Truenamers study the words that comprise the fabric of existence. They seek to unravel and comprehend the mysteries of the Multiverse by learning the truenames of as many of its components as possible. A truenamer learns new truenames as he progresses in level, which he can use as utterances to manipulate the world around him. All truenamers know the basic words of Truespeak that allow them to describe creatures that they encounter, so the new words they learn enable them to alter those creatures in very specific ways. As they continue to advance, they also learn to describe - and thus affect - inanimate objects and even places, which are more difficult to describe using truenames.

If you want to understand the secret language of the universe, the truenamer class is for you. By delving into the truenames of everything that surrounds you, you can reshape reality itself. You will speak words of power so potent that the cosmos will rearrange itself to match their meaning.

MAKING A TRUENAMER

At first, you will only be able to use Truespeak in a few ways, so your power will necessarily be limited. You will know only a few truenames, and more important, your ability to pronounce them is imperfect. You will encounter situations when you aren't as skilled with Truespeak as you need to be, and you say "ghaurtahlakranammio" when you meant to say "ghaurtalhakranammio." As a low-level truenamer, you might be able to increase an ally's effectiveness in combat or freeze an enemy in place, but you won't be commanding demons or altering the landscape - yet.

As you attain more levels, your power grows in three main ways. First, you gain access to new lexicons, expanding your abilities to influence items and places, as well as creatures. Second, you learn new utterances, each of which gives you a new way to affect creatures, objects, and places. Third, as you gain ranks in the Truespeak skill, you will naturally be able to pronounce truenames more reliably, especially the truenames of more powerful creatures.

In many ways, you're like a spellcaster. You would rather deliver an utterance or a recitation than attack with a weapon. By choosing the path of the truenamer, you give up a degree of flexibility compared to a spellcaster. You have a set of utterances and recitations you can make, and this set doesn't change from day to day the way a wizard can change her arsenal of prepared spells. But because you aren't casting spells, you don't have to worry about spell slots, spell levels, or running out of your most precious resource. You can continue to speak utterances and recitations as long as you can continue to succeed on Truespeak checks.

Intelligence and Charisma are the most important ability scores for you. Intelligence is the relevant ability score for the Truespeak skill; a high Intelligence will help you learn and remember the long strings of syllables and exact pronunciation of the truenames you know. Charisma provides the force and conviction behind your words. In game terms, it sets the save DC for many of your utterances.

Other ability scores matter less, because you would much rather deliver an utterance than swing a sword or shoot a bow. If you're spending points on a physical ability score, consider Constitution because it provides extra hit points - a resource everyone runs short on eventually.

The knowledge of truenames - and how to manipulate them - can be found among most races, but, as with the magic of wizards, the lore of truenamers requires a certain scholarly bent. Truenamers also spend significant time in libraries and other places of knowledge, and thus are more rare among less civilized (or at least, less urban) races.

Humans and dwarves, especially, find truename magic appealing. Dwarves find truename magic like a delightful puzzle to be solved: combinations of individual words of power, when put together a certain way, capable of achieving a specific effect. Scholarly dwarves are on the forefront of combining genealogy and truenames, discovering how the personal truenames of dwarves within the same clan have some common syllables.

Humans living in the centers of major cities have access to some of the libraries and other resources so essential to learning truenames. They're also natural explorers, crossing the globe in search of new things to name. The division of truenames into three lexicons is largely a human invention, and now all truenamers enjoy the convenience of the three classifications.

Truenamers can also be found among elves and gnomes, although such characters tend to prefer a more organic approach to magic. Halflings and half-orcs frequently lack the discipline or access to sources of knowledge to make truename magic feasible, although some clans and tribes might include members with ranks in Truespeak, and perhaps knowledge of a few truename spells.

