About 'Old Malco' BoramyVARISIAN WANDERERS PATRON: Malco Boramy
Spellbook Stuff. Malco Boramy is an old Varisian man, looking like a bag of sticks bound in skin like cracked and stained parchment, his wandering days long behind him. His hair has gone white, and he moves slowly and deliberately, on most days, furthering the initial impression that he is one foot on the ground and another already on the ferryman’s boat. Those who speak to him disrespectfully, or assume that he is hard of hearing (or that his eyes are clouded by age) may receive a tweak on the nose from surprisingly nimble fingers, as his age may have taken the strength from his arms and the stride from his step, but he’s as capable as he ever was. He tends to forget his age at times, and is an outrageous flirt, always willing to dance with a lovely lady, at least until he grows winded, which comes much more quickly than he remembers. He lives in a small house on the shores of the river, which river is prone to changing, sometimes inexplicably, having appeared as far east as the Velashu river north of Riddleport, and as far west as the Jeggare river, upstream of Korvosa. His small home is distinctly recognizable as springing forth in a ramshackle manner from a painted wagon, but it generally looks like it is a permanent structure, and has been wherever it appears for quite some time (and it only moves every few years, so this is not always a poor assumption). Wanderers are welcome, and those of the family may make use of his spellcasting services, or little trinkets that he has found (or made) piled around his cluttered disaster of a home, filled with precariously teetering piles of junk that he assembled during a lifetime of wandering (or inherited from the previous residents, in some cases). Malco has a secret that only the initiated may know, and are forbidden to speak of to non-Wanderers, that he is the Keeper of the Hidden Library. Under a tattered rug, he will reveal a plain looking trapdoor (that radiates no dweomer) that was worked into the bottom of his rickety wagon, and if he opens this trapdoor while speaking the proper words, a doorway into another place appears, allowing he and his guests to take a ladder down into an extradimensional space crafted via a variation upon magnificent mansion cast by some ancient arcanist (presumed to have been Thassilonian by most visitors, although Malco has his doubts on this last point). Within the Hidden Library, the layout is unsettling to the eye, with no sharp angles on any item of the rounded and curvilinear furniture, and the majority of the room being irregular trapezoids, with every corner ‘filled in’ and rounded, leaving no angles or sharp edges. Everything is white, grey or silver in color, and nothing is decorated. Doorways between chambers are ovoid (tapering towards the top, usually, like an egg resting on its fat end), and only dull grey ‘curtains’ that appear to be made of falling mist separate them. The tall slender and silent servants are clad in all-concealing silvery robes that seem part metal and part cloth, with only their white porcelain-skinned hands and mask-like unmoving faces visible occasionally as their hoods or sleeves part. Where their faces are visible, their chins are small, and their foreheads large, with pursed and thin-lipped mouths set beneath flat triangular noses resemble an owl’s beak and large oval solid-blue eyes. If accosted, the hands and face drop away, shattering into thin porcelain as they hit the ground, while the silvery robes dissolve into dust and spiderwebs. Even if this happens, any missing servants are replaced within a month, inexplicably, and Malco discourages any meddling with them. The closest thing to a familiar sight within the extradimensional space are the piles and piles and piles of books, stacked on floors and tables. It is often only after entering the Hidden Library that a visiting Wanderer will notice that Malco’s cluttered home included dozens of everything, but not a single book or scroll, as he brings them all into the Library for safekeeping. A property of the extradimensional space is that any nonmagical item left within it after all living souls have left the extradimensional space becomes property of the Library forever, and cannot ever be removed (regardless of tactics, any attempts at removing something from the library result in the thief having a handful of cobwebs and dust, and the stolen or destroyed item reappearing within the library anywhere from immediately to one month later). This means that while the many many books and scrolls of lore within the library can never be removed, they are preserved forever, for the enlightment of visiting Wanderers. Malco has found two ‘doorways’ within the Library that he cannot enter, and suspects that they are like his own entrance, portals from the outside world that allow other visitors into the Library (and that it was perhaps a meeting place, in ancient times). He attempted for many years to organize the books in the library, placing books on certain subjects in certain rooms, for convenience, and it seemed that his efforts were undone. He attempted to destroy the servants, since they took a month to return, but this helped not at all, and he finally gave up, carefully cataloguing the changes as he could, to discover that someone *else* was attempting a