Emerald Enclave

The Emerald Enclave seeks to retrieve the artifact of Silvanus known as the Leaves of Green. In addition, they seek to stop the Deathcurse from corrupting the natural order.

Leaves of Green

This tome looks like a flat oval piece of fissured dark gray bark. It gives the appearance of great age and fragility, but it cannot be broken by any known means. The tree it came from cannot even be identified by the most experienced wood-dwelling creature. To a casual inspection, there is nothing to distinguish this piece of bark as anything out of the ordinary except a triangle of scratched circles on its inner surface (all are a little more than an inch across). To make the true book appear, one of the names of Silvanus (Green Father, Irmider, Orthaum, Shabrathan, Silvanus, or Taoltrathan) must be spoken aloud while the speaker is pressing on the wood inside all three of the rings. This deed causes the bark to grow speedily into the fissured covers of a book whose pages are square, waxy green leaves of lush appearance and extreme toughness. Each face of a page bears a single spell, and there are 16 pages in all. In bark-scrap form, the tome is about 8 inches across, 10 inches long, and about half an inch thick, but it is concave, so that its uncrushed thickness is closer to 2 inches. In book form, it is about 11 inches across and 14 inches long, with rounded corners, and about 2 inches thick. In either model, Leaves of Green is AC -5 and totally resistant to fire, water, heat, lightning, and other “elemental” damage (including the attacks of those conjured creatures known as elementals and para-elementals). It cannot be readily cut or torn and seems to absorb all types of spells cast at it —releasing such magic at any being who launches an attack on it, shedding necromantic spells first, and then spells of the alteration school (such magic is launched at the level of the original caster and automatically fails if the spells involve charms or mental influences). No matter what its form, Leaves of Green is almost weightless, yet it cannot be blown away or otherwise moved about except within the grasp of a living being. If released (even unintentionally) by someone, it remains exactly where it was abandoned — floating in midair if necessary. No action of weather, not gales, not tidal waves, will budge it, and it is neither harmed nor altered by the elements. The only change in its appearance is that if left in book form it will silently revert to the bark-scrap pattern after 2d4 rounds pass. It does not radiate magic in either form, and (of course) absorbs all detection, divination, and identification magic cast its way.

No mortal knows the exact age of Leaves of Green. It first comes to light in certain Halruaan writings, described as something old even then, taken from the ruins of Netheril by the wealthy but little-known Darusk family. These claims may be fanciful, but it is known that the Darusk clan settled in northern Halruaa (where, much diminished in wealth and numbers, folk of the Darusk lineage can be found to this day), and there set about taming the uplands into a sort of vast wooded park, with “wild” plants carefully placed, underbrush cleared, and the land sculpted to provide easy walking under giant shade trees and a series of pleasant vistas over tranquil lakes and picturesque valleys. Although these landscapes were soon overshadowed by more spectacular alterations wrought by powerful Halruaan archmages (notably the Esculphions, with their love of cascades and waterfalls), it is not hard to ascribe the rapidity of the Daruskan reshaping to the use of the magic held in Leaves of Green.

A rogue son of the family, Rondyl Darusk, is said to have stolen the book sometime around 954 DR when he slipped out of the realm to seek his fortune in Faerûn. When he met a bloody end a dozen summers later as the “Bandit Wizard” of Chondath, living as a brigand, harrying the trade passing between the Vilhon and the lands of Chessenta and Mulhorand, the book was lost.

