Magical Grimoires
Magical Grimoires for D&D
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Ben over on Mazirian's Garden recently posted six spellbooks for Wizards. What struck me was the wonderful descriptive text for each of them. The original idea was these were books for starting characters to have in a Basic D&D game. However I wanted to take this idea and update them to be spell books that were found by characters as part of treasure horde while adventuring. What Wizard does not want to find a volume of new spells to add to their own spellbook?
These give great background and help build up the illusion of a world where long dead sorcerers are still talked about and discussed. I also found some wonderful alternative spell names over on the Halberds and Helmets page and used those as inspiration for chapters in the book.
Quality of the Grimoire
Make an Arcana (Int) test to uncover each spell. Target based on the quality of the volume
Roll d4
1 - Poor quality with pages missing. Target DC of 15 + Spell level to decipher a spell.
2 - Cheap copy. Target DC of 13 + Spell level to decipher any spell.
3 - Good quality copy. DC of 11 + Spell level to decipher any spell.
4 - First edition. DC of 10 + Spell level to decipher any spell.
1. Beyond the Convex Mirror
This book was authored by Oliphaxus the Heretic Sage. The original was created for him by the workshop of Selim Aphastes whose unparalleled creations abounded with consequences unintended and unforeseen. The original is coptic bound betwixt darkened mirrors that strangely distort what they reflect, shards of a shattered portal between worlds. The lettering of the title is etched into the glass, and painted in silver hues.
Inside, the work is an abstruse treatise on the optics of occult mirrors. Those who deeply study the work may intuit the principles for pulling reflections from mystical mirrors as strange sorceries. All spells learned from this book teach the way to summon a different mystical mirror from which the enchantment is drawn. The book may also be used to research any phenomenon having to do with mirrors, optics, or reflections.
Cheap copies, such as those likely to be possessed by a starting wizard, often have cloth boards with a plate depicting a mirror. They also include tiresome contemporary appendixes with more "up to date" views about optics.
This book focuses on planar travel, Illusions of light and piercing the veil of death. Notable chapters
- Ephemeral Multiform Reflections
- Direct and intimate contact of the mirrored soul
- Transcendence of reflective spaces
- Conjuration of reusable phasic doors
2. Enchantments of the Twilight Court
Authored by the poet enchanter Elidar who it is said sought to forsake his humanity so that he might dwell amongst the fey courts and dance in their glades forever. To make the book, Elidar brought glittering ink distilled from the tears of fairy laughter to Telisa the star touched. She knew the art of binding cold and fickle starlight into pulp. For this pulp was gathered the tough stems of cat-tails, dandelion dander, and the shells of robins eggs. It was then fashioned into creamy paper, soft as a babe's skin. The finished book was bound in cloth boards of amethyst hues, with darkling endpapers, twinkling like stars emerging at dusk.
Within these creamy pages are illustrated poems about the allures and charms of the fey Twilight Court. Its verses contain potent pieces of fairy magic that one may employ only if one's heart has truly been awakened to the temptations of fairy. The casting of these spells betrays their fey source.
Lesser copies are often bound in plain boards with pink wraps painted with the silhouette of a gauche and stereotypical fairy. Sometimes they are illuminated in a cloying and distracting fashion intended to perk the poems up.
This book focuses on Enchantment and Illusion spells. The following poems are found in the book
- Charming of the most Unnatural Creatures
- Drowsy Lull of Crashing Waves in Spring Time
- Elder Rune Magic
- Eternal Starlight
- Manipulative Secrets of the Fairy Voice
- Transmogrification of Friends and Strangers
3. Geometry of Unseen Potencies
The work of Daglon the Geometer, mystical master of force and balance, architect of suspended structures. He had the original volume crafted by confounding Ubaes who constructed books like puzzles and conundrums. Geometry of Unseen Potencies is bound between polished stones taken from the hearts of substantial clouds in Wishery. Although ponderous in appearance, the book weighs almost nothing.
Within the book is a complex geometrical treatise on otherworldly shapes and forms. Many of its intricate geometrical constructions and proofs are on elaborate foldout pages. The final proofs are actually powerful sorceries that exert strange forces. To master them, one must master the theorems that have come before.
Cheap copies are often on a single scroll that one unrolls revealing each proof in succession. Such copies require ponderous turning backwards and forwards to remind one of the place in the proof structure.
