Wythyndle's Round Book

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Worshipers of Milil, the Lord of All Songs, have surprisingly few holy books. Every shrine to the bardic god is furnished with chapbooks of lyrics and lengthy ballads, and Sorlyn temples hold more extensive libraries of written music and scholarly treatises on past musicians and their music, but sacred tomes are few. Like Lathander, Milil manifests himself often in response to outstanding inspired performances on the part of his faithful. He places little emphasis on magical items (except for enchanted musical instruments, of which he seems to have empowered over a score) and on books of holy spells. Such manifestations usually take the form of a radiance surrounding a favored performer, accompanied by flowing music of unearthly beauty, and aid in the form of a temporary augmentation in the level or abilities of the favored. Permanent heal effects may be bestowed upon him or those he touches with kindly intent during the time of the manifestation. One of the few Sorlyn tomes is Wythyndle's Round Book, named for the blind half¬elf bard into whose hands Milil gave it some 400 years ago, as he sat alone on a nameless mountaintop in the eastern Cloven Mountains, singing the god’s praises. (Milil also carried him safely down to the gates of the House of Alastrin, a now- vanished Sorlyn temple below that peak, to spread tidings of the god’s great gift.) The Round Book is perfectly round. It resembles two shields fastened at a single point about a stack of circular, wire-rimmed vellum pages. The “shields” are thin slabs of appar¬ently unbreakable black stone, covered on their outer surfaces by a bright latticework of interwoven horizontal and vertical strips of gleaming, silvery metal. The “bars” are of random lengths, so that the pattern has gaps here and there—gaps that the Sorlyn have puzzled over for centuries, but from which no meaning has been divined. Enchantments on the tome keep it from rolling or from toppling sideways. When stood on edge, even on the narrowest of perches, it stays upright, ignoring winds, battering rain, or brush-by contacts. A hard and deliberate push or snatch must be made upon it to get it to fall over or move off the location where it was placed. Whenever this volume is opened, music briefly rises from its pages. The tunes are old, melodies that have been harped, piped, or sung somewhere in Faerun before, but the selec¬tion is apparently random (save that these are never hymns to any deity, not even to Milil) This property has entertained many a nondevout owner of the tome, encouraging him to sell the book when times become hard (and thus pass it on), but it also prevents stealthy examination of the most sacred Sorlyn book. Beings of any faith can use the spells in the Round Book, but use of any of the magics first bestowed on mortals by Milil in this tome (the three spells detailed in this text) places an apparently unbreakable geas spell on any user who is not a priest of Milil—a magical commandment to help the next Sorlyn priest they encounter who requests their aid. The request is always to accomplish a single task, or refrain from doing something (such as attacking the Sorlyn), but the affected being must obey to the best of his ability, fulfilling the spirit of such a request, and not merely the “letter of the law.” Sorlyn clergy of 6th level and greater seem able to sense when a being is under a geas from the Round Book. The geas applies only to the spells actually in the Round Book, not to written copies of them, but priests of other faiths who attempt to set down these “special” spells may suffer the disfavor of their own deities. Each reading or cursory examination of these special spells begins with a warning to non-Sorlyn in the form of a chill tingling of the flesh. The Round Book was obviously intended to widely spread the influence and worship of Milil. It has the ability to randomly transport itself from place to place in a teleport without error spell that succeeds despite any magical or physical barriers or restraints placed on the tome. In this way the tome travels Faerun, finding its way into the hands of a great many astonished individuals. The few such who attempt to deface or destroy the tome, or to remove pages from it, discover that any direct attack (including magical ones) on the Round Book leaves it entirely unaffected—and visits the damage on the attacker instead. The Round Book vanished from the temple of Alastrin the night Wythyndle died, in the hard winter of 996 DR, on the first of its “by the will of Milil” trips. It has spent most of the time since then in the hands of commoners all over Faerun, its exact whereabouts unknown to the Church of Milil and the sages of record alike. We do know that it was a curiosity displayed by the Brossfeather noble family of Waterdeep in 1012 DR and that it was stolen from them by unknown hands, only to end up in the possession of the reclusive mage Artabranth of Eshpurta in 1018 DR. It was then seized from the ruins of his tower by the elder red wyrm Maerithryvvin, who slew Artabranth in 1026 DR. Presumably it spent some time in Maerithryvvin’s hoard and then passed into the stores of his slayer, the venerable blue dragon Thoklastees of Calimstone—because it was found there, in the oasis of Calimstone in the eastern heart of the Calim Desert, by Flester Farcoat of the Dun Blades adventuring company of Ulkan in 1144 DR. Thoklastees had perished earlier that year, out over the Shining Sea east of Orlil, in an aerial battle against beasts summoned by the Halruaan archmage Ootheraum Deirin (whom Thoklastees had attacked). It is said that seeing this struggle and the airship in which Ootheraum sailed the skies inspired the Lantanna to begin their long (and continuing) researches into flying ships. When the Dun Blades fell in the final slaughter of the orc horde led by Krautharr Longfangs at the Battle of Manyswords in 1161 DR, Flester’s grieving widow, Annaethe Farcoat, sold the tome to Lord Irlistir of Ulkan in return for a cottage and farm on which to live out her days. Ironically, she was a singer of note and worshiper of Milil, who never knew the holiness of the treasure she had traded away. As is all too common with those born rich and of higher station than those around them, Lord Irlistir had an inflated sense of his own worth and high dreams of better things (such as a sprawling empire or two) to go with it. A book that gave forth brief tunes when opened was useless as a thing of battle-power, but worth a nice stack of coins when sold to the right buyer, such as the bard