Leaves of Green does not reappear in the lore of Faerûn until 1167 DR, when the Gray Druid of the Ash Circle tried to sweep away all walls and buildings (with the folk dwelling in them) in what is now Amn, raising an army of treants and forest beasts to accomplish the task. The druid was defeated early in his campaign of destruction by the Wild Helms adventuring company from Waterdeep (an informal group of younger noble sons and their drinking companions), they cut the book from the old madman’s dying hands and hurled it away. Of course, it stopped in midair the moment it left the gauntlet of the young Waterdhavian who threw it, and drank the fireball that his fearful brother mage cast upon it. Convinced that it was an item of great power, the Wild Helms gingerly closed a strongchest around it and carried it back to Waterdeep for examination. There it was seized by the priest Angluth Eriduth, Watcher of the Seatrees Shrine (the name then in use for the city’s Shrine of Silvanus; it has since been called “the Green Garden,” “the Quiet Place,” and “Oakenshade House,” among others). Angluth declared the tome to be a holy item of the god Silvanus (the first time it had been identified publicly), but his taking of the book was not readily accepted by at least two of the noble families whose sons had brought it to the city. There was a nasty confrontation between the agents they sent to the shrine and the aged priest. Angluth survived (though stabbed with many daggers) by using the spells of the book and thereby demonstrated the support of Silvanus for any “rightful possessor” of Leaves of Green. This did not stop a Waterdhavian thief from stealing the tome almost immediately. If (as Angluth and some citizens have always thought) this was done at the behest of the foiled noble families who had failed to gain the tome by open force, the thief double-crossed them, selling the book in Calimport to Torast Haeluth, a wealthy collector of magical curios whose vast estates were guarded by animated, tireless, prowling stone lions (reportedly some kind of gargoyles). They tore apart no less than two dozen thieves and adventurers in the month that followed Torast’s acquisition of the tome (twice what they normally slew in a year of guarding the sprawling estates against intruders), but an unknown mage who opened a gate into Torast’s very bedchambers stole the tome along with many other magical items—and Torast Haeluth’s life. 

Angluth of Waterdeep sponsored many searches for the sacred book of Silvanus in the decades that followed its loss, but beyond uncovering the unfortunate fate of the jovial Torast of Calimshan, no sign of Leaves of Green came to Angluth (or any other scribe or diarist of record) until 1212 DR, when the Grand Old Druid of Waterdeep was truly ancient. A young supplicant came to him with news of seeing a female half-elf dancing in a fairy ring of mushrooms that shone pearly-white in the dusk (the moon had not yet risen), somewhere along the western edges of the High Forest. She gave her name as “Ghalashalue, Servant of Silvanus,” and the supplicant, one Faerûn by name, saw her cast no less than nine spells from “a floating book of bark, whose pages were glossy green leaves.” Angluth declared himself content that the tome was in the hands of a priestess of Silvanus, and died in Faern’s arms. Of course, his bones had barely been buried in the forest with the traditional handful of acorns when half a dozen younger, more ambitious druids of the faith set forth in search of Ghalashalue and the by-now-legendary “Lost Tome of the Father.” They met with little success, finding any number of fairy rings (though none glowed without moonshine), but no book and no dancing woman. Ghalashalue was never seen again, although some folk say she is one of the servants of Silvanus, who sometimes brings the words of the father to those who pray to him for guidance.

Leaves of Green reappeared in 1248 DR, when adventurers under the command of the paladin of Tyr Endruth Immister, the “Unicorn Knight” of Westgate, found it atop a moss-covered altar in a westerly woodlot among the Ghost Holds of Battledale along with a huge sword whose blade was a leafy spar of living oak. They bore both items carefully back to Westgate, to the druid Raevarl (who dwelt southwest of the city, in the woods that have now vanished under the axes of woodcutters). Raevarl’s Circle of Silvanite priests examined the tome and the sword carefully, and it is from their notes that we know the contents of Leaves of Green.

Unfortunately, doom came to Raevarl and his followers in 1255 DR, in the form of a “Crusade of Slaughter” organized by ambitious priests of Bhaal, which swept bloodily from eastern Amn along the trade-routes to the very walls of Westgate before being broken by hastily hired mercenary armies.

Amid all the death, the book disappeared again, carried off by unknown hands to keepers and places unknown until it was purchased in Scornubel in 1314 DR by the merchant trader Augheen of Athkatla. The saturnine Augheen intended to take the tome to Sembia and there auction it to the highest bidder, but his ship was sunk in Suzail by a golem rising up, apparently from the bottom of the harbor, to punch in its hull. In the wreck, the book vanished again. Augheen suspected certain magically powerful noble families of Cormyr of using the golem to seize various magical items from his spell-guarded strongchests, and hired agents to watch and listen for any trace of the missing items in Cormyr, Sembia, and Westgate, but those agents spied in vain.

Leaves of Green next came to light in Turmish in 1331 DR, when a nameless forester gambled it away in a game of highcard in a tavern, losing it to the adventurer Murkiltan of Ormpetarr. Murkiltan had no more luck in holding on to the muchtraveled holy book of Silvanus than his predecessor Augheen—he was set upon by orcs in the Orsraun Mountains the next spring, and lost Leaves of Green, along with his entire backpack of belongings, into a rift that opened deep down into the roots of a mountain.

