Scrolls

A scroll (?) holds one spell or charm. Press r to read one. A list of the scrolls you carry opens, and you choose one by its letter (or with the arrows and Enter). Reading takes a turn and uses the scroll up, as long as you can make it out.

Making out a scroll

Some reads are refused before anything else happens: a scroll with no target, nothing to identify, or nothing to restore. Those take no time. Otherwise, whether you can make out the writing depends on one of three things:

• A spell you know. If the scroll holds a spell you already know (including one you wrote yourself), you simply read it. It still counts as a use of Decipher script if you are trained in it.
• Enough learning. If you are trained in Decipher script and your learning is at least the scroll’s spell level, you simply read it. What you could learn for certain, you can read for certain. A scroll with no spell behind it (restoration) counts as level 0, so any training in Decipher script will do.
• Everyone else makes a check. Roll 2d12 and add your Intelligence modifier, whatever your talents add to its checks, and your points of Decipher script. You need 10 + the spell level ÷ 5, rounded down. Nobody is refused outright: without the skill it is your Intelligence and talents alone, and nothing that raises the skill helps. A natural 24 always succeeds and a natural 2 always fails.

If you make it, the scroll works as described below. If you fail, you are told “The writing swims before your eyes.”. The turn is spent, you keep the scroll, a label stays unknown, and nothing else happens. You may try again at once.

Every check, made or failed, earns those trained in Decipher script a training mark in it, or two in a scriptorium. Every scroll you read and use up, check or not, earns one more half the time. Reading a scroll trains no Spellcraft: only casting does.

Deciphering a scroll unread

If you are trained in Decipher script, the Decipher ability lets you work out a scroll you carry without reading it, as long as you have not identified its kind yet. It takes ten minutes. A creature coming into view, or a blow, stops it, and then nothing comes of it.

After the ten minutes you make the same check as for reading, with the same rules: a scroll of a spell you know, or one within your learning, is made out at once. If you make it, you learn the kind: every scroll of that kind shows by its name from now on, and you keep this one, unread. If you fail, the ten minutes are gone and the scroll stays a label. You may try again. Every check earns a training mark in Decipher script, just as reading does.

Unknown scrolls

A scroll you have never read shows a label instead of its name: “a scroll labelled ZUNBAR”, in the same plain colour as every other unknown scroll. Each kind of scroll has its own label. The labels are made up anew for each character and stay the same for their whole life, so two scrolls labelled ZUNBAR are always the same kind. The label shows everywhere: in your pack, on the floor, in a shop, in look mode, and in what you are told.

You learn what a kind of scroll is, for good, in any of these ways:

• Read one. “You read the scroll labelled ZUNBAR.” “It is a scroll of fireball.” From then on every scroll of fireball shows by its name. Reading an unknown scroll is a gamble: a spell scroll is aimed first, and a fireball aimed near you may catch you too.
• Read the scroll of identify on it (below). You know the scroll of identify itself once you have read your first one.
• A merchant’s Merchant’s eye (from level 12), used on it from the abilities menu, tells the scroll for what it is, as the scroll of identify would.
• An appraisal. Factor Wulfrun in Cēaptūn identifies everything you carry for 100 gold per unidentified stack (see Services).
• Your starting kit. You know the scrolls you start with, including a caster’s random ones.

Knowing what a scroll is does not teach you its spell. No scroll does: the spell’s grimoire teaches it. A scroll that cannot be read, such as a sealed letter, has no label and is known on sight. A shop charges its true price for an unknown scroll.

Spell scrolls

Every spell comes on a scroll of its own: a scroll of magic missile, of haste, of web. Reading one casts its spell once, as if you cast it yourself, with its shape, its resolution, and its damage as given in the spell’s row.

It casts at the rung the scroll’s row gives (the table’s “Casts at”), which for most scrolls is the base. Your stats do not grow a scroll’s damage or healing, but its reach and how long it lasts are yours, as for your own casts. Scroll adept takes it a rung up.

A scroll is free of mana. Anyone can try one, even a warrior, by making the check. A spell on yourself (Haste, Barkskin, Blessing) is read at once. Any other spell is aimed first, as below. Mend and Cure wounds are aimed at the creature beside you that you want to heal, or at yourself.

Scrolls of lower spell levels are found sooner and more often: cantrips from the first floors, and spells of level 11 and 12 from item level 6 (see the table above). General stores also lay out low levels more often than high ones.

Fireball, frost, and lightning

The scrolls of fireball (a rung up: 6d6), lightning (two rungs up: 8d6), and frost (its base: 4d6) cast their spells as any spell scroll does. They reach as far as the spell would when you cast it.

An aimed scroll is aimed like a shot (see Aiming). After you choose the scroll, a cursor appears on the map. It starts on your last target (a creature you still see) if it is within range, otherwise on the nearest hostile creature you see within range, otherwise on you. Tab moves it from creature to creature, and the movement keys move it anywhere. Enter (or r again) reads the scroll at the cursor, and Esc puts it away unread. A cell out of reach is marked “Out of range.”, and the scroll is not used.

