I love the hell out of books and
naturally my bibliomania pushes its way into the campaign. In fact my
notebooks are sloppy with this kind of in-game artifacts and
self-indulgence. Five best-selling examples from the campaign year 40214...
A Briefe and True Report of the
Divers Land and Peoples of the Feral Shore
Author: Alojiza nad Hromon
Physical Appearance: Crimson pelgrane
hide cover with a gorgeously-illuminated interior rendered in the ink
of bisytsia (she-devil) tears. Pressed paper (disappointingly
cheap and thin). 86 pages
Cost: 149 gold suns and 99 copper sags
The third best-selling release this
year from the Guild of Potboilers,
Ghost Writers, Scribes and Jakes Farmers. The book is
“selling in the tens,” an astounding commercial hat trick for the
guild, and relates the author's experiences having scandalously
dressed in simple cloth and cut her exquisite curly main into a bob
to pass as a common laborer in the little-known Kezmaroki crown
colony called Karldeset (or King's Ten). Strangely the book is written in the form of random tables.
Choice Excerpts:
“5. The colonists of the Shore
differ much in apparel from the Kežmarokis although little in
indolence and deceitfulness.”
“38. The Lords of the Shore are
coarse and low. Indeed they wallow in their base natures,
self-describing their Company as the Nefarious Nine. Colony
discipline is handled quite-literally by a clown who fear of curbs
the excess of vice commonly found in an assemblage of drink-besotted
laboring men. And the rest of the bizarre Nine number among them an
oily grifter, a disturbing doctor of unknown academic acumen, a
full-toothed handsome but shady royal pretender, a foppishly-attired
cave dwarf, a vinegar-smelling half-giant, a drunken alien priest,
and a clockwork midget.”
“59. It is an error to call those on
the Shore heretically ultra-orthodox (as is the common way with
Kežiamoors), the folk are true pagans raising a vast new temple—in
between two villages inhabited only by monkeys--to the vanity of the
dead many-faced gods of the Old Pahr.”
A Brief Relation of the
World-Dungeon Unitary, As it Was Delivered to the Folk of Marlinko
Author: Son of
Mulmak
Physical
Appearance: Folded, continuous codex with pressed paper and printed
by a cutting-edge “printing press”. 16 pages.
Cost: 20 gold suns
A provocative new pamphlet rocking the
excitable (and riot-prone) academic world of the Cantons. The
booklet theorizes that mirroring the surface of the world is a
vast subterranean network of dank chambers, byzantine tunnels, tomb
complexes, fiendish traps, treasure houses, and creatures fell.
That said “dungeons” combining
those elements exist is a matter of consensus among scholars, but
this new doctrine of pandungeonism that claims that all
said murderholes are but the surface manifestations of a single
world-dungeon has already drawn the ire of the ecumenical council of
the Temple who have deemed it and its anonymous author “borderline
heretical.”
The Altricious Cycle of Supernal
Japery
Author: Third-Commander Jaasher,
translation by Lady Szara
Physical Appearance: Compressed
fingernail-clipping cover with scraped donkey-skin parchment.
48 pages
Cost: 250 gold suns
A cruelly satirical book of poetry
written in Classical Eld Iambic pentameter now translated into the
vernacular of Low Hyperborean by the famous society lady (and rumored
strigoi) Lady Szara. The translated copy is subtitled “As Seen in
the Slumbering Ursine Dunes” and sports a promotional blurb
from Sir Eld: “The underdeveloped hairless ape mind cannot wrap its
feeble brain capacity around the sheer joy and wonder of Jaasher's
work. Still buy it if you must.”
Five Shades of Azure
Author: Captain Balazas
Physical Appearance: Sparse but
functional leather-bound volume with standard vellum. Full-color
erotic plates inside. 128 pages.
Cost: 300 gold suns
Choice Excerpt: “Contrary to the
prejudices of the Rock [High Kežmarok] our Pahr subjects here on the
Shore are not quite the uncouth louts they are made out to be in
polite society. To the contrary, I have had many a pleasing—if such
a word can be used when suffering the pains of court exile—moment
here at Vygrot in their hearty bearded company laughing at their
colorful tall tales, seeing the blush of the red-cheeked village
maidens in their white linen and floral bodices...[long, racy and
embarrassingly clumsy digression].
Lost Vlko and Romuilak the Lupine
Author:
Unattributed but commissioned by “He Whose Howls Echo Among the
Ages, His Fecundity, Tazrun, the Illuminous and Mighty Seneschal of
All the Southlands.”
Physical Appearance: Embroidered leather cover
strung with cat-gut and smelling vaguely of wet dog. 64 pages
Cost: 150 gold suns
Choice Excerpt: “For a people who had
their origin in the horse-stunk nomad hordes of the Sea of Grass the
Pahr people have been remarkably at home in the scrubby hills,
rounded peaks, high valleys and crags of Zem. While many of the hill
clans have long since been domesticated into the (slightly) more
sedate lives of Overkingdom cantons, tales of the “lost kingdoms”,
Old Pahr petty mountain kingdoms that dropped from the historical
record centuries ago--and into the popular imagination of this day.
One such tale that looms large in the
so-called Southern Cycle, that great collection of folk ballads and
tall tales of how the Pahr came to migrate, conquer and be conquered
in the post-Hyperborean era, is that of Vlko and its hirsute,
half-wild founder, Romuilak the Lupine. Many a man of science would
like to believe that Vlko still exists, nestled high in the Cerny
mountains, with a people prospering by the simple, bellicose virtues
of the Old Pahr hidden and secure from modernity.”
Also Rans
A Modest Survey of History High and Low in the Overkingdom's Late Modernity by the scandal-ridden Cantontonal historian Jiri Paveliak (whose elaborate backstory bedazzles all).
A Modest Survey of History High and Low in the Overkingdom's Late Modernity by the scandal-ridden Cantontonal historian Jiri Paveliak (whose elaborate backstory bedazzles all).
The World-Dialectic: Is it For You?
by Jarek the Nagsman.
There's a program called PocketMods that lays an 8-page PDF out across one page so that you can cut and fold it into a stapleless book. I've been using it to make a few little books to hand out to players when they're researching or when they find books as treasure.
ReplyDeleteOh that's super neato, definitely will have to use that. Thanks!
DeleteWhy didn't you mention any of the works by Mandamus the Scholar? His paper on the intersection of the semantics of Fourth Dynasy Hyperboran heiroglyphics with the eschatology of atemporal extradimensional beings as found in subterranean environments caused quite the stir at last year's academic conference.
ReplyDeleteSadly I believe I failed my saving throw throw and was thus asleep during the presentation. It's sitting on my night stand now...
DeleteIt's funny how often that happens ...
Delete