Volo's Guide to All Things Magical (AD&D Forgotten Realms) by Ed Greenwood, Eric L. Boyd

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Proper use of such magics as dweomer divination discern most words of activation if one possesses an item and not the word, but much time and trouble may be saved by testing the item with words from the following list. It should be noted that in the time after the fall of Myth Drannor, it became fashionable for several centuries to hide the actual trigger word inside a more easily memorized phrase. This practice fell out of favor because too many words of activation thus were everyday words23 and so too many items were unintentionally triggered—often with fatal or disastrously destructive results.

Many methods of magically shielding or altering the form of drow magical items have been tried to keep what little radiations they possess intact and functioning, but all have been in vain until now—perhaps. A certain mage of Kelazzan, one Harladryn, claims to have perfected a method of mixing dust from strongly radiant rocks, melted-down drow armor, or drow enchanted items with molten gold while still underground and casting certain cloaking spells on the resultant mixture that make the gold discs he produces (which resemble oversized gold coins) both strongly reflective and resistant to solar damage.

A successful awak- 30 ening may be heralded by a flash of light from the item, but this effect is never a harmful discharge of wild magic or item powers. The material components for this spell are a single priest spell scroll bearing at least as many spells as the item has functions, a gem of any sort of not less than 2,500 gp value each for each item function, and a living plant that has been altered by magic. Some sages believe an awakening is more likely to succeed (an additional +1 bonus to the item’s saving throw at the DM’s discretion) if a random dweomer-bearing component is also present in the spellcasting components.