Really Weird New Psionic Wondrous Item (sort of): Book Worm
Living inside a small jar is fuzzy white caterpillar, no more than 2 inches long and quite girthy, relative to it’s length. In the jar with it is a small twig, which serves it as a resting perch, and its apparent food; strips of paper torn out of books. As you watch, it munches away, flashing faintly every so often with bluish psionic light. The jar has an affixed tag which reads, “caution: book worm,” but it seems implausible that such a cute little thing warrants caution.
This bizarre creature is a book worm, and the above description is the most likely way in which PCs will encounter them, on a dusty top shelf in a magic or curio shop somewhere. The fuzzy white creature for sale is actually the larval form; adult book worms form a psionic symbiosis with a host that makes it impossible to remove them. Functionally immortal, a larval book worm that is kept in a jar and well-fed (about 1 page of written text per day) will live forever, providing only the benefit of dim, intermittent light.
The true power of book worms is only revealed when they undergo metamorphosis and bond with a host.
By inserting the book worm into your ear, you initiate the metamorphosis and bonding process. In the same round that you insert a book worm into your ear, it immediately tunnels into your brain, instinctively minimizing damage. Despite the best intentions of book worms, this process deals you 1d6HP (which are lost forever and can never be restored except by a wish or miracle) and 1d6 Intelligence damage (which is recovered normally, but see below).
Over the following 1d4 days, the book worm siphons small amounts of psychic energy from you in order to cocoon itself (inside your brain) and begin to metamorphose. During this time, a confirmed critical hit to your head has a 50% chance of killing the book worm, which dissipates into nothingness and is wasted. Additionally, the 1d6 Intelligence damage does not begin to heal and cannot be restored in any way, except by a wish or miracle, until the book worm emerges. Having fully matured, it slithers forth from your ear nearly 1 foot long and as big around as your thumb. It glows passively bluish-white (but no brighter than before) and periodically gives off little ectoplasmic arcs of energy. It immediately begins to seek out written words to consume, but you find that it can be actively controlled if concentrate on it.
Once a book worm emerges, you may benefit from its’ namesake ability.
When placed inside a book, a book worm begins to slowly eat it at a fixed rate. Thanks to the psionic link it established with you while cocooned, you are aware of any knowledge contained in texts your book worm consumes as though you have studied them personally.
Book worms can and will (if allowed to do so) literally eat constantly, at a maximum rate of 2 pages of text per minute. That’s 120 pages per hour and 2,880 pages per day. As a general reference, The Bible has (on average) 1,220 pages, according to these guys.
As a minimum, a book worm must consume 100 pages of text per day or begin to starve; a starving book worm drains you of psychic energy (you become fatigued, except no save, no Spell Resistance, and the effect can only be ended by feeding your book worm) on the first day of starvation. Should you allow your book worm to continue to starve, it begins to use its’ psionic link with you to sustain itself on your brain. This deals 1d6 Intelligence damage per day, and cannot be restored in any way, except by a wish or miracle, until the book worm has been fed at least 100 pages of text. After this point, any Intelligence damage you have incurred may be restored normally. If you ever reach Intelligence 0 due to book worm-inflicted damage, you and the book worm both die.
You can use a book worm to learn new spells, but you must still pass the Spellcraft check as normal. The worm can only do the reading for you, not the learning, when it comes to magic.
You can use a book worm to gain the benefit of magical tomes like a Manual of Gainful Exercise, but doing so (obviously) destroys the tome, even if using it would not normally do so.
If your book worm ever consumes gibberish or nonsensical text (no actual information conveyed), then you must Will save or suffer an effect identical to confusion, at a caster level equal to your character level. Spell Resistance does not apply in this situation.
Book worms gain no benefit from consuming text written by their host, meaning your book worm will starve on your diary.
After using a book worm every day for a month, as long as you never took Intelligence damage, you gain an additional ability score increase whenever ability score increases are accrued from level acquisition. This ability score increase must be to one of the mental ability scores (Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma). Allowing your book worm to deal you Intelligence damage starts this counter over, but does not affect ability score increases already acquired in this way. This represents the extensive knowledge and perspective gained from constantly ‘reading’.
You may choose to recall your book worm back into your head at any time. While there, critical hits to your head are as perilous for it as they were when it was cocooned (50% chance to kill it), however, it need not consume written text. If left in your head for more days than you have Intelligence bonus (minimum 1), your book worm becomes dormant until removed and fed written text. Dormancy starts the counter over for 1 month of book worm use, recalling your book worm to your head and storing it there does not.
Should your book worm die after bonding, you suffer an immediate 2d6 Intelligence damage (Fortitude save DC: 20 halves this amount), which can be restored normally.
Cost: 10,000gp; Strong Psychometabolism; cannot be created, only captured*
*For whatever reason, book worms seem to emerge in and around those places on the Astral where bag of holding contents are spewed whenever one of those items is placed inside another. Some say that new book worm larvae (or perhaps their eggs) are created by this process.
Mature Book Worm
Diminutive Aberration
Hit Dice: 1/4d8+0+3 Toughness feat; (5hp)
Initiative: as host; acts on host’s turn
Speed: 10ft (1 square), climb 10ft (1 square), Swim 20ft (2 squares)
Armor Class: 19 (10+4 size, +4 Dexterity, +1 natural), touch: 18, flat-footed: 15
Base Attack/Grapple: 0/-17
Attack: N/A
Full Attack: N/A
Space/Reach: 1ft/-
Special Attacks: –
Special Qualities: blind, bond with host, psionic metabolism
Saves: Fortitude +2, Reflex +3, Will +2
Abilities: Strength 1, Dexterity 18 (+4), Constitution 11, Intelligence 1, Wisdom 10, Charisma 4
Skills: Climb* +4, Swim* +4, Listen +2
Feats: Toughness
Environment: The Astral Plane (as juveniles), Any (as adults)
Organization: solitary
Challenge Rating: N/A
Treasure: N/A
Alignment: always Neutral
Advancement: N/A
Level Adjustment: N/A
*uses Dexterity instead of Strength
This strange earthworm-like creature is no longer than a foot, glowing softly bluish-white as it wriggles in-between the pages of a book, or out of it’s host’s ear. It’s segmented body is somewhat scaly, and neither end is distinctly a head.