• Fireball and frost fly along the dotted line, like a missile. They burst on the cell you aimed at, on the first creature in the way, or just short of a wall. The burst catches everyone within its radius, including you if you stand that close. When you aim so near that it might, a window asks first: The fireball may catch you too. Read the scroll of fireball anyway?, with Read it (y), Aim again (n), and Don’t read it (Esc, chosen at first). With the talent Scroll savant your own bursts never catch you, and nothing asks.

  A fireball blows apart the softer walls it reaches and melts ice, and whoever stands on the ice falls in. Frost freezes the water it reaches into ice that holds a laden person (see Temperature and ice).

• Lightning runs from you along the line through the cursor and on beyond it, striking everyone on it, until it hits a wall or the end of its reach. It never strikes you.

These three never roll to hit: they hurt everyone they reach. A spell scroll of a ray, such as ray of frost, does roll to hit as the spell does, with your Dexterity.

Unlike a trap’s spell, a spell you read is yours. What it kills earns you experience and counts for your quests, and a shopkeeper it hurts turns on you. A scroll that kills you is named on the death screen (“Killed by their own scroll of fireball”). The explosion and the thunder are heard like any noise (see Hearing). Spells cannot be read on the overworld.

Reading faster, and keeping the scroll

Reading a scroll uses it up, but scholars do better (see Talents). Scroll savant reads in half the time, and together with the wizard’s Scroll adept in a quarter, but no less. With Spell recall on top, one read in four leaves the scroll as it was: “The writing does not fade from the scroll.”

The scroll of identify

When you read the scroll of identify, a second list opens. It holds the unidentified items you carry (see Magic items), the scrolls you carry that show only their label, and the wands and rods you do not know, a wand’s charges included (see Wands). Choose one, and from then on you know what it is: “This is a Sharp dagger of the Lynx!”, “This is 2 scrolls of lightning!” (and every scroll of lightning shows by its name). If nothing is unidentified, the list says so and you keep the scroll.

It is made out like any other scroll, as a spell of level 6. If the writing swims, you keep the scroll and learn nothing about what you chose.

Reading it casts the spell Identify for you, free of mana. The grimoire of identify teaches the spell for good (see Magic). Cast for mana, Identify is dear at 60 mana, so only an experienced caster can afford it (see Magic).

The scroll of identify is the most common scroll. It turns up more often than any other in loot, and every general store in the dungeons has a stack of them.

The scroll of restoration

The scroll of restoration casts no spell. Read it (it is made out as a spell of level 0) and it works on you at once. Every point of stat damage you carry mends, and every point that drains took comes back (“You feel your strength return.”, one line for each stat). It does what Sister Hild’s mending in Cēaptūn does (see Services), but wherever you are.

It works even with a disease still on you, though the disease may damage the stat again. With nothing to restore, it is not read (“There is nothing to restore.”), and you keep it. As no spell is behind it, it has no grimoire. It is rare, found from item level 8, and dear (see the table above).

Writing scrolls

A blank scroll is paper with nothing on it. It is never labelled, it is known on sight, and it weighs 50 g and is worth 15 gold. Read it and nothing happens (“There is nothing written on it.”), and you keep it.

The wizard’s Scribe (from level 12) writes on one. Choose it in the abilities menu and a list of the spells you know opens, sorted by school, each with what writing it costs you in mana and how long it takes. Choose one, and you write its scroll on the first blank scroll you carry.

• The price is three times the spell’s mana. That is what casting it would cost you before Frugal caster, with your armour, School focus, Empower, and Archmage counted, and then the whole is cut by Frugal caster. Fireball’s 26 becomes 78, Magic missile’s 3 becomes 9, and Identify’s 60 becomes 180.
• The time is the time reading the spell’s grimoire takes: 100 turns plus 20 for each spell level, or 10 minutes plus 2 a level at a normal pace. Magic missile takes 16 minutes and Fireball 32. Quick study does not shorten it.
• If you are interrupted (a creature coming into view, anything said, a blow), you stop writing. The time is lost, but you keep the blank and the mana. The mana is spent and the blank used up only when the scroll is done: “You write a scroll of fireball.”
• The scroll is the ordinary scroll of that spell, at its own rung, as one you found would be, and you know what it is. It reads and sells like any other (a shop buys it at its usual offer). Scroll adept adds its rung when you read it. Neither writing nor reading it asks a check: you know the spell, so you read it at once, even one you learned beyond your learning.
• Scribe is refused, with no time or mana spent, for a spell you do not know, with no blank scroll (“You have nothing to write on.”), while raging, or with too little mana (“You lack the mana to write it.”). Light and place do not matter.

Each scroll written always trains Intelligence, as reading a grimoire does, besides what spending the mana trains. There is no roll: a scroll begun and finished is a scroll made.

Where scrolls are

• Loot: scrolls lie about as loot on the floors of generated dungeon levels (see Dungeons and danger), from the item level given in the table above. They are never magic, so vaults and creatures that leave only magic things never leave one.
• Shops: a general store sells and buys scrolls (see Shops). One in the dungeons always has scrolls of identify among its goods, and so does Ælfric’s in Cēaptūn.
• Blank scrolls turn up as loot and as general-store stock just as other scrolls do, from item level 1 (frequency 30).

See also: Magic, Learning spells, and Potions.