Paerestus “Smokebeard” of Tsurlagol. Paerestus was famous for his rich, warm voice, but he lacked originality, so for him the book that spun out tunes when opened was truly a gift from the gods. All he ever did was open it and listen, committing the tunes he loved to memory, to fit with words of his own later. He kept his treasure hidden in a hollow space in the crumbling wall of a stable behind his home. Thus it escaped several thieves and the morning fire in 1182 DR that killed Paerestus and destroyed his house. Someone found it in the wall later, probably while scav¬enging building stones, and it disappeared for more than a century, probably changing hands many times, before priests of Milil found it in the bazaar in Calimport on Mirtul 3rd, 1296 DR, and bought it because of the tunes it emitted when opened. They took it on a tour of Sorlyn temples, amid great rejoicing (and perhaps with the secondary and successful intention of increasing their own personal ranks and reputa¬tions within the priesthood). This “Grand Promenade,” as some church histories term it, lasted for more than a decade before it ended in Scornubel, in 1313 DR, when the priests were torn apart by the beast-claws of unknown assailants, and the holy tome vanished again. The “Book that Sings” appeared again in 1337 DR, in an inn near Amnwater, when a gang of thieves used it as cover for their deeds, leaving one of them behind in their room to open the book from time to time and sing along (to make it seem as if they were all within, singing and playing, while in fact they were out stealing from other rooms in the inn). When the thieves were caught at this and slain on the spot by the unchartered adventurers known as Talandusar’s Tusks, the unprincipled warrior Talandusar took the tome with him as the Tusks headed north and east out of Amn, into the wilderlands and brigandry. What befell them is not known, but Talandusar has been seen recently in both Hillsfar and Mulmaster without his fellows—and without the “Book that Sings,” which turned up one night in 1345 DR, floating above a street in Neverwinter. It was promptly collected by a traveling merchant, and sold in Waterdeep to the mage Noustlas “Stonecoin” Mnarrath. Noustlas was known for dour ways and harboring suspicions of all other living things. Those he suspected must be sorcerous foes or the disguised agents of sorcerous foes, out to spy on him and work him harm whenever they could. (His nickname came from turning a pile of coins paid to him at a MageFair into stone, for fear that waiting spells would be unleashed on him if he touched them or if someone else disturbed the pile.) Eventually he became convinced that the book had been enspelled by an enemy to listen and watch on all that befell in the cluttered, cavernous upper room where he lived—and to emit harmful magics from time to time. So he hurled it out a window, and sent a fireball after it. This earned him the ire of the city authorities, and sent the round tome tumbling into the hands of an astonished lady escort working the street below. She took it home and used it as a music box, opening it from time to time when she wanted to hear a tune. When the stiffness and wrinkles of her increasing age caused business to decline, she sold the book in 1355 DR for enough coin to allow her to retire in relative luxury. The buyer was Obelos “the Only” Braeril, a dealer in magical curios whose shop (since destroyed in a sorcerous duel, though Obelos still deals in enchanted oddities out of his lodgings in Shield Street) stood on the Way of the Dragon. There it was noticed by the Sorlyn priest Velmos Sonder, an ambitious and swiftly rising young prelate. Velmos lacked the funds to purchase the tome, but hid himself in the shop one night and copied the singing stone spell from its pages. He then took to writing humorously nasty topical songs that commented on the lives and doings of Waterdhavians—songs he performed in secret, and “recorded” with singing stone spells that he cast on stones so that, when touched, they would emit the song loudly and clearly—all too clearly, in the opinions of certain powerful noble persons and merchants. By then, with everyone else in the city wanting one of the stones, Sonder had made enough money to buy himself the holy book, a load of fine furniture, strongchests to hold the rest of his money, a caravan of wagons to carry it all in and many fine horses to take it all to somewhere distant where he could find a country villa to his liking, and settle down there. So that is exactly what Sonder did, founding the Sorlyn Abbey of Highsong in the abandoned Tharthyn family villa northwest of Nashkel. His murder there, three years after the abbey opened (and began to flourish, attracting many wealthy but directionless young folk from Amn and Baldur’s Gate), has never been solved. But whoever did the deed, leaving the self-styled “Laurel Lord of Song” sprawled in his blood in the main hall of the Inner Gallery, saw fit to take the abbey’s prized holy book away, too. Its current whereabouts remain a mystery, despite the best efforts of the diligently searching Sorlyn priests. From the records of Highsong, we know the precise contents of Wythyndle's Round Book, which are as follows (one spell to a page): Accelerate healing (a spell detailed in the Tome of Magic sourcebook), analyze balance (Tome of Magic), animate rock, battle song (a spell detailed in the Faiths & Avatars sourcebook), blessed abundance (Tome of Magic), calm chaos (Tome of Magic), cloud of purification (Tome of Magic), create holy symbol (Tome of Magic), dispel silence (Faiths & Avatars), dissension's feast (Tome of Magic), divine inspiration (Tome of Magic), draw upon holy might (Tome of Magic), elsewhere chant (a spell detailed below), emotion control (Tome of Magic), emotion read (Tome of Magic), focus (Tome of Magic), forgotten melody (Faiths & Avatars), fortify (Tome of Magic), genius (Tome of Magic), heroes' feast, holy word, idea (Tome of Magic), know customs (Tome of Magic), memory read (Tome of Magic), mind read (Tome of Magic), music of the spheres (Tome of Magic), mystic transfer (Tome of Magic), nap (Tome of Magic), personal reading (Tome of Magic), plane shift, rapport (Tome of Magic), sacred guardian (Tome of Magic), searing song (detailed below), singing stone (Faiths & Avatars), song of healing (detailed below), speak with animals, speak with dead, speak with monsters, speak with plants, stone tell, telepathy (Tome of Magic), thought broadcast (Tome of Magic), thought capture (Tome of Magic), tongues, unearthly choir (Tome of Magic), and zone of truth (Tome of Magic).