similar project, and had very different organizational ideas than he did. So he allowed this mysterious third party to organize things, and learned from their efforts (not much, although he has determined that they made a very deliberate choice to allow no stack of books to exceed three feet in height, which has led him to the conclusion that they aren’t very tall…). [Unknown to Malco, a second portal to the Hidden Library exists within the Gnomish community of Omesta, and is similarly guarded by an irritable Gnomish scholar, who has finally ordered the books to her own eccentric tastes, which is inconvenient for Malco, but more acceptable than the shadowy ‘war’ over the organization of the library. Neither the Wanderers nor the Gnomes are able to perceive or affect each other while visiting the Library, although both are aware that sometimes things are moved, or servants are called away to perform inexplicable duties for the mysterious ‘others.’ The third portal does not appear to be in operation, or is lost, as no third party has been noted by either gnome or Wanderer.] The wide-bottomed rooms are arranged in a circle around a central room that has a small floor space, but widens as the walls rise to a wide ceiling, upon which a permanent image of the starry night sky shows the constellations in great detail. Unfortunately, the constellations never change, and Malco theorizes that the scene ‘froze,’ as his research into those constellations indicates that this would be what the night-sky looked like over Absalom, on the night that the Age of Prophecy came to an end… Not terribly useful as an observatory, if it ever was, this room is also used to store many texts, and most of the texts of particular use to arcane spellcasters will be found here. Boons The sheer number of volumes in the Hidden Library can grant a visiting Wanderer a +2 circumstance bonus to any research check, or a +4 bonus if the user is willing to spend 1d4+1 hours attempting to make sense of the gnomish ‘organization.’ (Even Malco can only shorten this by 1 hour, with all his experience, as the irascible gnomish scholars system is maddeningly obscure to his every attempt to interpret.) Research into spells or item creation pertaining to illusions can be performed here at 15% reduced prices, due to the abundance of information Malco has acquired on that field, and research into magics related to divination and abjuration are similarly reduced in cost by 5%. (The latter through no effort on his part, as the Library always seemed to have an abundance of information on divinatory matters, and seems to be gaining new texts on protective and abjurative magics through the preferences of the mysterious ‘Others.’) The Hidden Library also makes a fine hiding place for a Wanderer in trouble, as it removes the quarry from the world of the living and places them beyond most forms of divinatory magic, while providing a safe, if somewhat boring, environment and even sustenance, as the enigmatic servants will bring food of exotic form and texture (round plates of ‘bread’ made from puffed rice bearing circular chunks of alternately sweet and sour-tasting goat’s cheese and leathery dried fruits and vegetables, some of them quite exotic in appearance) and clean water upon request, being able to provide such sustenance for a dozen or more visitors without apparent limit. Malco has three unique items that he has either acquired over his travels or crafted himself; FEATHER TOKEN: WITCHES BROOM
[Note that this item doesn’t use the typical ‘Feather Token’ rules. If this bugs you, feel free to just excise the words ‘Feather Token’ from the name.] DANCING SCARVES
STARRY LANTERN
As a standard action, the bearer can reach into the lantern and pull out a handful of colored illusory fire to throw at a foe within a 30 ft. range as a ranged touch attack. The fire acts like a flask of alchemical fire, but inflicts no damage, instead merely illuminating it’s target with phantasmal fire for 2 minutes with the effects of a faerie fire spell that also gives the target the dazzled condition as long as the spell lasts. The ‘burning’ target can make a Will save (DC 13) to attempt to quench the flames as a standard action. Anyone within 5 ft. of the target square is ‘splashed’ by this illusionary fire, and is similarly affected by both faerie fire and dazzled condition for 2 rounds, with a similar Will save (DC 11) to attempt to prematurely end the effect. The illusory fire produces torch-equivalent illumination from those affected, and is treated as bright light to any creature struck by it (but not those nearby), causing those with the light blindness trait to be blinded for one round, in addition to other effects, and the effects of of the dazzled condition from this effect are doubled (to -2 to all attack rolls) for any creature that has either the light blindness or light sensitivity traits. Finally, when held by an Illusionist using his blinding ray specialist ability, the effect of that power (blindness or the dazzled condition) lasts one additional round, is more potent (functioning against light blind creatures even if their HD exceed the Illusionists level, is twice as ‘dazzling’ to light blind and light sensitive creatures) and limns the target with faerie fire property for those two rounds of effect.
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