Where the Leaves went next no one knows, but an elven burial barge that drifted into the nets of pirates fishing in the open seas west of the isle of Sarr in 1346 DR proved to contain a fortune in gems, a sword whose blade was visible only in moonlight (or when bathed in gore!), and Leaves of Green. These riches overcame the usual superstitions of the pirates of the Fallen Stars, and they fairly tore apart the corpse of the elf and its slender ship of rest in their eagerness to become men of wealth. The barkscrap was retained by a pirate named Skirpo as something “that no one else was grabbing, which just might be of value.” It was valued by someone on the Dragonisle not long after, because they slit Skirpo open from end to end like a used wineskin to take it, when he was among the poorest of all that drunken crew. It was evidently sold in Sembia the next spring, briefly surfaced in Ordulin in a merchant’s hoard for which two rival bands of adventurers fought to the death in an inn, and was claimed from the last reeling survivor of that fray by the innkeeper as part payment for the damages done to the rooms. It disappeared again only a tenday later, when ambitious Zhentarim magelings riding feywings tore the top right off the inn to get at anything of value they might carry off while they practiced blasting the angry owners of said items to ashes with spells in the process. After the destruction of Zhentil Keep, a caravan master found the book floating in the ruins. Fearing to examine it too closely, he wrapped it in an old cloak and took it to Arabel on his regular caravan run, selling it there to someone who took it into the Stonelands and was devoured in that place by predators. The book lay beside his gnawed bones for a winter or more before adventurers found it again and took it to the House of the Morning in Eveningstar to be identified. They reclaimed it then, and set off into the Haunted Halls, never to be seen again.

The most recent identification of Leaves of Green was at an inn in Iriaebor in 1367 DR, when a traveling hiresword brought it out to back up a boastful tale of adventure—and then left his room in the dark of night. He was probably out for only a few breaths before a band of hired slayers who smashed in the shutters and left the bed a-bristle with seeking arrows. The hiresword gave no name to his fellow guests, but seemed to be heading for Waterdeep (or at least the northern Sword Coast) . . . but given the past history of Leaves of Green, it could well reappear anywhere in Faerûn from Icewind Vale to Var the Golden.

Spells

All accounts of the contents of the holy book of Silvanus agree that it holds the following spells: Barkskin, briartangle (a spell detailed in the Faiths & Avatars sourcebook), changestaff, control weather, death chariot (Faiths & Avatars), dispel magic, entangle, falling wall (a spell detailed below), fireward (Faiths & Avatars), goodberry, hold plant, jaws of the wolf (detailed below), liveoak, many thorns (detailed below), moss skull (detailed below), mulch (Faiths & Avatars), oakheart (Faiths & Avatars), pass plant, pass without trace, plant door, plant growth, protection from lightning, rainbow, smoke ghost (Faiths & Avatars), snare, speak with plants, starshine, thorn spray (Faiths & Avatars), transport via plants, tree, turn wood, and wall of thorns.

Jaws of the Wolf

(Invocation/Evocation) Level: 2 Sphere: Range: Components: Duration: Casting Time: Area of Effect: Saving Throw:

Combat 30 yards V, S, M Instantaneous 5 One target creature ½

This spell creates a spectral set of gaping, many-fanged jaws that are about as large across as a human head. They rush toward a chosen target creature at lightning speed, chasing if the target dodges, and strike unerringly if the target is within range at the end of the round. After delivering an energydraining bite, the jaws vanish. This attack arrives at the very end of the round (its damage and pain do not disrupt spellcasting that takes less than a full round for the target to complete), and it inflicts 2d8+2 points of damage. The target is allowed a saving throw for half damage and must be visible to the caster of the jaws spell during the entire casting in order to be a valid target. (If a jaws of the wolf spell is sent forth and fails to reach its chosen target, it fades away and is lost.) It cannot strike the wrong being “by mistake,” even if that creature switches positions precisely with the intended target. The material components for this spell are four wolf teeth.

