Skip to content
CharGen Icon
Create
The Practical Scholarium - AI-generated fantasy Shop

The Practical Scholarium

Back to Generator
Create your own Shop

Est. 2026 • Human Sage and former expedition quartermaster

The Practical Scholarium

The shop is called The Practical Scholarium, a narrow general store wedged between a lecture hall and a stone archway leading toward the university gardens. Its...

MA

Shopkeeper

Mara Vellum, a Human Sage and former expedition quartermaster (Lvl 5)

Keeper's Species

Human

17 Misc1 Misc6 Misc6 Misc1 PotionsEst. 133 gp

Shop Inventory

(31)
Miscellaneous17

A practical field pack favored by students, researchers, and expedition leaders. It holds roughly 30 pounds of gear.

A compact travel kit assembled for late-night study sessions, wilderness surveys, and cramped library stacks.

A familiar adventuring essential, sold in thick ceramic flasks with the university district's blue seal.

Can be thrown or poured like standard oil if ignited; ignition requires an action and an open flame.

Reliable brass lanterns used by campus groundskeepers and field researchers.

Provides bright light in a 30-foot radius and dim light for an additional 30 feet.

Quality writing supplies for copying notes, mapping ruins, or recording magical observations.

Plain but dependable rope sold to climbing clubs, architecture students, and adventurers.

A polished hand mirror, inexpensive but well made.

Useful for signaling, checking corners, and applying disguises.

A campus invention marketed to survey teams and students who forget to bring clean water.

Filters ordinary sediment and unpleasant taste, but does not remove poison or magical contamination.

Dense travel rations of hard bread, dried fruit, salted meat, and spiced nuts.

Popular with cartographers, dungeon surveyors, and professors who mark classroom walls.

Colored chalk remains visible on stone for approximately one week unless washed away.

Protective lenses designed for laboratory work and field excavation.

Protects the eyes from ordinary glare, furnace sparks, and weak alchemical flashes.

A basic emergency set stocked by the university infirmary and expedition societies.

Grants advantage on one check made to identify or prepare a mundane antidote, if the character is proficient with an herbalism kit.

A custom field purification bundle prepared for scholars investigating suspicious water or soil.

Provides the material supplies for three attempts to identify or neutralize mundane contamination. It does not replace a spell component or grant automatic success.

An expensive but dependable navigation instrument sold to expedition sponsors and advanced students.

Functions as a reliable mundane compass. The needle becomes unreliable within 30 feet of a strong magnetic or planar anomaly.

A custom academic testing set, useful for examining stains, residues, inks, and unstable reagents.

Grants advantage on one Intelligence check using alchemist's supplies to analyze a mundane substance. The kit is consumed after use.

A standard bedroll upgraded for damp dormitories, ruined observatories, and rainy field camps.

Resists ordinary moisture and insects. It is not fireproof or magical.

A small precision set popular with alchemy students and culinary researchers.

Grants advantage on one check to measure a mundane powdered ingredient precisely.
Miscellaneous1

A professional kit for gathering and preparing medicinal plants.

Functions as an herbalism kit for rules purposes.
Miscellaneous6

A common medicinal herb used by student physicians and traveling botanists.

Heal 2 HPWhen brewed as a tea, restores 2 hit points. A creature can benefit from only one cup of Brightleaf Tea per short rest.

A canonical-style medicinal plant commonly used in poultices. This version is a balanced shop variant rather than a formal magic item.

Applied to a minor burn or insect sting, it grants advantage on the next saving throw against ordinary irritation or venom made within 1 hour.

Favored by students during long sea voyages, excavation work, and unpleasant dissections.

When chewed, it suppresses ordinary nausea for 1 hour but does not cure poison or disease.

A mild stimulant and calming tea ingredient sold in little paper packets.

Steeped in hot water, the flowers provide advantage on one check made to remain awake during a nonmagical lecture or watch, but the drinker suffers disadvantage on their next initiative roll.

Used by field researchers who want to avoid attracting insects or drawing attention to a camp.

Burning one bundle masks normal campfire smoke for 10 minutes, though it creates a noticeable herbal scent.

A valuable healing reagent gathered from shaded ruins and old stone cisterns.

When mixed with water, produces a paste that grants advantage on one Medicine check made to stabilize a dying creature. The paste loses potency after 10 minutes.
Miscellaneous6

Popular with geology students, amateur jewelers, and children visiting the district.

Splits ordinary candlelight into small rainbow reflections. Has no inherent magical power.

A sample of magnetite labeled with its approximate origin and weight.

Can be used as a focus for mundane mineral testing. Worth more to an interested academic than to a typical merchant.

A chipped piece of malachite wrapped in linen to prevent staining.

Counts as a suitable reagent for one poisoner's kit or alchemist's supplies check involving corrosion or verdigris.

A common cinnabar sample sold with a warning not to consume or heat it.

When powdered, it can provide pigment for red inks, paints, or chalk.

