VEX
"Read everything, but copy it exactly."
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The Annotator by Dyolf
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VEX

"Read everything, but copy it exactly."
Owlin Wizard · Order of Scribes
Level 7. Neutral Good
"The Annotator" by Dyolf for Vex
Character Sheet

The Character

4'11". Small. Tawny-brown feathers, amber eyes behind thick round spectacles slightly too big. Robe of Stars hem pools on the floor. Permanent blue-black ink stains on the left hand. They/them.

AC 14
HP 44
Speed 30/30 fly
DC 15
PP 14
Prof +3
STR
0
-1
DEX
0
+1
CON
0
+2
INT
0
+4
WIS
0
+1
CHA
0
+1
Armor Class
14
Mage Armor 13 + DEX +1
tap to toggle
Primary Attack
+7 to hit
Fire Bolt 2d10
120 ft range. Damage type swappable via Awakened Spellbook.
Flight
30 ft (Owlin)
Nimble Flight: no concentration, no slots. Cannot fly in medium or heavy armor.

Skills & Proficiencies

Proficient Skills
Arcana +10 (Expertise)
History +7
Investigation +7
Nature +7
Religion +7
Perception +4
Insight +4
Stealth +4 (Owlin)
Saving Throws
Intelligence +7 (proficient)
Wisdom +4 (proficient)
All saves +1 (Robe of Stars)
Other Proficiencies
Weapons: Simple Weapons
Tools: Calligrapher's Supplies (spell scrolls)
Languages: Common + 1 (DM choice)

Attacks & Actions

Fire Bolt
Cantrip, 120 ft. 2d10 fire. Damage type swappable via spellbook.
Magic Missile
1st level, 120 ft. 3x (1d4+1) force. Auto-hit. Robe star version: 7 missiles at 5th level.
Scorching Ray
2nd level, 120 ft. 3 rays, +7, 2d6 fire each. Damage swappable.
Fireball
3rd level, 150 ft. 8d6 fire, 20 ft radius. DEX save. Cast through Manifest Mind for devastating angles.
Spirit of Death
4th level, conc, 60 ft. Summon Reaper Spirit: 2 attacks/turn with advantage, 1d8+7 necrotic each. Flies, phases through walls.
Counterspell
3rd level, reaction. Auto-counter 3rd and below (2014 rules). 4th+: INT check vs DC 10 + spell level.
Hold Person
2nd level, conc, 60 ft. WIS save or paralyzed. Attacks within 5 ft auto-crit.
Hypnotic Pattern
3rd level, conc, 120 ft. 30 ft cube. WIS save or incapacitated, speed 0. Best battlefield control in the game.

Spell Slots

1st 4
2nd 3
3rd 3
4th 1

Spells (11 Prepared + 4 Cantrips)

Cantrips
Fire Bolt (2d10 fire, 120 ft)
Mage Hand (utility, Vex's third arm)
Prestidigitation (ink stains, sound effects)
Minor Illusion (distraction, scouting)
1st: Mage Armor
Always up. AC 14.
1st: Magic Missile
Auto-hit force. Robe star: 7 missiles.
1st: Detect Magic
Ritual, no slot needed.
1st: Identify
Ritual, no slot needed.
2nd: Misty Step
BA teleport 30 ft.
2nd: Scorching Ray
3 rays, +7 each, 2d6 fire.
2nd: Hold Person
Paralyze humanoid. Auto-crit.
2nd: Shatter
3d8 thunder, 10 ft AoE.
3rd: Counterspell
Auto-counter 3rd and below. 4th+: DC 10 + spell level.
3rd: Fireball
8d6 fire, 20 ft radius.
3rd: Hypnotic Pattern
Mass incapacitate, 30 ft cube.
4th: Spirit of Death
Summon Reaper Spirit. 2 attacks w/ advantage, 1d8+7 necrotic.
Concentration Spells
Detect Magic, Hold Person, Hypnotic Pattern, Spirit of Death. Only one at a time.

Spellbook 18 spells

Vex's spellbook contains 18 spells (6 at level 1, +2 each level after). They prepare 11 each morning. Tap a spell, then "Prepare" to build your daily list. Saves to your browser.

Prepared (0/11 choices)
Tap any spell below, then hit "Prepare" to add it here. Saves automatically.
1st Level
Mage Armor Magic Missile Detect Magic Identify Chromatic Orb Earth Tremor Ice Knife Shield Unseen Servant
2nd Level
Misty Step Scorching Ray Hold Person Shatter
3rd Level
Counterspell Fireball Hypnotic Pattern Spirit Shroud
4th Level
Spirit of Death Sickening Radiance
Awakened Spellbook: Damage Swap
When casting a damage spell, Vex can swap the damage type to any type from another spell in the spellbook at the same slot level expended.

