Appearance: This volume consists
of nine plates of beaten and polished
mithril, stamped by the elvish smiths of <>
Silverymoon with letters of the High
Tongue, graven on small dies that are
positioned on the page and then struck
sharply with a hammer so as to leave
their distinct impressions. The plates
are pierced at the top and bottoms of
their left sides (as they are read), and
fastened together with bronze rings.
The work once had an ornate case of
s t a i n e d w o o d , a n d w a s c a r r i e d
wrapped in canvas, but these may well
have perished.

History and Description: Orjalun,
the white-haired High Mage of Silverymoon
in the early days of the North
(now believed dead), oversaw and took
a large part in the construction of this
work, designed to be a permanent
repository for the most useful defensive
spells he could provide for the continued
safety and security of his
beloved city in the years to come. But it
never served so, for when Orjalun gave
his staff of office to his chosen successor,
Sepur, and left the city, Sepur
revealed his true nature--taking the
Arbatel and staff as his own, he also left
that fair city.

Sepur's fate is unknown, although the
sage Alphontras recounts the finding of
a broken staff atop a lonely, scorched
tor in the Trollmoors. The Arbatel is
first identified in the village of Longsaddle
by Alphontras's colleague Eelombur
the Learned, who observed it in the
possession of the sorcerer Arathur Harpell.
Arathur was later slain in a magical
duel by the necromancer Marune, who
held the Arbatel only briefly. Marune
lost it somewhere in the winter snows
when fleeing from the Lords of Waterdeep,
and it must have changed hands
several times in the following decade,
for many hints of it are found in various
records of the North.

It is mentioned once in this period by
the sage Maerlus, who is represented in
the Letters to the Court of Elfrin ("Collected
by the King's Own Hand, being a
record and discourse most fascinating
upon our lands and times") by a letter
he penned to the monarch, King Elfrin,
wherein the sorcerer-sage described a
number of items of power known to be
within Elfrin's realm. In the letter,
Maerlus describes several works and
speculates on their locations; the Arbatel,
he says, is in the hands of the reclusive
wizard Lios--unless Marune has
overcome him and regained it.

Elminster believes that Marune did
slay Lios, but says that the activities of
Marune from that time to the present
reveal that he has not recovered the
Arbatel, despite his repeated attempts
to do so. Its recent and present whereabouts
are unknown.

Contents: Orjalun was tutored by
The Masked, most mysterious of the
Seven Wizards of Myth Drannor, and
two of the spells in the book are
believed to be of his tutor's personal
crafting: encrypt and secure (an
improved version of wizard lock).

The first and last plates of the Arbatel
are featureless, so as to reveal nothing
of the contents within, but the seven
interior plates bear one spell each (the
method of scripting allows only one
side of a plate to be used). These are, in order of appearance,

All of
the commonly known spells in the
Arbatel appear in the standard (PH) form, and the two unique
spells therein are reproduced below,
from the books of Vauth, another
apprentice of The Masked.
 
 
 

Magic-User Spellbooks

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Books of the Forgotten Realms