Professor Abelhous Nicholsi (NPC)

Abelhous Nicholsi was a renowned botanist and biologist who taught at the University of Il Aluk. He was born in Darkon to a family of farmers in 689 BC. After completing his studies at the university in 718 BC, he was asked to remain as a teacher. Six years later he was attacked by a carnivorous crawling ivy which spurred his interest in dread plants. The plant had been used by Julia Fyrehaaven to murder her husband, a fellow professor at the university. Professor Nicholsi exposed the plot and earned her wrath. She escaped the police and from time to time attempted to have her revenge, generally using plant based poisons or dread plants. The face of the professor was disfigured by the feasting of a goblyn during a field trip to Forlorn in 731 BC. He investigated a meteor shower in Hazlan in 743 BC, in the hope of locating the infamous doppleganger plant. While there Governor Pall Ibington arranged for him to inspect the remains of an illithid. He escaped the grisly fate visited upon Il Aluk by the Requiem in 750 BC, being away on a sabbatical in the jungle of Sri Raji. Upon his return he settled in Karg from where he attempted to pull together the surviving faculty of the University of Il Aluk. His success in this may have given rise to the University of Il Aluk in Exile at Karg. At the latest he perished in 755 BC. And at the earliest he perished in the fall of 751 BC based upon the in game date of The Book of Souls. In any case he had time to write about about this research in Sri Raji.

Curiously enough the lantern jack was developed with the assistence of the professor, despite him having no aptitude for magic. It doesn't seem to be implied that he was a kill by the dread plant. One of the students that joined him in Sri Raji returned as a Typhoid Mary but again it doesn't seem to be implied that this was the end of him either.

Professor Nicholsi published numerous works:

• Soil Content and Agricultural Crops
• Crop Yields and Traditional Farming Techniques
• Medicinal Applications of Native Darkonian Flora
• Psychotropic Plants and the Mystic Tradition
• Distinctive Signatures of Flora and Floral Derivatives in Homicide
• Practical Chemical Derivatives of Core Flora
• Dangerous Flora: A Guide to Carnivorous and Toxic Plants
• Flora and Fauna of the Forfarian Forests
• Flora and Fauna of the Mordent Moorlands
• Cryptobotany: Search for the Doppleganger Plant and Others
• Speculative Biology of an Inhabitant of Bluetspur
• Native Flora of the Tropical Forests of Sri Raji.

Data not yet in the Ravenloft Catalogue

		The Book of Souls
		The Book of Souls - p47
		The Book of Souls - p46-7