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Jon_Dahl
2013-11-26, 09:40 AM
In my previous session, PCs raided and looted a lost library of the clergy of Vecna (evil god of secrets). The library is nonmagical and had been used by not-so-powerful worshippers. In other words, the library is nothing unusual or earth-shattering.

What kind of books are there in an evil pseudo-medieval library?

After hours of work, I have compiled the following.

Volumes / Genre or subject (volumes per language)
14 / Magical item creation guides (10 draconic, 1 dark elven, 1 elven, 1 infernal, 1 abyssal)
35 / Unofficial unholy scriptures (16 flan, 9 abyssal, 10 infernal)
15 / Prophesies (5 infernal, 5 abyssal, 4 draconic, 1 flan)
26 / History books (1 dark elven, 14 infernal, 5 abyssal, 5 draconic)
10 / Bookkeeping records of various sorts (infernal)
3 / Diaries of powerful clerics (2 infernal, 1 abyssal)
17 / Alchemy manuals (5 draconic, 3 dark elven, 1 elven, 4 infernal, 4 abyssal)
15 / Magic theory (6 draconic, 4 dark elven, 4 elven, 1 infernal)
1 / Ancient mysteries (draconic)
2 / Magic traditions (draconic)
1 / Magic symbols (draconic)
1 / Riddles (abyssal)
1 / Golems and other similar constructs (draconic)
1 / Dragons (draconic)
1 / Magical beasts (draconic)
2 / Architecture and building (1 dwarven, 1 elven)
4 / Caves (3 dark elven, 1 abyssal)
5 / Geography (1 dark elven, 1 orc, 1 elven, 2 draconic)
2 / Law (infernal)
3 / Warfare (1 orc, 1 dark elven, 1 elven)
5 / Practical magic (1 orc, 1 dark elven, 1 elven, 1 flan, 1 draconic)
3 / Weapons and armor (2 elven, 1 infernal)
10 / Animals (flan)
10 / Plants and fungi (flan)
1 / Nobility and politics (flan)
22 / Planes (10 infernal, 10 abyssal, 2 draconic)
15 / Linguistics (12 draconic, 1 infernal, 1 abyssal, 1 elven)
12 / Fictional novels and short stories (10 elven, 2 draconic)
10 / Songs and music sheets (5 elven, 3 dark elven, 2 flan)
3 / Agriculture (flan)
5 / Arts and art history (1 draconic, 2 elven, 2 dark elven)
4 / Physics (2 draconic, 2 infernal)
6 / Mathematics (2 draconic, 4 infernal)
2 / Seafaring (2 elven)
6 / Astronomy (3 draconic, 3 infernal)
1 / Astrology (draconic)
7 / Cryptology and cryptography (2 draconic, 5 infernal)
4 / Philosophy (1 dark elven, 2 draconic, 1 infernal)
2 / Healing and homeopathy (2 flan)
5 / Great secrets (draconic)
1 / List of known liches (draconic)
1 / List of temples (flan)
1 / List of powerful creatures and tribes (draconic)
A grand total of 300 books.

Languages are nothing important, please ignore them.
I wasn't sure which forum would be best for this: general, 3.5 or Homebrew. I would, however, like an opinion what would be the appropriate breakdown of such books.

Brookshw
2013-11-26, 10:02 AM
The list looks fine to me and I'm impressed you spent the time to break it all down, I probably would have just hand waved the exact list away as trivial. May I suggest looking for ways to either litter the books with plot hooks or some other way that they'll be moving the story? Well, you might already be doing just that so disregard.

Jay R
2013-11-26, 10:42 AM
If I were doing it, it would have all of Aristotle's works: Logic, Politics, Ethics, Rhetoric, Poetics, Physics, Metaphysics, Arcanics, and Meta-arcanics. (The last two don't exist, of course, but in a world with magic, Aristotle would have written about it.)

There would also b e a copy of Dungeon Crawlin' Fools.

hymer
2013-11-26, 10:46 AM
Impressive list! One thing I didn't see was biographies, though they may be under history. Books like dictionaries, grammar texts and the like might also have a place. Other themes that may or may not be covered (and which may or may not be appropriate) are forestry, rearing of rare animals (or horse and dog breeding, very big in certain noble circles), city planning, metalwork/metallurgy, rhetoric, anatomy, business/shipping/banking and six shelves of books about chess openings. :smallsmile:

Magesmiley
2013-11-26, 11:31 AM
You might add a few on church ceremonies and procedures.

Another might be a set of books (possibly with one of the books missing, just see how much that drives the PCs nuts) - maybe one on each school of magic.

Maybe a few books with a detailed analysis of prominent leaders and communities.

Cookbooks?

Bavarian itP
2013-11-26, 11:56 AM
Poetics,

Only the first book, right? The second one is much to hardcore for a bunch of low-level vecnaists.

btw. Vecna is the evil god of secrets, not the god of evil secrets :smalltongue:

Hyena
2013-11-26, 11:58 AM
"How to serve man".