Truenamers have no preferred alignment. Both the blackest hearts and the purest souls seek to understand the cosmos by mastering truename magic. Evildoers want to reshape the universe for their own ends - or for those of their dark masters. The defenders of all that is good want to use truenames to create a more just, compassionate world. The rigid complexities of truename linguistics appeal to lawful characters, while chaotic characters love how truename magic confounds society's rules as an agent of fundamental change.

PLAYING A TRUENAMER

The whole point of being a truenamer is that your words have impact. You're at the table to be heard. Whether you're a glib negotiator, a master of riddles, or a laconic hero who speaks only when she must, you should develop a distinctive style for your character's speech.

As a truenamer, you're particularly interested in defining things. You want to figure out the game world and accurately name all its contents. That's what drives you to solve puzzles, uncover hidden enemies, and undertake other adventures: the desire to catalog and name all you encounter.

Any deity with knowledge, lore, or speech in its pantheon is a natural for truenamers. But more than that, truenamers favor the creator deity (if one exists) in a given pantheon. Many truenamers have the explicit or implicit belief that the creator deity used the language of truenames to define everything in the universe at the moment of creation, essentially speaking every truename at the beginning of time. Not every truenamer believes in the connection between the creation of the universe and the power of truenames, but most do. This can sometimes get truenamers in trouble with strongly orthodox religions that lack a creator deity or don't incorporate truenames into their creation story.

In the standard D&D pantheon, truenamers tend to worship Boccob (N), Vecna (NE), or the patron deities of a specific race such as Corellon Larethian (elves, CG), Moradin (dwarves, LN), Garl Glittergold (gnomes, NG), or Yondalla (halflings, LG).

Truenamers of the FORGOTTEN REALMS setting often venerate Azuth (LN), Gond (N), Lathander (NG), Mystra (NG), or Oghma (N). Some truenamers worship Selune or Shar due to their importance in the world's creation myth. Others favor Deneir because they see a connection between truenames and the Deneiran Metatext. The racial patron deities find worshipers among truenamers, too.

The truenamers of the EBERRON setting worship Aureon (LN), Onatar (NG), or the Path of Light (kalashtar, LN).

Most members of other classes know little about the ways of truename magic, and thus most will judge you independently of your magical inclinations. Wizards and some clerics are the most likely to know something of your art, and many can be invaluable allies, aiding you in your research and complementing your utterances with their own powerful forms of magic. You also benefit from the presence of strong melee combatants, as do spellcasters, since they can keep enemies away from you while you shake the battlefield and strike terror into the hearts of your foes from a distance. Allies can become mistrustful once they see your power and realize that they too have truenames, and some will take time before they become comfortable with you knowing their personal truenames.

Although you don't cast spells, strictly speaking, you're effectively a spellcaster in a fight. In a typical combat round, you attempt an utterance, hoping to damage or otherwise confound your enemies in some way, or to aid your allies. If you are wounded, you might be able to use an utterance to heal yourself. But your interesting combat options revolve around the utterances you have at your disposal.

If a foe proves especially resilient to your truename magic, or if your offensive utterances have been repeated to an extent that you can no longer succeed on your Truespeak checks, your tactical role in a fight shifts from offense to defense and support.

Once you have undergone your initial training, you can continue your studies in the downtime between adventures, much the way a wizard learns new spells. You're always practicing the pronunciation of truenames you already know and trying to figure out the truenames you don't know yet. Occasionally, you might visit the library of your mentor or a truename-aware organization so you can learn more truenames. When you reach higher levels, you might advance the lore of truenames yourself, discovering new truenames and becoming the first truenamer to speak them aloud.

As you attain more levels in the truenamer class, the most important choice you face is which utterances to learn. Each utterance from the Lexicon of the Evolving Mind represents an action, and its reverse, that you can use against friends or enemies. Eventually, you learn words that you can use to form utterances that affect objects and places. At every level, you learn a new utterance that can affect creatures you encounter. The words you can learn also increase in difficulty (and therefore increase in power) as you gain levels, allowing access to new, more powerful utterances.