1st-level slot: force (Magic Missile), acid, cold, fire, lightning, poison, thunder (Chromatic Orb), bludgeoning (Earth Tremor), piercing, cold (Ice Knife)
2nd-level slot: fire (Scorching Ray), thunder (Shatter)
3rd-level slot: fire (Fireball), necrotic, radiant, or cold (Spirit Shroud)
4th-level slot: necrotic (Spirit of Death), radiant (Sickening Radiance)

1st-level slot now covers 9 damage types. Chromatic Orb alone unlocks 6. Upcast a lower spell to access higher-slot type pools.

Wizard

Arcane Recovery
1/long rest on short rest: recover spell slots with combined level ≤ 4. No 6th+ slots.
Scholar (Expertise)
Double proficiency on Arcana. Total: +10.
Memorize Spell
On a short rest, swap one prepared spell for another from spellbook. Adapt to the situation.
Ritual Casting
Cast any ritual spell from spellbook without preparing it. No slot, +10 min casting time. Detect Magic and Identify are free.

Order of Scribes

Wizardly Quill
BA summon magical quill. No ink needed. Spell copying: 2 min/level (vs 2 hrs). Erase within 5 ft. Vex's primary fidget object.
Awakened Spellbook
Sentient spellbook (aware, no speech). Use as focus. Damage type swap: replace spell damage type with any type from another spell of the same slot level in your book. 1/LR: cast a ritual in normal time.
Manifest Mind
BA: summon spectral floating book within 60 ft. Cast spells from its position 3/long rest. Move 30 ft as BA. Shares senses. 300 ft range. Dim light 10 ft. Darkvision 60 ft.

Owlin Traits

Darkvision 120 ft
See in dim light as bright, darkness as dim, out to 120 feet. tap: glasses off
Nimble Flight
30 ft flying speed. No concentration, no slots. Cannot fly in medium or heavy armor.
Silent Feathers
Proficiency in Stealth (+4).
Vex's magic items on a desk: Robe of Stars, Pearl of Power, Medal of the Maze

Magic Items 7/7

Robe of Stars (Very Rare, 4pts, attune)
+1 to all saving throws. Six stars: each plucked (action) casts 5th-level Magic Missile (7 missiles, 1d4+1 each, auto-hit force). 1d6 recharge at dusk. Action: enter the Astral Plane. Deep blue-black, shifting silver embroidery. The hem drags. They keep meaning to grow into it.
Pearl of Power (Uncommon, 2pts, attune)
Action, 1/dawn: recover one spent spell slot of 3rd level or lower. Save for Fireball or Counterspell recovery.
Medal of the Maze (Common, 1pt, no attune)
Carved driftwood pendant with maze pattern. Action: trace the maze to gain advantage on WIS checks and know the shortest route through nonmagical mazes for 1 hour, then the medal becomes nonmagical. Single use. Attunement: 2/3 used (Robe + Pearl). Third slot open.

Disadvantages

Mechanical

Glass Cannon
HP 44 on a d6 hit die. No armor without Mage Armor (AC drops to 11). One solid hit and they're in trouble. One crit and they're on the ground.
STR 8
Carries twelve pounds of books and calls it light travel. Furniture is stronger. Athletics, STR saves, and grapple are liabilities.
Nearsighted
Blind beyond 10 ft without glasses. When hit: STR save (DC 10-12) to keep glasses on. Separate from concentration save. One hit can force both. If glasses knocked off: disadvantage on attacks, Perception, and spell targeting beyond 10 ft. Action or BA to retrieve.
Concentration Tax
Hold Person, Hypnotic Pattern, Spirit of Death, Detect Magic all require concentration. Only one at a time. CON save is +3 with Robe (+2 base, +1 Robe of Stars). Any solid hit still risks breaking it.

Backstory-Driven

The Mother's Trail
Will take dangerous risks for any lead on Seraphel. Can be baited with false information about the Mourne network. An ongoing research project with personal relevance.
Compulsive Annotator
Literally cannot stop themselves from correcting documents. This is what started the whole thing. A succession of clients found annotations in the margins. Most were charmed. A few were not.
Over-Explains
Simple questions produce paragraph-length answers. They know they're doing it. Cannot stop. Social encounters become lectures.
The Brass Key
A key left by their mother. They do not know what it opens. It occupies mental bandwidth. Anyone who offers information about it gains leverage.

