Rune Slate

Rune Slates are Book-like items found on the Nautiloid and in the Mind Flayer Colony. When "read", the Narrator describes the mental images they impart.

Holding this tablet causes a flash of inscrutable images to appear before the eyes before vanishing, leaving a mild headache in their place.

Properties

• Miscellaneous Items
• Rarity: Common
•  Weight: 0.2 kg / 0.4 lb
• Price: 1 gp

Where to find

• 1x - on a desk in the room, the player character awakes in aboard the Nautiloid (Prologue)
• 3x - on desks at the east side of the Nursery Room, northeast of the Brain Room (one called 'Eldritch Tablet') aboard the Nautiloid (Prologue)
• 1x - on a desk at the east side of the room with Shadowheart's pod (see Illithid Manuscript) aboard the Nautiloid (Prologue)
• 2x - on the table in the Balthazar's study sideways from the Necrotic Laboratory in the Mind Flayer Colony
• 2x - on crates in the Mind Flayer Colony at X: 688 Y: -31 and X: 693 Y: -21
• 1x - on an Illithid table at High Hall at X: 322 Y: 97

Usage

• Reading some of the rune slates in the Nautiloid can provide bonuses to certain Intelligence checks related to their topics later on in the game. For instance, reading the one with a Nautiloid schematic provides advantage on a check made when describing the Nautiloid to Omeluum during the quest  Help Omeluum Investigate the Parasite.

Text

• *Visions project into your mind. A nautiloid, hurtling through the planes, resplendent with psionic energy.*
• *A schematic of a nautiloid flashes into your mind. Nerves, sinews, as much living being as ship.*
• *A feeling penetrates your mind. An anomaly. One like ourselves, unconnected from the whole. Caution.
• *Worlds beyond worlds flash before your eyes, empires of a grand design, traversed by ships just like this.*
• *Faint images appear in your mind: a brain, a githyanki warrior, and centuries of darkness…*
• *A series of dots and broken lines - entries in a language you cannot read. And yet, you sense their meaning nonetheless…*
  • A flash of nautiloids lining a great dark void. One mind, with one purpose, moving in concert through the darkness between planes. The design in action, before the slave-minds rose and ruined it all.
  • Fractured reports from the other colonies, scattered throughout the Underdark. One in particular tells of an uprising - slaves breaking free from their fighting pits to swarm over the watching illithids...
  • A final, mournful entry, carrying with it a vast hollow feeling of grief. The colony in decline. The Elder starving, falling dormant to preserve its strength and lie in wait - for some salvation to come.
  • A blur of noise and pain filtered through a newly-born high-mind, staggered fresh from the spawning pool. The Elder wakes! The Elder births anew! But all is not right. Down in the darkness where the Elder stirs, something else moves too. Three shining lights that taste of pain.

Notes

• To read the slates in the Mind Flayer Colony it is necessary to pass a DC 14 Arcana check.
• As of current version of the game (4.1.1.6072089) the text on the slates found in the Colony can be read regardless of the roll result, though the party member who tries to read it issues a positive/negative comment according to the actual check. Also, the text of the each slate is currently displayed twice (like the contents of some books, clearly a bug).