TRUENAMERS IN THE WORLD

Truenamers are a good addition to a magic-rich campaign because they extend the boundaries of magic. What they do is unquestionably magical, but it doesn't involve spells, components, schools, or any of the other accoutrements normally associated with spellcasters.

Most truenamers are content to catalog new truenames, practice the truenames they already know, and engage in other linguistic and historical studies. Adventuring truenamers are an exception, however. They use truenames to bring their vision of the way the world should be that much closer to reality. Some are eager to find the truenames of monsters, places, and items that no sentient eyes have ever seen before - even if they have a hand in creating such things in the first place. Truenamers are curious about the world around them, so a high-level truenamer can make a good patron for lower-level PCs. Such truenamers often hire adventurers to gather rare items for study or to recover lost treasure troves of truenamer lore.

Perhaps the most famous truenamer is Khurufu the Eloquent, a human truenamer who lived centuries ago and founded several truenamer colleges that exist to this day. Khurufu lived to be more than 130 years old, although his mental faculties had diminished significantly from their peak. He didn't die so much as utter the truename for "ascend" and disappear. Some say that for centuries, Khurufu the Eloquent has been wandering the caves of Pandemonium, where the screaming wind drowns out his voice and makes rational thought impossible.

Several organizations of interest to truenamers exist, including the Collectors of the Lexicon and the Kingmakers.

Most people have an indifferent attitude toward truenamers, because truename magic is regarded as just another esoteric discipline. The average peasant doesn't distinguish between truenamers and wizards - they're all scholars who make magic, aren't they?

Truenamers likewise have few enemies. Logokron devils regard them as rivals and have starting attitudes of unfriendly.

TRUENAMER LORE

Characters with ranks in Knowledge (arcana) can research truenamers to learn more about them. When a character makes a skill check, read or paraphrase the following, including the information from lower DCs.

DC 10: Truenamers speak their magic aloud using long strings of what sounds like gibberish.

DC 15: Truenamers claim to tap into the power of a fundamental language of the universe, and if they know something's truename, they can affect it with their magic.

DC 20: Truenamers gradually learn more truenames and more ways to use each truename they know. They also can learn the personal truename of an individual creature, which gives them lots of power over that creature.

TRUENAMERS IN THE GAME

Truenamers rely on truename magic, obviously. But as long as truename magic is compatible with your ongoing campaign, you can introduce it gradually.

The most important way to keep the player of a truenamer happy is to let that truenamer use his most important utterances - especially those recently acquired. Mostly, though, truenamers are versatile enough to have fun in nearly any sort of encounter. You can pay attention to the types of utterances a truenamer takes to get a clue as to the types of encounters the player would enjoy most.

The underlying structure of the truenamer class is modular: He can use utterances and recitation feats. That leaves plenty of room to replace those elements described in this chapter with utterances and recitation feats invented by the truenamer or DM.

A truenamer, much as a spellcaster, can be a powerful ally or dire villain. In either case, he has an inquisitive mind and is eager to obtain any knowledge of truename magic the PCs have - possibly by any means. The first time a truenamer is encountered, the PCs are likely to assume him to be a wizard or sorcerer. Eventually, however, they will notice his unique delivery (no somatic or material components) and his unique approach to his art.

EL 9: Khetarin(NG male half-elf truenamer 9) found himself out of touch with his elven heritage from an early age. He felt that the elves' approach to magic as an almost living entity was too spiritual, when magic was really a tool to be studied and used. He discovered a reference to truename magic in a musty old tome in one of the elven libraries, and he was hooked. He eventually sought out a truename school in a distant human city, where he started down the path of the truenamer.

Khetarin is bookish and preoccupied, but can be dignified and charming if the occasion requires. He frequently stares at new acquaintances, which can be unsettling (he is mentally assembling the appropriate truename for each acquaintance he meets - just in case), but he is extremely knowledgeable and willing to help any group devoted to furthering knowledge and the greater good.