Yornar's Trail Companion

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The Companion takes the form of a crescent, with a single stout curving scrollwork hinge as its spine, at the midpoint of the outside curve of the crescent. Its covers are of ironwood, so treated with many layers of enchantments as to withstand all known spells (including disintegration and dispel magic effects), fire, and other physical attacks. These covers are capped with metal at their points from time to time, and covered with leather bindings. Both metal and leather reveal the rigors of time, weather, and handling, usually giving the whole book a worn appearance. The covers enclose many thin pages of what look like polished, hair-thin slabs of mica, spell-treated and so unbreakable, it seems. Each bears a single spell. The distance from horn to horn of the crescent (the height of the book) is perhaps a foot and a half. If held in bare flesh, the Companion is prickly to the touch when it comes into contact with anything corrosive or poisonous to humans, elves, and half-elves (thus, it can be used as a detect poison spell by immersing it in liquid, touching it to food, or when poisonous gases are suspected, by waving it in the air). The book itself can be made to glow faintly (like a faerie fire spell) if someone touches it and wills it to shine, and this radiance can be silently extin¬guished in the same manner. This property has often been used as a light source, at night in the forest, by the hundreds of rangers who have borne the Companion in the years since Our Lady of the Forest gave it to her faithful. Mielikkian lore says that the great ranger hero Yornar “the Tracker” was the first to bear the Companion, and hence it bears his name. Yornar was a gaunt and bearded giant who once slew an entire orc horde singlehandedly by tricking them into a gorge and then triggering rockfalls until the chasm was filled with tumbling boulders. He spent most of his days working much smaller magics to ensure that the snails and bears of the forest both had food and shelter in plenty. Yornar flourished in the eastern Sword Coast North backlands, coming to Neverwinter, Silverymoon, and Everlund of the cities of men (and those only seldom). He became a legend among the foresters, trappers, and prospectors who traveled the wilder¬lands of the North. Yornar was wont to appear out of storm or nightdark when travelers needed aid, render it with a smile and in silence (or the fewest words needed), and slip away again without farewell. He was last seen (so Mielikkians believe) by a woodcutter in 996 DR, and although signs of his work were observed as late as 999 DR, none have seen him since. No man knows where his bones lie. The followers of the goddess of rangers believe that he still lives, as the personal servant of the Lady in Green. The tales say Yornar was once lost in the woods and beset by bugbears. Looking up through the trees, he saw the crescent moon high above, and muttered, “Oh, that the moon itself would come down and light the way for my sword.” And the moon did so, or rather, out of the glowing heavens a miniature crescent descended, glowing with the pale fire of the moon, lighting the forest brightly for Yornar to vanquish his fearful foes. When the battle was done, the ranger turned to look at the radiant thing, and pray to his goddess in thanks for her aid. The crescent floated into his hand and he discovered he was holding a book. Wondering, he leafed through it, but could read little more than the names of some of the prayers therein, enough to recognize them as spells used by the priests of Mielikki. In his fervent prayers thereafter, he asked the goddess for guidance as to what to do with the token she had sent him. He was startled into wakefulness by a low, rich voice that spoke into his ear, “Keep it with you and give it to one who will serve me. You will know when the time is right to bestow it.” He felt a kiss on his cheek like fire, but as cool as spring water, and when he sat up and stared into the forest, he was alone in the darkness. Yornar did as he was bid, passing the Companion on to a priestess, Emthreena Gulkryn in the year 964 DR, who was fighting against the spreading influence of Hellgate Keep in the eastern High Forest. The dream-visions she received from Mielikki, after using the tome for most of a season, were that it was time to hand it to a passing ranger who seemed right, her time for using it was at an end. She did. The book traveled on, being taken across Faerun by a ranger and surrendered to a Mielikkian priest, who in turn handed it to another ranger and so on. Emthreena, and every cleric who received the tome after her, gained the impression that a priest of the goddess might be allowed to use the Companion a second time, when in great need, but no more. Mielikki seems