Spellbook

A wizard's spellbook.
See also: Images of spellbooks.

See also: Formula book, prayer book, meditation book, familiar, and trinket

A spellbook—sometimes termed a grimoire, shadow book, eldritch tome, or codex—refers to collections of spells stored as writings. They are used by several types of spellcasters, but are most associated with wizards.

Physical description

Most spellbooks resemble hardbound paper books also known as bound codexes, but any object that collects written spells can suffice, and many variants exist. A new, empty spellbook can hold 100 spells, weighs about 3 pounds, and costs anywhere from 1 to 15 gold pieces, while spellbooks containing spells can be worth tens of thousands of gold pieces to a buyer, depending on their contents.

Variants

Folded codex

A pleated codex made of one long sheet of paper or several adhered to each other. While faster and less expensive to create than a bound codex, they are also more fragile and awkward to use.

Palimpsest

A reused spellbook whose spells have been removed (though not always completely) from the salvaged pages. Palimpsests are most often found in the possession of apprentices and low-end magic shops.

Scrolls

Distinct from the ephemeral magical item, codexes in scroll form predate bound spellbooks. Many scroll codexes use papyrus wrapped around spindles to make them easier to store and use. While rarely used by modern spellcasters, they are still employed by traditionalist dwarves and in parts of Garund.

Tablets

Spells can also be engraved into solid materials, such as durable damage-resistant wood, student-friendly wax tablets that can be more easily erased than a palimpsest, bone, clay, and rings of metal disks.

Regardless of their materials, formats, and origins, most spellbooks become unique items whose design and contents evolve alongside their owners, and are often magically, mechanically, or alchemically secured, treated, or trapped in order to preserve their function and protect their contents.

Writing in spellbooks

A magus carrying her spellbook.

Wizards scribe new spells into their spellbooks, with more complex spells requiring more space. Spells can be acquired from numerous sources, including:

• from another wizard's spellbook
• from an arcane magical scroll
• upon achieving a greater understanding of magic and spellcasting
• after creating a new spell from independent research

Spells can be rewritten through certain extraordinary means, such as a spell.

Whatever the source of the spell, writing it into a spellbook is a costly business in terms of both time and money, since the process often requires special inks and materials. Likewise, standard printing presses cannot produce magic items, including spellbooks.

As personal items of a spellcaster, spellbooks also often contain copious non-magical writings that provide context for their beliefs, research, and practices.

Reading from spellbooks

Spellcasters who regularly prepare their spells perform simple preparation rituals to do so. For spellbook users, these rituals are often also recorded in the spellbook itself.

Known spellbooks

The Book of the Damned.

See also: Category:Spellbooks

• The Analects of Aroden, an Arodenite series of spellbooks containing both spells and mundane descriptions of the arts of civilization
• Arrowsong's Sorrow, a sardonic commentary on spell-breaking written into the margins of an elven spellbook
• Book of Abstruse Geometries, on summoning and planar travel
• The Book of the Damned, especially the Daemonic Section, which compiles all evil spells
• Cold Irony, one of a series of supposedly encoded spellbooks written by Merivesta Olinchi
• The Eager Tooth of Gluttony, spellbook of the lich Thulos
• Erages Journeyman's Manual, a bark-bound spellbook in Elven and Taldan written for magi
• The Necronomicon, the original copy of which was the spellbook of Abdul Alhazred
• The Prying Eye, an excerpted Nethysian chapter from The Majestic Book of the Prime Ascended
• Redwing's Dungeon Companion, a popular tome of dungeoneering spells
• Runes of Wealth, spellbook of Haphrama, former runelord of greed
• Sarini's Workbook, a journal that also functioned as a spellbook for the Chelaxian polymath and playwright Lokoris Sarini
• Serren's Field Manual, popular among those who provide support to knights
• Sihedron Tomes of the Runelords
• Structure and Interpretation of Arcane Magic, used to teach fundamentals of arcane magic in academies and to apprentices
• Tome of Stone Wards, an heirloom anthology dating back to the dwarven Quest for Sky precisely copied for the last 1,000 years, though no original editions are known to exist
• Wisdom of Jatembe, a leather-bound collection of the works of Old-Mage Jatembe, addressed in part to students of the Magaambya

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Associations

Ezren discovers the powers of a grimoire.

In crime

Spellcasters who cast any significant spells within five miles of the Esoterium Lodge in Corentyn without being registered members can be punished by having their spellbooks confiscated and burned.

In magic

A spellbook can be temporarily stored in a random part of the Ethereal Plane by use of a spell.

In wizardry

Each wizard is required to study their spellbook every day in order to prepare spells, and can prepare only the spells written in their spellbook, with the one exception of the cantrip read magic that all wizards can prepare from memory alone. Sometimes, wizards might share their spellbooks in order to copy new spells from each other's repertoires.

Wizards who adhere to the journals and works of Arustun, founder of the ancient Jistka Imperium, sometimes bond their minds to a spellbook in a way that makes its capacity effectively unlimited while obfuscating its contents from others. Such Poleiheira adherents also specialize in exploration instead of a specific school of magic.

With creatures

Venedaemons slowly strengthen themselves from their victims' spellbooks.

If given an opportunity, a crepitus goes well out of its way to destroy wizards and burn their precious spellbooks to ashes.

References

Arcane Anthology discusses spellbooks in detail.

For additional as-yet unincorporated sources about this subject, see the Meta page.