Jon_Dahl
2013-11-26, 12:14 PM
I'm glad that some of you have liked my work :smallsmile:

http://gifwall.net/gif/arrrrrska.gif
Good ideas so far! Playgrounders obviously have a solid understanding what should be in Vecnaists' library. Keep them coming.

BWR
2013-11-26, 01:28 PM
Self-help books on how to cope with amputations and you're cheating spouse lieutenant.
Issues of Playcorpse.
A few half-finished badly written self-insert fanfics (like about how Vecna almost became a god by doing some impossible things like cheating his way into Sigil, and his worshippers believe the lies).
A few folders with titles like "Top Secret: Project X" or "Ultraclassified: The Overlord Enterprise"

Apart from that, you're good. Now you just need to make names and details about the books. That's one of the things I loved about Ars Magica - finding a book with a title and author. Sure, the mechanics were the same but it added a lot of flavor.
"A book on Knowledge (the planes)" doesn't sound nearly as cool as "Sigil and Beyond: the collected wisdom of Tarsheva Longreach" by Ashy, planewalker blood.

dysprosium
2013-11-26, 01:35 PM
You have quite an excellent list of topics for the tomes themselves. Finding a topic not covered is difficult.

There could be interesting notes/folded papers inside some of the books--critiques of a certain wizard's findings or theories for example.

There could also be a collection of correspondences between various leaders or other important people.

Maybe books on archaeology--Books on Old Empires or books written about what was contemporary for them.

TriForce
2013-11-26, 01:47 PM
"mating rituals of the orcs"

a grand report about every single thing orcs ever did in order to reproduce, and everything they do in order to get someone of the opposite sex in the right mood to not kill them while doing it. in graphic and extensive detail

Brookshw
2013-11-26, 01:48 PM
Various books on anatomy?

Never enough books of fiendish politics.

Children of various gods?

Pex
2013-11-26, 02:12 PM
What about the obvious?

What's the true deal about Kas? Where is his sword?

Does Vecna want his eye and hand back? Why or why not? Where are they?

Jon_Dahl
2013-11-26, 03:14 PM
One of the reasons I'm putting lots of effort into this library is that the players have already looted a library once, and at that time they wanted to get something out of the books and learn lots of cool secrets, but I mainly just avoided the whole thing and gave minimal information to my players. This time I'd like to be a bit more prepared.


What about the obvious?

What's the true deal about Kas? Where is his sword?

Does Vecna want his eye and hand back? Why or why not? Where are they?

Thank you for the suggestion, but I feel that this sort of information is too classified for the run-of-the-mill clergymen and worshippers such as these. This is not the personal library of Vecna.

TechnoWarforged
2013-11-26, 03:17 PM
For laughs:

Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

The Prince by Machiavelli

The Evil Overlord List

How to cook Humans - various contribution

Chicken Soup for the Infernal Souls.

The Voynich Manuscript

The Game by Neil Strauss

Radar
2013-11-26, 03:37 PM
Maybe some books on organising, infiltrating and controling conspiracies or other forms of secret societies? A real of fictional in-world version of Who's Who? Some books on numerology? A copy of Voynich manuscript with added notes in yet another impenetrable cypher? Scrapbook with pieces of various scrolls with Beautiful Mind-style notes on them?

Also worth pondering on: if you want to throw your players a curve ball, some pages in those books should visibly be missing (torn out for example), but upon closer inspection (Forgery check) they will notice, that those brutaly torn pages were added later to an otherwise full book, or that there were more missing pages, but they were removed more gently. Now why would anyone do that? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0UzpSzkeys)

edit: the library should have some books in druidic, since it's one of the most closely guarded secret languages in a typical D&D world.

Pex
2013-11-26, 11:44 PM
Thank you for the suggestion, but I feel that this sort of information is too classified for the run-of-the-mill clergymen and worshippers such as these. This is not the personal library of Vecna.

Perfect place to hide the information. Who would expect something so valuable in a place not so important? It's just a matter of knowing where to look. The common trope is in the arrangement of the normal books - a pattern in the binders, the Nth word of each title, the Xth letter of each title, the first, middle, or last word of each book, etc. One clue could be the books are not arranged in alphabetical order. The arrangement could be K to R, A to J, S to Z.

valadil
2013-11-27, 12:26 AM
Thank you for the suggestion, but I feel that this sort of information is too classified for the run-of-the-mill clergymen and worshippers such as these. This is not the personal library of Vecna.

Oooh. This looks like a good spot for a puzzle I thought of but haven't been able to use.

I wanted to make the PCs raid a library looking for a specific book that holds the secret of winning the campaign. They get the book, but an entire chapter is torn out. (In your case, I could see this as censorship from the run-of-the-mill clergymen.) However, if the players are observant they'll notice that the bibliography is intact. Now they have a MacGuffin per bibliography entry to collect.

nedz
2013-11-27, 06:45 AM
"How to ghost write a Wizard's spellbook"
(Or various puns around this)

If you're going for the medieval feel you should have epic poetry rather than novels and short stories. Prose fiction is a modern concept.

Gnome Alone
2013-11-27, 08:35 AM
Issues of Playcorpse.
Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! *ahem* Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Moving on, how about an illithid cookbook for brains?

