The Alcaister

The Alcaister was an antique spellbook from the North written sometime before the 8th century DR. It has a long and deadly history, having claimed the lives of many of its readership.

Description
The tome was made from metal plates, wrapped with russet-colored burlap and bound with a spine of intertwined leather thong, similar to that of a corset. The title was burned into the cover, and marked in with silver paint.

The edges of the pages were coated with a colorless, transparent and unique contact poison that has never been identified. The substance would diffuse into the skin, causing numbness and slowly drain the life from the reader as they turned each subsequent page. Eventually they would slip into a coma-like state and never wake. The potency of the poison has not diminished over the centuries but could be avoided by simply wearing gloves during its reading.

History
The spellbook's first noted appearance was around 759 DR in the cargo manifest of a merchant arriving in the city that would come to be known as Nimoar's Hold.

Sometime later, an adventurer named Wilund used the book as payment to obtain information on the whereabouts of the chessmen of Ultham-Urre from the sage Ardagundus in Baldur's Gate. The sage then handed the book to his apprentice Nornagrym to study and catalog its contents. After his master's death, Nornagrym returned the book to the now-named city of Waterdeep, where it stayed until his death.

The book was observed to be in the personal library of Orgoth the Tainted, when he took on the Amnish sorcerer Zemloth as a pupil. However, it was nowhere to be found when the adventurer Malahuke searched the lair of Orgoth after the latter's death. Although its whereabouts were unknown as of 1359 DR, Zemloth asserted it had to be floating around somewhere as he saw a spellcaster in Zazesspur cast the tome's unique version of the cantrip spell.

Contents
It was 46 pages long, each of which contained instructions for a different spell, with two dedicated to the book's unique version of cantrip. Two spells originated from, and were uniquely found in this spellbook, until they were republished in Volo's Guide to All Things Magical in 1359 DR.

In total it included: Affect normal fires &bull; Cantrip &bull; Charm person &bull; Dancing lights &bull; Erase &bull; Hold portal &bull; Identify &bull; Magic missile &bull; Protection from evil &bull; Read magic &bull; Spider climb &bull; Audible glamer &bull; ESP &bull; Fool's gold &bull; Locate object &bull; Magic mouth &bull; Mirror image &bull; Rope trick &bull; Wizard lock &bull; Clairaudience &bull; Dispel magic &bull; Flame arrow &bull; Gust of wind &bull; Haste &bull; Hold person &bull; Infravision &bull; Slow &bull; Water breathing &bull; Charm monster &bull; Dimension door &bull; Ice storm &bull; Remove curse &bull; Wizard eye &bull; Bigby's interposing hand &bull; Cone of cold &bull; Feeblemind &bull; Anti-magic shell &bull; Death spell &bull; Geas &bull; Reconstruction (unique) &bull; Reverse gravity &bull; Simulacrum &bull; Death link (unique)

The last page of the Alcaister contained an interesting rune, encircled with the word "Kuhoralminthannas" written in common. The rune acted as a gate; any creature who held the book open, touched the rune and spoke the command word would open an entrance to another plane of existence. These could include Avernus, Concordant Opposition, Mechanus, the plane of Shadow and Limbo, among others.