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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2539576" data-attributes="member: 143">Gah, I knew I should have picked a different word there.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> * * * * * Chapter 447It was deep in the night in the Western Heartlands of Faerûn, but one would not have known it from the crowded, windowless space of the study, separated off from the rest of the world by thick stone walls and potent magical wards.  The bookshelves on each of the walls made the place seem even smaller than it was; most were overflowing not only with books, but with scrolls, boxes of polished wood and handwoven wicker, and dozens of other assorted items ranging from the mundane to the extraordinary.  The dominant feature of the chamber was a low desk and matching chair, the former likewise burdened with miscellany, the latter occupied by a small figure clad in a soft robe of faded blue silk.  He was bent over a book, his pen making a constant scritch, scritch as it darted over the parchment, pausing only for a refill from the adjacent bottle of ink.  The two candles burning brightly atop the desk—no danger to the books and scrolls, these were continual flames—highlighted the writer’s features; he was a gnome, fixed with an incredible look of concentration and gravity undermined slightly by the large smudge of ink above his right eyebrow. The door to the room opened, but the gnome did not even look up.  “You need to rest, Cal,” Dana said. The quill stopped its steady progression across the page.  Cal looked up.“Did Selûne refresh your spells?” Dana nodded.  “I can tell from your expression that you’ve already tried to find Benzan, without success.”“Yes.”“And Adimarchus?”“I did not even try.  You know where he’s going, Cal.”“Yes, I suppose that I do.”Dana came more fully into the room.  There really wasn’t anywhere else to sit, but she carefully pushed back a stack of books from the corner of the desk, and situated herself there, just a few feet from her friend.“Is Dannel all right?”The priestess nodded.  “Weakened somewhat, but that is normal.  Mole is keeping an eye on him.”“Good.  Coming back from Beyond… it is not an easy experience.”“Arun and Beorna are chomping at the bit,” she said.Cal sat back in his chair, folding his hands together in his lap over his belly.  It had become more ample, over the years, but he could still walk the average laborer into the ground, even without all of the magical augmentories that each of them carried in abundance.  “And what do you feel?” he asked. “I think that Adimarchus will quickly regain much of his power, if he is not stopped.”“I did not ask what you think,” Cal said.  “I asked what you feel.”She met his gaze for a moment, then turned away.  “My heart tells me to find Benzan, whatever the cost.”  She looked up again.  “I will do what is necessary.”“We need you, to get to Occipitus, and to make our way back safely.”“And in between?”Cal laid a sheet of blotting paper into the fold, and then closed the book.  He had not mastered any of the spells of the highest valence that had just opened to him, or any of the other spells from the bundle of scrolls that rested in the small but sturdy iron box attached to the underside of the desk.  If only he could have twenty-four uninterrupted hours… but there was no time, not now. He stood, and stepped away from the desk and the power that would have to wait. “In between, we knock a Prince off his throne.”</blockquote>

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