Origin

Vex Ashquill in the candlelit library
Listen to narration

Vex Ashquill grew up in the back rooms of the Callowhaven Scriptorium, a place that was part copy house, part notary office, part lending library. Their mother, Seraphel, was the head copyist: a precise, methodical barn owl who believed that copying something correctly was itself a form of respect for the truth. Vex learned to read before they learned to fly properly, and spent their first decade making slightly wobbly copies of trade agreements and property deeds. They were, from the beginning, intensely interested in the why of things. Not just what a contract said, but why it was structured that way. Not just what a spell scroll contained, but what the underlying formula meant.

At sixteen, Vex was assigned to copy contracts for a client named Aldric Mourne. The documents were property agreements on their face. But Vex, who had copied thousands of property agreements, noticed these weren't. Buried in the legal language was a structured system for moving people across jurisdictional lines under fraudulent documentation. Vex didn't copy the contracts. They copied most of them, then substituted the critical clauses with near-identical language that subtly invalidated the mechanism.

Vex crouched in the ransacked scriptorium

Three days later, two men came asking for the copyist by name. Seraphel had seen them coming. She sent Vex away. Vex came back to find the Scriptorium ransacked, their mother gone, and a note in Seraphel's handwriting: "Don't look for me. Finish your education. I'll find you when it's safe." The note smelled of smoke. On a nail by the door hung the small brass key their mother always wore around her neck. They do not know what it opens.

Vex spent the next two years moving between cities, taking copyist work wherever they could find it. Apprenticing with a cartographer in Thornmere. Cataloguing a minor noble's library outside Ashford. Eventually spending eight months in the Collegium Arcana's research wing, where a sympathetic researcher named Maester Dolvin recognized what Vex was doing with their spellbook and began teaching them proper wizardry. Dolvin is still at the Collegium. He sends magically delivered letters that smell of pipe smoke and always include a reading list.

Vex is adventuring now for three reasons, though they would express them in reverse order of importance: the work pays reasonably well, ruins contain documents nobody has read in centuries, and they are quietly following the trail of Aldric Mourne's network to find out what happened to their mother. This third reason is the one they don't mention unless pressed. Even then, they phrase it as "an ongoing research project with personal relevance."

Plot Threads

Seraphel Ashquill
Their mother. A senior copyist who went underground two years ago. She is alive. She is embedded within the organization as an informant for a third party. She has been watching Vex's progress from a distance and is terrified they're getting close.
Aldric Mourne
The well-dressed man whose contracts Vex sabotaged. A facilitator, not the principal. He has recently heard the name "Ashquill" again. He is paying attention.
Maester Dolvin
A senior Collegium researcher who taught Vex wizardry. He knows more than he's said and has been gently steering them away from certain lines of inquiry. Vex has noticed and has not mentioned it. He is protecting them, not obstructing. He knows if Vex surfaces the full network too fast, there will be no warning before the response.
The Brass Key
Left by Seraphel on a nail by the door. It opens a safety deposit box in a banking house in a city Vex has not yet visited. Inside: a complete copy of the original Mourne contracts, the real ones, and a letter from Seraphel written two years ago.
The Operational Map
A document Vex found in the Collegium auxiliary wing and has been studying as historical material. It is not history. It is a current operational map. People may be noticing that someone has been accessing it.
Calloway the Archivist
A fussy, ink-stained archivist in whatever city the adventure takes place in. Vex has a standing correspondence with them. They may have found something relevant. They also sent Vex an overdue-notice letter for a book Vex absolutely returned.

Hidden Connections

The Staffs
Three staffs on the Sword Coast blur the line between tool and witness. One is vine-wound and still growing, carried by a reclusive tortle. One holds the ashes of the dead, carried by an infamous, destructive firbolg. One carries an inheritance its owner cannot verify, carried by a half-elf who left home with his father's weapon and his uncle's silence. The Awakened Spellbook is aware of these staffs and those who carry them, unbeknownst to Vex.
The Mourne Displaced
Aldric Mourne's contracting network moved people across jurisdictional lines under fraudulent documentation. Erased them from one set of records and filed them in another under names that weren't theirs. Some of those displaced ended up in places that don't appear in any ledger. Duskmire's Edge, for instance. The slum at the edge of a Shadowfell rift where unnamed children raised themselves.
The Thundertree Rift
A wild magic surge tore a Shadowfell rift near Thundertree decades ago. The rift bleeds arcane energy that does not follow the grammar of spellwork. It catalyzes dormant power. It displaces people. It created a child from the chaos. The Manifest Mind sees things normal eyes miss, and somewhere in its spectral blue glow is a sensitivity to magic that was never structured, never written, never meant to be read. It would react to rift-touched magic and beings the way a compass reacts to iron.

