Book of Bats (Magic Book)

This gruesome-looking tome is tall and narrow, being 3 handwidths across but 9 handwidths top-to-bottom. Its 22 pages are of polished electrum, stamped and etched with the symbols and script of spells, one to a page. The book's covers are plates of blackened, sealed oak, bound about with the tattered, leathery hides and wings of black bats of large size, claws still attached. This fell tome is of unknown origin. It contains spells created by (or at least attributed to) the long-ago wizards Beltyn and Shaeroon, but may well have been assembled long after their deaths. It first appears in recorded Realmslore among a satrap's treasures in Calimshan some 210 winters ago, and since then has had a bewildering variety of owners, being stolen or seized many times by wizards or minor rulers who slew the previous owner. Its present location and owner are unknown; thieves plundered a ship in Calimport that was to carry it to Tashluta last summer, where it is believed the Archmage Malharduu had arranged its purchase.
The wizard Khondall Sszundar catalogued the volume’s contents when it was (briefly) in his hands—he purchased it from the merchant Chulu Thall of Ithmong, and lost it when his tower was destroyed by fiends sent by an unknown foe. The tome reappeared in Innarlith soon after, but was stolen again. Khondall’s catalogue tells us that the book contains the following spells: the rarely-seen priests’ prayer censure (described below), and the wizard spells feign death, protection from good 10' radius, slow, Beltyn's burning blood (a unique spell, described below), dimension door, fear, polymorph other, wall of fire, animate dead, cloudkill, cone of cold, feeblemind, hold vapor (a unique spell, described below), telekinesis, wall of iron, anti-magic shell, death spell, geas, invisible stalker, project image, and Shaeroon's scimitar (a unique spell described below).
Category:Magic Items
Category:Magic Books
Category:Encyclopedia Magica