A small lapis lazuli fragment used by artists, scribes, and introductory arcane students.

A suitable component for simple illusion diagrams and academic demonstrations, but not a substitute for a spell's costly material component.

A curiosity-grade beryl fragment kept in a padded wooden tray.

If struck against steel, produces a brief shower of harmless green sparks.
Potions1

A canonical Potion of Healing supplied by the university infirmary and stored behind the counter.

Heal 2 HPAs a standard potion of healing, drinking it restores hit points.

Lootable Stash

(5)

Where The Take Sits

The shop's most valuable stock and business records are distributed between the locked counter, a rear display cabinet, and the shopkeeper's small upstairs apartment. The store is narrow, crowded, and full of hanging bundles, labeled drawers, glass jars, and unstable stacks of academic supplies. A concealed bell wire connects the counter to the office, while the shopkeeper's owl familiar watches from a ceiling beam after closing.
1 Money1 Personal Item2 Valuable1 Records

Security Check

Dexterity (Thieves' Tools) for the locks, followed by Wisdom (Perception) to detect the counter bell wire and the owl familiar's watch position
DC 16

On Failure

A failed theft attempt triggers a bell wire beneath the counter and alerts the shopkeeper's unseen familiar, a sharp-eyed owl named Index. If the party does not immediately retreat, the shopkeeper locks the front door, calls two nearby university watch officers, and loudly announces the thieves to surrounding faculty and students. The university district's reputation system means later attempts to purchase restricted reagents may be made at disadvantage until the party clears its name.

Estimated haul

228.56 gp

MoneyLoot target #1

Cash Drawer

18 gp, 47 sp, and 86 cp
A locked compartment beneath the central counter, protected by a simple mechanical lock and a bell wire.
The day's ordinary sales, mostly in copper and silver with a few gold pieces from adventuring students.
Personal ItemLoot target #2

Mara Vellum's Personal Effects

5 gp for the brass case and keys, though the sentimental items are worth far more to the owner than a buyer.
Inside a false-bottom drawer in the cramped office behind the mineral shelves.
A brass spectacles case, a ring of dormitory keys, a half-finished letter to the shopkeeper's sister, and a small portrait of the shopkeeper's former professor.
ValuableLoot target #3

Reserved Geological Samples

45 gp as a complete set, or 20 gp if sold piecemeal without the university documentation.
A locked glass cabinet at the rear of the store, beneath a sign reading FACULTY ORDERS ONLY.
Six carefully labeled mineral samples reserved for a visiting geology lecturer. The samples are not magical, but their documented provenance makes them desirable to collectors and researchers.
RecordsLoot target #4

Restricted Order Ledger

75 gp to a rival merchant, smuggler, blackmailer, or academic competitor, though possessing it could create serious legal trouble.
Concealed inside a hollow atlas on the office writing desk. The ledger is protected by a mundane cipher rather than magic.
A coded ledger listing faculty purchases, student debts, rare reagent requests, and the names of several private expedition sponsors.
ValuableLoot target #5

Mentor's Keepsake Pouch

60 gp total, with the brooch worth more to a university historian than to a pawnbroker.
Tucked inside a locked tea chest beneath the shopkeeper's bed in the upstairs apartment.
A small velvet pouch containing two polished moonstones, several silver trade tokens, and an old university signet brooch inherited from the shopkeeper's mentor.
MA

Mara Vellum

Human•Sage and former expedition quartermaster•Lvl 5

Shop Atmosphere

“The shop is called The Practical Scholarium, a narrow general store wedged between a lecture hall and a stone archway leading toward the university gardens. Its blue-painted door is covered with layers of handwritten notices, field expedition requests, tutoring advertisements, and warnings about laboratory safety. Inside, the air smells of dried herbs, lamp oil, dust, ink, and polished brass. Every wall is crowded with labeled drawers, racks of rolled maps, hanging bundles of plants, mineral trays, sealed jars, canvas packs, lanterns, and stacks of inexpensive student supplies. A rope-operated dumbwaiter connects the sales floor to the upstairs apartment and storage loft. A cracked chalkboard near the counter lists overdue student accounts under the heading SCHOLASTIC DEBTS, PAID IN FULL OR IN TEARS. The owner, Mara Vellum, is a level 5 human sage and former expedition quartermaster with cropped gray hair, ink-stained fingers, and a habit of correcting customers' terminology while giving them discounts. She wears a patched academic robe over sturdy traveling clothes and keeps a brass magnifying lens hanging from her neck. Mara is patient with serious researchers, merciless toward reckless alchemists, and quietly protective of students who cannot afford proper supplies. Her owl familiar, Index, perches among the rafters and mimics snippets of overheard lectures. Mara knows which professors are secretly funding expeditions, which students are buying antidote ingredients for dangerous reasons, and which university doors should never be opened after midnight.”
Visual sheet

Turn The Practical Scholarium into a sheet

A high-res, share-ready sheet you can post or print.