Play Guide

Speech Patterns

Fully-formed sentences
Long sentences that arrive like they were drafted and revised before leaving the beak. No filler words. Technically precise vocabulary.
"I have a theory..."
Opener whenever they've noticed something others haven't. The theory is usually correct. Occasionally spectacularly wrong.
Nervous over-explaining
Simple questions get paragraph-length answers. They know they're doing it. Cannot stop.
"Aww, pellets."
For: dropping something, a spell going wrong, a locked door, an enemy appearing, or the city being on fire. Same tone each time.
"Note that..."
Before any statement Vex considers crucial. The party has learned it means pay attention.
"That's... yes, that tracks."
When caught off guard by something they should have predicted. Said quietly, like updating an internal spreadsheet.

Physical Mannerisms

Pre-entry scan
Pauses one full breath in every doorway. Counting exits, light sources, and visible weapons. Not paranoia. Standard environmental assessment.
Quill fidgeting
Wizardly Quill summoned, tap-tapped twice on the beak, dismissed, summoned again within thirty seconds. The party uses it as a stress-meter.
The Scrunch
When problem-solving: wings pull inward, sinks into chest fluff, ear tufts flatten, eyes go focused. The "do not interrupt" signal.
The Shuffle-Step
Two small involuntary shuffling steps toward anything exciting: a new spell, an old book, an interesting door. Always embarrassed when they notice.
Apologetic bobbing
Bobs their head for thank you, sorry, excuse me, and hello. Does it too often. Has apologized to furniture.
After surviving something dangerous:
"I had a 34% probability estimate on that outcome. I was wrong. I've updated the model."
Asked about their past:
"I worked at a place that had a lot of important documents and then it, um. Didn't."
Party is arguing:
"I could... I have notes on this, if that would... no? Okay. I'll just. I'll be over here. With my notes."
When someone does something kind:
"Oh. That's... thank you. I'm going to write that down."
When the party is about to do something unwise:
"I want to note, for the record, that I have concerns. I'll assist regardless. But: concerns. Noted. By me. Formally."

The Owl Under the Robe

Combat transformation
Does not panic. Gets very calm and very focused. The Scrunch activates, ear tufts flatten, and they start casting before most people have finished being surprised. Post-combat, the shaking starts. They process fear on a delay.
Compliments hit different
Looks briefly like they've been handed something warm unexpectedly. Says "thank you" twice: once immediately, once after three seconds. Will bring it up again later unprompted.
The spellbook is the friend
The Awakened Spellbook is the closest thing they have to a best friend. Hums to it sometimes. Does not acknowledge doing this.
Touch the book and find out
Dead silence. Absolute stillness. "Could you... that's... please don't. It's not that I don't trust you. I trust you. The book is just... it's sensitive. To handling."
Asking about their mother
One beat of silence. "She was a copyist. Very good one. She... we've lost touch." End of information. Left hand presses flat against thigh, knuckles down.

Introductions

Casual / first meeting
"Oh! Hi. I'm Vex. Vex Ashquill. I'm a wizard. Well, officially I was a copyist but I think at this point the wizard thing is probably more relevant. I study how spells are structured, like, the actual grammar of them? It's... it's very interesting. To me." [ear tufts go up] "Sorry, I talk a lot when I'm... I'm glad to meet you."
Professional / formal
"Vex Ashquill, formerly of the Callowhaven Scriptorium, Order of Scribes tradition, licensed in arcane research under provisional Collegium status. I specialize in magical linguistics and the structural grammar of spellwork. I also make very good copies of documents."
In a dungeon
"I'm the one who knows what things say, what things do, and which things will kill you if you touch them without reading the inscription first. I'm also very fast. And I can fly. And I have a... a friend... who can look around corners." [the Manifest Mind drifts into view] "That's the friend."
Where it began
The Callowhaven Scriptorium
Part copy house. Part notary. Part lending library. None of it theirs anymore.
"The truth is in the margins."
They read everything. They copy it exactly.
Except when it matters. Then they rewrite the world.

References

Player's Handbook (2024)
Wizard class, Scribe background, prepared spell table, Arcane Recovery, Memorize Spell, Scholar (Expertise).
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything
Order of Scribes subclass: Wizardly Quill, Awakened Spellbook, Manifest Mind.
Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos
Owlin race: 120 ft darkvision, 30 ft flight, Silent Feathers (Stealth proficiency).
Dungeon Master's Guide
Robe of Stars, Pearl of Power.
CR: Call of the Netherdeep
Medal of the Maze.
Xanathar's Guide to Everything
Sickening Radiance, Earth Tremor.
The Book of Many Things
Spirit of Death spell.