This book focuses on Transmutation and Conjuration with the following chapters
- Mechanical Lordship over Locks
- Perfect Paralysis of Bipeds
- Supremacy of Will over the Material World
- Temporary Cancellation of Gravitational Effects
- Transportation of People through Rifts in Space
4. Principles of Arcane Duelling
This work was penned by the Eldritch Knight Saffroy, a meticulous duellist with both sword and spell. He had many dashing victories in his youth, serving in his middle years as a tutor to the aristocratic scions of magical families, before he was slain in a final duel by the treachery of Imbabo. To create the Principles of Arcane Dueling, Saffroy brought his magical sword Fluid Riposte to the workshop of Pentalon the Illustrator, whose famed depictions of historical scenes produce melancholy daydreams of shocking vividness. Pentalon had the sword melted into a metal cover for the book, illustrating the book with swirling scenes of swordplay and spellcraft.
Within the covers, an antique treatise on the history of magical duels, and the etiquette, rituals, and rites of the dueling code dating to the era of the Sorcerer Lords is printed on heavy vellum. By reading the text and daydreaming about Pentalon's captivating illustrations of famous historical duels, one may bring the scene to life sufficiently to learn from them how to cast the spells illustrated in the scene.
The depressing copies found among the possessions of marginal wizards are leather bound, dusty tomes, with workaday illustrations and dense text boring enough to make one doze. Only in such delicate involuntary catnaps may one--if one is lucky--recover the enchantments of the duels depicted.
This book focuses on Abjuration and Evocation spells. Notable illustrated scenes are
- Barriers against all sorts of Aerial Missiles
- Chilling Projectiles of Unerring Accuracy
- Control of Lethal Electrical Energies
- Flourishes of Elemental Vitality
- Short range powers of Ignition for Martial Purposes
5. Lesser Emanations of the Infernal Spirits
This grimoire was written by Melanoch, eerie sage of forbidden lore, who worshipped the black sea of chaos and wrested knowledge of what lies above the heavens and below the earth from the hands of those who guard it. He brought to the doomed bookmaker Zunnis, who had forsaken all hope owing to a curse of the gods, the black scintillating peacock feathers of a corrupted seraph of the Overworld, from which Zunnis fashioned a soft cover of feathered eyes. Within is a treatise on the infernal spirits. It contains speculation about their nature, and testimony of those who have held congress with and supposedly mastered them. Deep penetration of the text allows one to deal with these emanations, and summon them to perform unsettling sorceries or to protect oneself from them and their ilk. The text is the first in an intended trilogy, a mere prelude to Melanoch's supposedly lost or unfinished magnum opus.
Common editions of this work are bound in ordinary black goat skin. They tend to be decorated with edgy illustrations of unwholesome scenes of sacrifice or pornography. Sometimes they are barely legible owing to the sinister lettering style of their scribes who overcompensate for lack of art by developing a doom-laden scrawl.
This volume deals with Abjuration and Conjuration of spirits from the outer planes. It has the following chapters
- Barriers against the Infernal Storm
- Banishment of Banes and Boons
- Contacting and understanding the Lords of Chaos
- Terrible Secrets of Summoning
- Vivification of protozoic matter
6. Inner Illuminations of the Mind's Eye.
This meditative treatise was conceived by Poscilles the Psychonaut, who it is said acquired six of the nine occult organs, until his form could bear no more and he disintegrated in a flash. Others say he wanders still in inner landscapes in search of the Seventh Organ, which no mortal has acquired. Whatever his fate, in those earlier days he brought silver saplings of the mighty shangra tree that grows on the inner astral plane to Olmsted the Gardener, whose books overflow with organic forms and lush illustrations of natural history. From their pulp Olmsted fashioned a pale grey vellum that thrums with inner meanings, and from their bark a set of silver boards into which they burned a single eye surrounded by a ring of flowing occult symbols. Within is a bewildering work, one part treatise on the inner plane and one part ascetic exercises to prepare ones body for incorporation of the Third Eye. This text is illuminated by teeming otherworldly vegetation. Those who engage in the ascetic and meditative exercises, preparing body and mind, are eventually able to open a floating invisible eye, the First Organ, from which the spells of this treatise are cast.
Lesser editions, such as those commonly circulating, are often copied with rainbow stained boards for covers. Inside, in place of the original glorious illustrations one finds earnest but ethereal illuminations of spirit beings with a third shining eye.
This book focuses on Divination and Transmutation of the body. Notable chapters.
- Control of Ocular Powers
- Detection of causal anomalies and arcane effects
- Utter transformation of the Self
- Polylinguistic Words
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