The Pale Ink Spellbook

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Rare Requires Attunement Wondrous Item
Weight 3 lbs
Cost 2,500-3,500 gp to a wizard who understands its properties and accepts the Order Marker risk. Unlicensed casters tend toward the high end, valuing the Extended Inscription and Recall properties against the exposure. The Orders would not price it -- they would seek recovery.

Magical Properties

Rare. A spellbook produced by the Grey Robes of the Orders of Wizardry, written in Sacred Magi, that assists the attuned wizard in learning and casting spells beyond their current capacity.

The Pale Ink Spellbook is a standard-format wizard's spellbook in every external respect -- leather cover, parchment pages, ribbon marker -- except that its ink is the palest grey rather than black, visible clearly in direct light and nearly invisible in dim conditions. This is not an aesthetic choice. The Grey Robes who produce these books use an ink formulation that includes a trace of silver and a substance whose exact composition is not shared outside the Order, and the result is ink that is readable by candlelight and completely invisible by torchlight -- a security measure that was more practically relevant several hundred years ago than it is now, but that the Order has maintained out of institutional habit.

These spellbooks are not common even within the Grey Robes -- they are produced in small numbers for specific purposes and distributed to members the Order considers likely to benefit from their properties. An unlicensed wizard who possesses one is technically in possession of stolen Order property, a detail the Grey Robes' licensing boards treat with the weary seriousness of an organization that has been dealing with this specific situation for centuries.

Properties

  • Extended Inscription: This spellbook can hold spells of one level higher than the attuned wizard currently has spell slots for. Spells inscribed at this higher level cannot be cast until the wizard gains the appropriate spell slots, but they are fully inscribed and require no re-copying when the level is reached.
  • Recall: Once per long rest, you may open the spellbook and concentrate for 1 minute. You recover one expended spell slot of 3rd level or lower.
  • Sacred Magi Fluency: The spellbook is written in Sacred Magi. While attuned, you read and write Sacred Magi as a native language and have advantage on Intelligence (Arcana) checks relating to spell identification and magical item analysis.
  • Order Marker: The book carries a Grey Robe registration mark that is detectable by any Order member using Detect Magic. The mark identifies it as Grey Robe property and its last registered holder. Grey Robe members who identify the book and its current unregistered holder are required by Order protocol to report this to their nearest Tower. Whether they do so is a matter of individual character.