to have carefully and patiently sent the book hither and yon to hearten, inspire, and build the magical might of her worshipers all over Faerun. There is little of interest to recount of its endless journeys, nor in the studies of the quietly diligent Mielikkian holy folk. One of the rangers who carried it often from place to place, however, was the tireless Rhighaermon O’Antlers, a nobleman of Waterdeep who renounced his surname, kin, and riches to travel the unspoiled backlands of the Realms. He sheathed the covers of the tome in new leather no fewer than four times, and came to regard it as an old friend, sometimes speaking to it as if it were a silent but attentive traveling companion. When a thief made off with the tome and sold it to Lord Lathamp of Elupar in 1184 DR, Rhighaermon gathered a half-dozen fellow Mielikkians and seized it back, taking it from the Lord’s vaults in a daring raid that saw rangers fencing with Eluphan armsmen up and down the galleries and battlements of the Lord’s grand palace. When Rhighaermon wed Dathae of Essembra in 1196 DR, the Companion hung above his bridal bed like a gently glowing miniature moon. It was on his honeymoon journey, taking the book to the priest Klavaeron of Cedarsproke, that Dathae’s secret life as a swanmay was revealed, and it was Dathae who, years later, after Rhighaermon had departed this life in the arms of the goddess, took the Companion on its journey from one priest to another. Two occasions have seen the shattering of the smooth ordering of the book’s existence (serving one Mielikkian priest and then being taken by a ranger to another cleric of Our Lady of the Forest). The first break in what Mielikkians term “the Rightful Cycle” of the Companion was in 1214 DR. A flight of seven wyverns (thought to be under the spell-control of an evil mage who employed them in several thefts and raids at about this time, although his identity and fate are unknown) tore apart the Mielikkian temple of Highluthholt (which stood in the High Forest some days’ travel east of Secomber). The tome was among the temple treasures taken in the raid. It vanished until 1231 DR, when the Talons of Timindar adventuring band found it among the ruins of Ilimar, an overgrown, fallen city overcome with nagas, lamia, and gigantic spiders. The Companion was floating in the center of a fire-scorched room at the top of a tower, a room whose shattered windows bore the tangled bones of men who were hurled into them by an explo¬sion (perhaps a fireball). The Talons took the tome to Kholtar, and there sold it to a mysterious dwarf who went about with two ravens perched, one on each shoulder. He seemed to confer with the birds and even obey them. The dwarf gave them 90,000 pieces of gold and a pair of slippers of spider climbing in exchange for the book, but neglected to furnish them with his name. He seems to have been a servant, or slave, of the evil sisters Halatha and Murbreistra Stamar of Phelzol, renegade sorceresses of Halruaa whose delight in monster breeding produced many mongrelmen and strange beasts, and won them many enemies. The sisters lived in a high-walled garden, through which sprawled a spiderlike mansion of rooms and porches and breeze way passages, each with its own doors out into the moss-girded rock gardens that surround it. After word of the deeds of the Starnar sisters reached certain long-standing foes in Halruaa, raiding the gardens (dropping on lines from skyships flying over at night) became a popular pastime for younger, willful Halruaans eager to try their spell-prowess. This fad has since ended (after the sisters worked spells that enabled them to teleport several crimson death mists into the gardens at will). Under cover of one of the earliest raids, in 1244 DR, when the night was torn apart by lightning bolts and conjured jaws and blasts of flame, a local thief dared to climb over the wall and risk his skin to make his fortune. In the teeth of the fray, Andaren Robyth made off with what he could from the Starnar mansion. He came out with a scaled, taloned left arm (caught in the fringes of a transforming spell) that effectively ended his life in polite society, forcing him to become a slayer-for-hire dwelling outside cities and living on commissions to come inside and kill certain people by night. He also came out with a sack containing several magical trinkets—andf ornar's Trail Companion. He traded it for his life in 1246 DR, when a mage hired by a man he had not quite killed came to his cave overlooking Phannaskul, to kill Andaren. The wizard, Hoth of the Six Curses, took the tome and teleported the thief across half of Faerun, to Westgate, where he enjoyed a short but colorful career. When Hoth discovered that the book contained nothing he could use to banish even one of the curses he labored under, he disgustedly sold