Turn the Lantern
A lantern-bearing seeker tends the boundary between the living and the lost, turning the light until every soul has a chance to answer.
Spellbook · Lantern-Bearer · Level 1
Turn the Lantern
A lantern-bearing seeker tends the boundary between the living and the lost, turning the light until every soul has a chance to answer.
Ex librisMara VennLantern-Bearer
At a glance
Level
1
Lantern-Bearer
Spells
10
4 cantrips, 5 signature
At the table
A margin note
Plot hook
Spells
10 spellsCantrips
4- One object no larger than 10 feet in any dimension sheds Bright Light in a 20-foot radius and Dim Light for an additional 20 feet. If the object is on a creature, that creature can make a Dexterity saving throw to avoid the spell.
- Duration
- 1 hour
- Target
- One object no larger than 10 feet in any dimension
- Components
- V, M (a firefly or phosphorescent moss)
- Higher levels
- No effect from using a higher-level spell slot.
- Source
- Player's Handbook (2024)
- One willing creature you touch gains a bonus to one ability check of its choice, which it can roll before or after making the check. The spell then ends.
- Duration
- Concentration, up to 1 minute
- Target
- One willing creature
- Components
- V, S
- Higher levels
- The die increases to when you reach level 5, at level 11, and at level 17.
- Source
- Player's Handbook (2024)
- A creature you can see within range makes a Dexterity saving throw, taking Radiant damage on a failed save. The target gains no benefit from Half Cover or Three-Quarters Cover for this save.
- Duration
- Instantaneous
- Target
- One creature you can see
- Components
- V, S
- Save or attack
- Dexterity saving throw
- Damage
- Radiant
- Higher levels
- Damage increases by at levels 5, 11, and 17.
- Source
- Player's Handbook (2024)
- Choose one creature with 0 Hit Points within range; it becomes stable.
- Duration
- Instantaneous
- Target
- One creature with 0 Hit Points
- Components
- V, S
- Higher levels
- No effect from using a higher-level spell slot.
- Source
- Player's Handbook (2024)
1st level
6- Make a ranged spell attack against one creature. On a hit, the target takes Radiant damage, and the next attack roll against it before the end of your next turn has Advantage.
- Duration
- Instantaneous
- Target
- One creature
- Components
- V, S
- Save or attack
- Ranged spell attack
- Damage
- Radiant
- Higher levels
- Damage increases by for each spell slot level above 1.
- Source
- Player's Handbook (2024)
- A creature you can see within range regains Hit Points equal to plus your spellcasting ability modifier.
- Duration
- Instantaneous
- Target
- One creature you can see
- Components
- V
- Higher levels
- Healing increases by for each spell slot level above 1.
- Source
- Player's Handbook (2024)
- You know whether an Aberration, Celestial, Elemental, Fey, Fiend, or Undead is within 30 feet of you, as well as its location. You also know if a place or object within range has been magically consecrated or desecrated.
- Duration
- Concentration, up to 10 minutes
- Target
- Self; detects specified creatures, places, and objects within 30 feet
- Components
- V, S
- Higher levels
- No effect from using a higher-level spell slot.
- Source
- Player's Handbook (2024)
- One willing creature you touch is protected against Aberrations, Celestials, Elementals, Fey, Fiends, and Undead. Those creatures have Disadvantage on attack rolls against it, and the target can't be Charmed, Frightened, or possessed by them. If already affected by one of those effects, the target has Advantage on a new saving throw against it.
- Duration
- Concentration, up to 10 minutes
- Target
- One willing creature
- Components
- V, S, M (a flask of Holy Water worth 25+ GP, which the spell consumes)
- Higher levels
- No effect from using a higher-level spell slot.
- Conditions
- Frightened
- Source
- Player's Handbook (2024)
- Ward one creature within range. A creature that targets it with an attack or a damaging spell must first succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or choose a new target or lose the attack or spell. The ward ends if the protected creature makes an attack roll, casts a spell, or deals damage.
- Duration
- 1 minute
- Target
- One creature
- Components
- V, S, M (a small silver mirror)
- Save or attack
- Wisdom saving throw by a creature that targets the warded creature with an attack or a damaging spell
- Higher levels
- You can target one additional creature for each spell slot level above 1.
- Source
- Player's Handbook (2024)
- A creature you touch regains Hit Points equal to plus your spellcasting ability modifier. An Undead or Construct can't regain Hit Points from this spell.
- Duration
- Instantaneous
- Target
- One creature you touch
- Components
- V, S
- Damage
- Radiant, plus if the target is Undead
- Higher levels
- Healing increases by for each spell slot level above 1.
- Source
- Player's Handbook (2024)
In the margins
4 notes
WarningTurn the shutter slowly. A frightened soul answers more readily when it is not forced into the light.
FormulaGuidance: the glow is not an answer, only courage enough to ask the question.
DiaryI heard my brother's voice in the wick tonight. I will not mistake longing for proof again.
DiagramThree concentric circles mark the lantern's bright light, dim light, and the darkness beyond. Keep the bearer at the center.
The book itself
The book's pages smell faintly of beeswax, rain, and extinguished candles.
Its diagrams show a lantern turned toward a face, never away from it.
The listed spells are a level 1 Lantern-Bearer’s spell options, not a claim that a level 1 caster can prepare or cast every entry at once.
The caster
Lantern-BearerMara Venn
Studies: Soul-guiding, warding, and revelation by lamplightManner: Patient and quietly direct, with the steady manner of someone accustomed to sitting beside the dying.Focus: A hooded brass lantern with a blue-glass pane, used as a Spellcasting Focus for Lantern-Bearer spells.Quirk: She turns her lantern's shutter toward anyone who speaks of the dead, then waits a beat as if giving the absent a chance to reply.Wants: Find her brother's true fate and learn why his voice sometimes answers from the lantern before she calls.Mara Venn once kept the lamps at a hospice chapel. After her younger brother vanished on a winter road, she learned to listen for the dead without promising that every whisper was true.
The book
A narrow, soot-dark folio bound in cracked oxhide, with brass corners shaped like little flames. Its pages are translucent vellum; when held before a lantern, faint handwritten answers appear in the margins.
Its wards · GM only
About the book
FormatSoot-dark lantern folio
ThemeTurn the lantern; let the soul answer.
Written by aLantern-Bearer
Caster level1
SystemDungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (2024)
Plot hooks
1A village's dead have begun answering the Lantern-Bearer's call with the same unfamiliar name, one that appears nowhere in the folio.
2The lantern's brass shutter is missing. Its thief claims it can reveal whether a beloved missing person is truly dead.
3A page has appeared in the folio in the handwriting of its owner's long-deceased mentor, warning that one soul answering the light is not human.
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