Manythorns

(Alteration) Level: 2 Sphere: Range: Components: Duration: Casting Time: Area of Effect: Saving Throw:

Combat, Protection 0 V, S, M 3 rounds 5 The caster Special

This spell covers the caster in thousands of bristling thorns. To the caster, these are weightless, spectral, and harmless (the thorns on a caster’s arm can apparently “sink into” the caster’s face if he uses that arm to scratch his nose and will do no damage), but to others they form an armor that increases the caster’s Armor Class by a +2 point bonus and slashes any creature who comes into bodily contact with the caster for 1d4 points of damage. If the caster can crush a foe against a wall or deliver a blow with a thorn-studded limb (both actions require a successful attack roll), damage is increased by 2 points to 1d4+2. Creatures clad in scale mail or better armor (such as plate mail) are immune to such damage; creatures clad in ring or chainmail are allowed a saving throw vs. spell. If successful, they take only half damage. The thorns fade instantly into nothingness at the end of the spell and are not considered true plant material for the purposes of determining whether they are affected by either friendly or hostile magic. The material components of this spell are six or more plant thorns.

Moss Skull

(Invocation/Evocation) Level: 5 Sphere: Range: Components: Duration: Casting Time: Area of Effect: Saving Throw:

Combat, Elemental (Fire), Elemental (Water) 90 yards V, S, M Up to 2 rounds 8 20-foot-radius sphere ½

This dramatic spell causes a construct that looks like a mosscovered skull to form in the caster’s hand and fly from there to strike at a chosen target. The skull travels at MV Fl 21 (A), and strikes at THAC0 9. It explodes in a ball of magical fire and ice with a radius of 20 feet that deals 4d4 points of damage to all creatures caught within the sphere, or half that if they successfully save vs. spell. If “killed” on the way to its target (it is AC 2 and has a number of hit points equal to the number of levels possessed by its caster). Even if damaged, it does full damage if it reaches its target and hits. Touching a moss skull with either fire (not just heat) or ice (not cold) magic destroys it instantly and harmlessly (it does not explode). If the moss skull misses, the caster can send it after a different target on the next round, but then it inflicts only half damage, strikes at THAC0 15, and is MV Fl 15 (B), with an AC of 5. When so directing it, the caster cannot engage in spellcasting on that round. When a moss skull strikes its target, it vanishes in a flash of light, sending forth both fire damage and ice damage into its target. Unless magically protected against those attack forms, the target suffers both kinds of damage, as follows: 4d4 points of fire damage (save vs. spell for half), followed by 4d4 points of ice damage (save vs. spell for half). Any item (such as a shield, helm, or breastplate) worn or held by the target that is directly struck by the moss skull must save vs. spell or be destroyed (other items will be unharmed, the target’s body takes the damage instead). A moss skull can strike the wrong person on the way to its intended target, but glances off without exploding or doing damage and continues to chase its target. The caster of a moss skull can will it out of existence at any time (even just before it hits), or it just fades away by itself at the end of the first round if it misses and is not immediately directed at another target by its caster or after the second round if it misses twice. The material components of a moss skull spell are a piece of human bone, a pinch of ash from something organic that has been burned in a fire of natural origin (lightning, for example, not caused by magic or deliberately set by a person), and a bone from a creature that froze to death.

Falling Wall

(Alteration) Level: 6 Sphere: Range: Components: Duration: Casting Time: Area of Effect: Saving Throw:

Elemental (Earth), Weather Touch V, S Permanent 9 Up to 5 cubic feet/level Special

This powerful spell works only against stone, masonry, and mortar. The priest must touch the construction to be affected continuously during casting, and then make a saving throw vs. petrification. If it fails, the spell does too, and the priest immediately sustain 1d6 points of damage. If it succeeds, the wall is weakened. A falling wall spell affects such constructions as if weather had worked on them for long periods. It causes mortar to crumble, drives stones apart, and even causes walls to collapse. The precise effects of this spell must be adjudicated by the DM in accordance with the prior condition of the wall and the situation. (That is, weakening a culvert through which water is rushing is quite likely to cause parts of it to break off and be carried away by the flow, enlarging the opening, but trying to break a hole in a strong, thick, unbroken, and fairly new wall is probably hopeless.) The caster can affect a maximum area of 5 cubic feet per level, but the extent of this is up to the priest (it can be along a surface or directed into a narrow cylinder sent straight through a wall). Natural rock formations, however fragile or unstable, are not affected by this magic, only artificial constructions. Carvings that leave a solid piece of rock as their result are also immune to the effects of this magic, which works on the joints, cements, and faces of joining. Obviously a thin, flimsy wall is more prone to suffer dramatic damage as a result of a falling wall spell, but just about any nonfortress wall can be breached by the application of three falling wall spells in the same place. Walls that are aided by spells or props before or during the operation of the spell are fairly likely to withstand falling wall effects, but small stone pieces are easily shattered by use of this spell.