it in a bazaar in Murghyr. The man who bought it made the mistake of double-crossing a fellow merchant—who turned out to be part of a druuth (a small band of dopplegangers working for a mind flayer, now increasingly encountered in the lands south of the Shaar and the Dustwall) later that same day, and paid the price. The leader of the druuth sought to trade the book for a more useful magical item, but happened to choose the wrong man to try to trade with: the elderly Rhighaermon O’Antlers, who used every magical item he owned and stratagem he knew to slay the illithid, seize the Companion, and take it to the nearest temple of Mielikki. He managed it, sorely wounded and hotly pursued by dopplegangers, and collapsed into the arms of the priests, unable even to tell them what he was holding out to them. The temple clergy rushed to defend the stricken old man and heal him, but out of the nearest trees stepped a lady clad all in green, whose pointing finger caused choking vines to spring up and rend the shapeshifters limb from limb. She took Rhighaermon in her arms, smiled, and vanished, leaving the dumbfounded priests on their knees weeping out prayers of praise. On the altar the next morning, carved deeply, as if the letters had always been there, was the commandment of the goddess: “That which I first gave to Yornar, I give to all in need, my priests to use, and my rangers to carry. Let it pass from you when the time is right, and to the right mortal. You will know when. Keep it not, lest the rightful cycle be broken.” These words can be seen to this day, in the Mielikkian temple at Maerlar. For the most part, they have been well heeded, but a second break in the Rightful Cycle befell recently and still continues, with the whereabouts of the Companion unknown and many priests and rangers of many forest faiths keeping “an eye out for it.” Those who serve Mielikki will of course follow her direc¬tives, should they find it, but priests of other faiths may well copy spells from the tome or keep it for their personal use. The Companion dropped out of sight in 1335 DR, when the treespeaker Elanalue Sharrith (a moon elf of the Border Forest) was enslaved by drow coming up out of the depths. Either they took the book with them down into the Deep Realms, or Elanalue managed to hide it before she was taken, or it was lost sometime during her desperate flight and struggle. No less than six bands of adventurers (most recently the Dwarves of Destiny, out of Saerloon, in Eleint, 1361 DR) have gone down into the Underdark seeking the lost treespeaker—none have yet returned. From the meticulous records kept by Rhighaermon O’Antlers, we know that the spells contained in the Companion are as follows: Accelerate healing (a spell detailed in the Tome of Magic sourcebook), age creature (Tome of Magic), age plant (Tome of Magic), animal friendship, animal growth, animate rock, anti-vermin barrier (Tome of Magic), anti¬ animal shell, anti-plant shell, banish blight (a spell detailed in the Faiths & Avatars sourcebook), barkskin, breath of life (Tome of Magic), call woodland beings, circle of privacy (Tome of Magic), clear path (Tome of Magic), conjure animals, control tempera¬ture 10' radius, control winds, create campsite (Tome of Magic), create food & water, create treant (Faiths & Avatars), create water, cure blindness or deafness, cure disease, detect snares and pits, dispel magic, efficacious monster ward (Tome of Magic), endure heat/endure cold, entangle, faerie fire, find drinkable water (a spell detailed below), find the path, fire purge (Tome of Magic), free action, giant insect, ground trace (detailed below), hallucinatory forest, heroes' feast, hold animal, hold plant, invisi¬bility purge (Tome of Magic), invisibility to animals, invisibility to undead, know age (Tome of Magic), know alignment, know direction (Tome of Magic), know time (Tome of Magic), land of stability (Tome of Magic), liveoak, locate animals or plants, locate object, log of everburning (Tome of Magic), lower water, monster mount (Tome of Magic), nap (Tome of Magic), neutralize poison, part water, pass plant, pass without trace, plant door, plant growth, protection from fire, purify food & drink, reflecting pool, reincarnate, repel insects, resist fire/resist cold, slow poison, snake charm, snare, speak with monsters, speak with plants, spike growth, stalk (Faiths & Avatars), tongues, trans¬mute rock to mud, transport via plants, tree healing (Faiths & Avatars), tree steed (Tome of Magic), tree, turn wood, unceasing vigilance of the holy sentinel (Tome of Magic), undead ward (Tome of Magic), unicorn steed (detailed below), wall of thorns, warp wood, water breathing, water walk, weather stasis (Tome of Magic), weather summoning, wolf spirits (Tome of Magic), wood sword (Faiths & Avatars), and zone of sweet air (Tome of Magic).