ward (Tome of Magic), embattlement (detailed below), emotion control (Tome of Magic), endurance of Ilmater (Faiths & Avatars), exaction, faerie fire, fangs of retribution (detailed below), favor of Ilmater (Faiths & Avatars), flame walk, focus (Tome of Magic), fortify (Tome of Magic), free action, frisky chest (Tome of Magic), glyph of warding, heal, healing hand (detailed below), heat metal, helping hand (Tome of Magic), hesitation (Tome of Magic), hold person, holy word, Ilmater's fist (detailed below), impeding permission (Tome of Magic), invisibility purge (Tome of Magic), know customs (Tome of Magic), light, line of protection (Tome of Magic), miscast magic (Tome of Magic), mystic transfer (Tome of Magic), nap (Tome of Magic), neutralize poison, probability control (Tome of Magic), produce fire, purify food & drink, random causality (Tome of Magic), rapport (Tome of Magic), regenerate, remove curse, remove fear, remove paralysis, repeat action (Tome of Magic), restoration, rigid thinking (Tome of Magic), sacred guardian (Tome of Magic), sanctify (Tome of Magic), seclusion (Tome of Magic), slow boon (detailed below), slow poison, solipsism (Tome of Magic), spell immunity, spir¬itual wrath (Tome of Magic), stone tell, strength of one (Tome of Magic), telepathy (Tome of Magic), thief s lament (Tome of Magic), thought broadcast (Tome of Magic), unceasing vigilance of the holy sentinel (Tome of Magic), unearthly choir (Tome of Magic), water walk, weighty chest (Tome of Magic), whirlchain (detailed below), and wyvern watch.