Though they occur naturally on the Astral plane, there is much speculation about the true nature of book worms. Most scholars agree on the point that they are an engineered species, but disagree with regards to who is responsible.
The full extent of the book worm’s life cycle is not clear. How new ones are made remains mysterious, despite countless expeditions to uncover this truth.
Blind (Ex): book worms have no eyes and no means of visual perception.
Bond with host (Su): mature book worms are rarely encountered without their host, with whom they share an empathic link. The host and book worm are aware of one another at distances of up to 1 mile. They can communicate empathically. Because of the limited nature of the link, only general emotional content can be communicated. Additionally, by focusing on the book worm, it’s actions can be directly controlled by the host. Doing so is a move-equivalent action that provokes attacks of opportunity.
Psionic metabolism (Su): book worms do not need to eat, sleep, consume water or breathe; they get everything they need by consuming texts or draining their hosts.
Proper Book Worm Care And Feeding
Now that you’re the proud new parent of your very own book worm, there are some important things to consider, in order to see to the health and well-being of your book worm.
Books (in most fantasy settings) are both rare and expensive (just like literacy). I found this nifty discussion about pricing books over on Reddit’s D&D section. It can be pretty helpful in arbitrating prices for literature, especially if you aren’t sure.
5th edition D&D says books cost 25gp. That’s hilariously too low, considering the price of a single sheet of paper (4sp) and the days of skilled labor involved. Such a book would also be very short, considering that 62 and a half sheets of plain paper costs 25gp.
Here is the SRD section on standard equipment. It has price figures for all manner of writing materials and surfaces, quills, and inkwells. Here, we have a blank book (for a spell book) listed at 50 gold. 125 sheets of blank paper alone costs 50 gold, never mind the binding and then days worth of writing or printing.
After these considerations, 100gp seems like a minimal number for a very short (50 pages or so) mundane book. Using the determinations described above, enough paper to make a Bible should cost about 500gp. 1,220 pages x 4sp each = 4,880sp = 488gp. Even if you count 1 sheet of paper as 2 (using front and back) you’re still looking at 250gp just for the paper.
So let’s go ahead and assume that the rules as written reflect a society where literacy is common and movable type or printing of some sort makes books vastly cheaper.
If that’s not the case in your campaign, then you may consider increasing listed prices for mundane written material by (at least) a multiple of 5. If that kind of commodity is particularly rare in your campaign, maybe multiply listed prices by 10.
Or, you can use…
My own, somewhat better thought-out prices for literature
This was very useful for working out book prices.
These figures assume that scribes are paid 6 silver per day (rather than the laughably small 3 silver in the SRD), that scribes produce 3 pages per day, that book-binding costs 1 copper per page of the text to be bound (and it takes about a day to bind a 100 page book, start-to-finish), that 2 belt pouches’ worth of leather is enough to bind a book, and that book-binders earn 3 silver per day.
Base book cost (binding only): 2 gold and 3 silver, plus 1 copper per page
Per page of text: 2 silver (parchment) or 4 silver (paper) + 2 silver (scribe) = 4 silver and for parchment, 6 silver and for paper
Typical 50-page book: 32 gold and 8 silver (parchment), 42 gold and 8 silver (paper)
Time to create: 2d6 days
Examples of 50-page texts: Children’s books, cook books, guidebooks, local gazettes, almanacs, short chapter books, hymnals
Typical 100-page book: 43 gold (parchment), 63 gold (paper)
Time to create: 4d6 days
Examples of 100-page texts: Chapter books, vignettes, poetry books, song books, transcripts of plays
Typical 300-page book: 125 gold (parchment), 185 gold (paper)
Time to create: 2d6 weeks
Examples of 300-page texts: Historical records, textbooks, novels, poetry collections, song collections, instructional manuals
Typical 1,000-page book: 418 gold (parchment), 618 gold (paper)
Time to create: 2d4 months
Examples of 1,000-page texts: Religious texts, alchemical recipe books, royal historical archives, encyclopedias, magical research volumes
Price figures assume books of average availability, transcribed by hand. If some version of printing technology is used, then reduce price and time to create by 50%. For rare or esoteric books, double the given price (but not the time to create).
Time-to-create figures assume a staff of 10 scribes. -1 day for each scribe beyond this number (minimum 1). +1 day for each scribe less than this number.
Using the guidelines presented here, you can create books of your own, or determine the gold-piece value of books with a known page count but an unknown price tag.
Suffice to say, keeping your book worm fed can quickly become an expensive endeavor. Assuming it is fed minimally (100 pages per day, or about 1 somewhat small book) made of parchment, your book worm will cost you 301 gold per week. That’s 1,204 gold per month. Over a year, it will cost you 14,488 gold. In that time, your book worm will have destroyed 365 painstakingly-made works of literature.
DMs may decide that your book worm’s appetite influences the attitudes of scholarly types towards you; -2 on all Charisma-based skill checks made to influence such a character who knows about your book worm. This penalty increases to -4 if the character is a scribe or print-maker of some kind.
Whew! That was a big one.
Enjoy!
-L. Doderman (take a look, it’s in a book)
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