The Book of the Dead - Egyptian
Wondrous Item
Legendary Requires Attunement
Random Properties. The
Egyptian Book of the Dead has the following random properties:
- 3 Minor Beneficial Properties
- 3 Minor Detrimental Properties
Passive Peace. The texts in this, grants Clerics a +4 to Wisdom up to a score of 24. This benefit can only be applied once.
Knowledge of the Passing. The texts within allows five additional spells to be learned by Clerics, all of which must be from the Necromancy school. For all other spellcasters, they can only learn two, and no more.
Protecting the Dead. The cleric who studies the texts can place magical script on a tomb to stop any spells, magical effects, or a creature's special effects from raising the dead within a three mile by three mile by three mile region, in the shape of a cube. Not even their own spells can work in this cube after it has been cast, and is to all intents permanent.
The Vengeful Dead. By placing curses & wards made of specific script from the texts on & inside a tomb, and even on the body of the deceased, the cleric can cause the dead to rise. This must be done before and during internment. Any of the deceased in the specified tomb complex or gravesite, will rise to defend it, along with knowing which direction any stolen object is. The dead will be comprised of skeletons, zombies, mummies and/or mummy lords. They will defend the gravesite from vandalism, and destruction, as well.
Cursed Ward. A specific curse is used with the texts to protect gravesites, causing a sickness to fall on anyone who desecrates the site. This spiritual wasting disease causes
1d4 necrotic damage a day until reparations are made to restore the site. The victim will die when they reach 0 hit points and no short or long rest, or healing magic can stop it proceeding. Only a
Wish spell cast by a Jinn/Genie can stop this otherwise.
Destroying the Book. Only by burning the book, mixing the ashes with sands from the Sahara, and casting the remains into the Nile during the dawn, will destroy the book. There is the chance that it will reappear after
1d100+1 days it may reappear at dawn in an old tomb or religious building in Egypt.
The Egyptian Book of the Dead is a collection of papyri wrote between 1550 BC and 50 BC. It was also known as 'rw nw prt m hrw' in Egyptian, or 'book of coming forth by day' and 'book of emerging forth in to the light'. It is a loose collection and not one bound edition. The book is a set of spells to help the soul of the deceased to travel through the afterlife into Duat (Egyptian land of the dead). Usually placed in the grave with the deceased, and sometimes included earlier works from the Pyramid texts and Coffin Texts, dating to the 3rd Millennium BC. Some parts were inscribed on the walls, coffins / sarcophagi. It was wrote using hieroglyphic or hieratic script. The Papyrus of Ani is the most extensive version.
It was originally used by the Egyptian nobility before becoming more affordable for the less wealthy to be granted these spells. Many earlier parts and versions exist of the spells in different forms before being standardised during the 25th and 26th Dynasties. Clerics regularly used this book to help with dealing with the dead too, keeping them at rest, raising them to defend religious & burial sites, and dealing with enemy undead too. Sometimes other spellcasters can glean spells from it too for use.
Cost: 5000000gp
Weight: 5 lb
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