Grimoire of the Drowned Stars

Major Artifact (Spellbook)

Aura overwhelming; CL 25th
Slot —; Price Not for Sale; Weight 6 lbs.

The Grimoire of the Drowned Stars is bound in dark indigo leather that never appears entirely dry. Tiny droplets of cold seawater perpetually cling to its surface, though the pages within remain immaculate. Its cover bears no title, only a silver-inlaid symbol resembling an eclipsed star sinking beneath stylized waves. The corners are capped in tarnished brass, greened by age and salt exposure, while the spine appears stitched with black sinew rather than thread.

When opened beneath moonlight, the pages faintly shimmer as though submerged beneath deep water. The script inside slowly shifts and rearranges itself, changing language to match the reader’s most fluent tongue. Every few moments, the pages emit the distant sound of creaking hulls, groaning ice, or whalesong carried from impossible depths.

Description

The Grimoire of the Drowned Stars functions as a blessed and cursed repository of arcane knowledge. It contains every wizard spell from the schools of Conjuration, Divination, Illusion, and Necromancy from levels 0 through 9. In addition, the spellbook contains numerous lost rituals and strange notations concerning entities that drift between worlds through the darkness separating stars.

Any wizard studying from the Grimoire gains a +4 competence bonus on Spellcraft checks related to deciphering spells, identifying magical effects, or researching ancient arcane lore.

Spells copied from the Grimoire require only half the normal time and material cost to inscribe into another spellbook.

Once per day, the owner may prepare any one arcane spell from the Grimoire without having previously mastered or recorded the spell themselves, provided they possess an appropriate spell slot.

However, prolonged study comes with consequences.

Each week spent actively using the Grimoire requires a DC 22 Will save. Failure causes the reader to suffer one cumulative stage of Star-Drowned Reverie.

Star-Drowned Reverie

First Failure: The reader suffers vivid dreams of endless oceans beneath alien skies. They take a -2 penalty on saves against sleep deprivation and fear effects.

Second Failure: The reader develops an obsessive fascination with celestial patterns and dark water. They take a -2 penalty on Charisma-based skill checks unrelated to magic.

Third Failure: The reader begins hearing whispers while alone. Once per day, the DM may provide cryptic visions, hallucinations, or misleading omens.

Fourth Failure: The reader permanently loses 1 point of Wisdom but gains blindsense 10 ft. while standing in darkness.

Fifth Failure: The reader becomes permanently haunted by extradimensional entities glimpsed through the Grimoire’s pages. Each midnight, there is a cumulative 10% chance an incorporeal outsider manifests nearby seeking communion, possession, or violence.

A wish or miracle spell removes all stages of Star-Drowned Reverie.

Lore

Legends claim the Grimoire was not written by mortal hands but rather assembled from fragments salvaged from vessels that vanished at sea beneath unnatural constellations. Sailors whisper that the book washes ashore once every few centuries following storms in which the moon appears distorted and the tides run black.

According to fragmented records preserved within forgotten monasteries, the first confirmed owner of the Grimoire was an astrologer-magus named Vael Tormund, who vanished alongside his observatory after predicting "the inversion of heaven." Witnesses later described seeing the observatory partially submerged in the sky itself, hanging upside down among thunderclouds before disappearing forever.

Entire kingdoms have quietly collapsed after their royal magi gained possession of the Grimoire. Court historians often describe periods of brilliant magical advancement immediately followed by paranoia, disappearances, strange weather, and mass drownings far inland. In nearly every account, survivors mention hearing distant waves where no water existed.

The book itself appears impossible to permanently destroy. Attempts to burn it merely dampen the surrounding air. Attempts to tear its pages result in new pages appearing the following dawn. One archmage allegedly cast the tome into the heart of an active volcano, only for it to reappear three months later upon his bedside table, dripping seawater onto his floor.

Many scholars believe the Grimoire is less a book and more a doorway - a thinking aperture through which something vast observes mortal civilization with patient curiosity.

Construction

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, creator must be able to cast 9th-level arcane spells, contact other plane, legend lore, nightmare, summon monster IX, permanency; Cost Impossible to calculate.

Kelwyn’s Notes

There are books that contain knowledge, and then there are books that contain hunger.

One must understand the distinction immediately, elsewise one mistakes predation for education. The Grimoire of the Drowned Stars does not teach in the manner that civilized minds understand teaching. It does not elevate. It does not nurture. Rather, it observes the reader with terrible patience, offering morsels of revelation precisely calibrated to encourage further descent. A fisherman lowers bait into black waters because he hopes to catch something. This tome lowers knowledge into the soul for very much the same reason.

I spent precisely eleven minutes in uninterrupted study of the Grimoire before I became aware of an utterly intolerable sensation - namely, the certainty that something had noticed me in return. Not metaphorically, mind you. Not philosophically. I refer to the dreadful and intimate certainty of reciprocal awareness. The pages shifted with the slow confidence of breathing lungs, and for one deeply regrettable moment I became convinced that the darkness between the stars was neither empty nor silent but instead populated by intelligences so old that human civilization resembles little more than condensation upon a window.

The most dangerous artifacts are rarely those which promise power openly. Such things can at least be recognized as temptations. No, the truly catastrophic relics are those which frame corruption as curiosity. Wizards are especially vulnerable creatures in this regard. Present a warrior with an abyss and he shall erect fortifications. Present a priest with an abyss and they shall name it evil. Present a wizard with an abyss, however, and they shall immediately begin constructing a staircase.

And yet… despite every instinct screaming against it, I confess the Grimoire possesses a terrible beauty.

Its pages carry the melancholy grandeur of storm-tossed cathedrals and drowned empires. One senses within it not malice alone, but distance. Vastness. The emotional texture of something too immense to comprehend humanity except as fleeting flickers of warmth upon an otherwise frozen shore. That realization unsettles me more profoundly than outright hatred ever could.

Should you discover this tome, I advise the following: wrap it in chains, lock it beneath stone, and dedicate trustworthy guardians to ensuring it remains unopened.

I also advise that you never, under any circumstances, read page ninety-three beneath moonlight.

I shall not elaborate further.