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ToohrVyk
2006-07-24, 08:33 AM
The quiet servant leads you through the winding and dusty corridors of the old museum, to a large and heavily decorated room. An old bald man with a white mustache greets you, seemingly indifferent to the countless artifacts on display around him. With a smile, he fingers through a large, thick book and reads a short passage to you.

"Where is the Pyrestaff?" he asks aloud, addressing no one. "In the Northlord's cold, dead hand" he answers, reading from the strange grimoire. "With its last owner is the Pyrestaff buried". He stares at you intentfully. As usual, you raid a lost tomb and keep all the treasure for yourself, save for a single item that goes to your contractor's ever increasing collection of esoteric relics.

"Where is the Northlord's tomb?" he now asks, shuffling through the thick velin. "North, north and north again, past the red peaks and alongside the lake that is now gone shall you find his burial mound."

With a short gesture he waves you away to your mission, mumbling to himself as he refers to the book once more. "Where are my keys?"


The Grimoire of Time and Space is a timeless artifact rumored to have always existed. Within its pages lie the answers to all questions about time and space, and anyone with the patience or skill can unravel them.

The Grimoire contains an infinite amount of pages, although scholars are still pondering on the possibility of such a thing. This does, however, explain the lack of page numbering. The old dusty book contains the answer to any question starting by Where or When with utmost correctness (although it might lack in precision, or be obscure enough to be misinterpreted). The old tome also has a tendency for answering the literal meaning of a question. The book always appears to be written in a language and alphabet that the reader can understand.

Opening the book with a question in mind first leads to an index. Its pages are covered in hundreds of entries each, yet the name and number of the chapter that contains the answer will magically stand out of the page on which the book is opened.

To reach the answer, the reader may then turn the pages (a lengthy undertaking, given that each chapter contains an infinite number of these) or open the grimoire again at random, hoping to stumble upon the correct chapter and page. An answer may be found within seconds of the book's opening, or the reader might be forced to shuffle through it for a very long time. Some sages have postulated that when trying to predict the future, the book sometimes refuses to give an answer if free will would get in the way.

Opening the book at random without a question in mind (or an invalid question) yields random results, which are useless without exception, ranging from amusing trivia on the location of the first grey hair of a long dead empress to puzzling answers to an absurd question.

Altair_the_Vexed
2006-07-24, 10:31 AM
Nice.

An artefact, of course. What's lacking in your excellent description is concrete guidance on what the Grimoire will refuse to answer, a visual description of the book (size, colour, that sort of thing), chances of finding answers.
Sure, you could leave the whole thing up to the DM, but that's going to really skew the sort of results you get.
Maybe a random table with a few subject hints for random questioning / opening would help.

ToohrVyk
2006-07-24, 01:34 PM
Good idea. I'll work on this.