Rockphed
2013-11-27, 11:16 PM
You have dark scriptures, but not those of nominally good dieties. There should be at least one book on Pelor, the Burning Hate, Bahamut, Lord of Possession, or Correlon, Kinslayer. They should have all the proper cross references with the more mainstream scriptures of said deities highlighting how the precepts taught by their priests really lead to a life of evil and debauchery.

Also, I'm not sure if you intend to have all your books be bound, but consider having some be scrolls or unbound collections of parchment.

Finally, considering that all books had to be hand copied until the printing press, consider having incomplete copies of some books.

GoblinArchmage
2013-11-28, 12:55 AM
I'm not seeing any tween romance or scatalogical erotica. Your library is a disappointment.

The Oni
2013-11-28, 01:57 AM
Don't forget; the Dewey Decimal System should be STRICTLY enforced, with the punishment of being made into still-living book jackets/bookmarks.

Mastikator
2013-11-28, 05:53 AM
"How to serve man".

Chapter 1, With Béarnaise sauce

Rockphed
2013-11-28, 07:42 AM
I'm not seeing any tween romance or scatalogical erotica. Your library is a disappointment.


Don't forget; the Dewey Decimal System should be STRICTLY enforced, with the punishment of being made into still-living book jackets/bookmarks.

Somehow this combination is much more horrific than I can express.

Jon_Dahl
2013-11-28, 08:48 AM
Thread starting to get a funny-haha turn, but otherwise good stuff. More, please!

falloutimperial
2013-11-28, 09:39 AM
I am interested to know if you came up with that original list yourself or if you used some generator or tool.

These online generators from Seventh Sanctum won't generate books, but can be useful for determining their individual quality, originality, etc.

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=bookspinnerinco

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=bookspinnerbkex

Jon_Dahl
2013-11-28, 12:20 PM
I am interested to know if you came up with that original list yourself or if you used some generator or tool.

These online generators from Seventh Sanctum won't generate books, but can be useful for determining their individual quality, originality, etc.

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=bookspinnerinco

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=bookspinnerbkex

I can assure you that I came up with the list myself :) No tool or generator was used.
Thank you for link falloutimperial! They're great for flavor if they read the books.

Brookshw
2013-11-28, 12:46 PM
So is it stricktly book names/topics you want, or do you want secrets that can be plot hooks? The latter I can provide a plethora of, the former is somewhat covered already. Also I'd suggest various circumstance bonuses on knowledge checks.

Subaru Kujo
2013-11-28, 04:32 PM
There's also the problem of how you are going to cart all these books out of the place. If they do it in a mundane way, it may or may not take a great deal of time to get em all out.

Also, any magical traps in them to spook the party when a book is open? For instance one that attempts to bite a party member on being opened.

Jon_Dahl
2013-11-29, 07:31 AM
So is it stricktly book names/topics you want, or do you want secrets that can be plot hooks? The latter I can provide a plethora of, the former is somewhat covered already. Also I'd suggest various circumstance bonuses on knowledge checks.

Plot hooks are appreciated, even though it's not specified in the OP. Plot hooks should be something non-epic. It was a library for the non-powerful worshippers, and a few powerful clerics that led them.

Brookshw
2013-11-29, 07:53 AM
Plot hooks are appreciated, even though it's not specified in the OP. Plot hooks should be something non-epic. It was a library for the non-powerful worshippers, and a few powerful clerics that led them.

Okay, easy enough. If you want to tell a bit about the campaign, party level, and where you want things to head I'll be happy to try and tailor them to be more specific to your set-up, but here are a few general ideas.

- Noble X is secretly spying for another nation. What to do?
- Noble X was working and getting away with subterfuge/sabotage. Black mail or expose?
- There is a Noble working against the nation/another noble (or really you could replace Noble/Nation with any organization). Discover which?
- Consortium of merchants is plotting to overthrow kingdom and install puppet ruler.
- Disappearances happening around city Y are due to the cult of the X which was thought to have been destroyed years ago.
- location for imprisoned angel/devil/demon.
- list of demon/devil true names (though you'd have to home brew what this means)
- Though the nation publicly executed some assassin it was an elaborate ruse and they're now using him to their own purposes.
- Captain of the guards is secretly a member of cult X and is helping them build up to some sort of scheme.
- A band of adventurers was lost while in the Mountains of X but actually stumbled into some demi-plane and became trapped. Rescue mission?
- Cult X which possessed the treasure Y was destroyed years ago but the treasure never recovered. You've found out where it was secretly hidden. Let's go looting!
- The secret identity of the guild of assassins/thieves.
- Mage X has been building power and plans to use it to summon something nasty and set up his own empire.
- The ancient dragon living not too far off used to be fond of a particular statue that was lost and would probably reward anyone who could retrieve it.
- The ancient dragon has a hatred of a particular song and is well known to fly into a rage when hearing it. A weakness to exploit? (rage, no spells, no tactical thinking when the song is playing).
- A battle fought long ago between a powerful celestial/demon ended and one (whichever more convenient) fell to the earth. Where it's body landed a pool of water came to be. Items immersed in the pool under the full moonlight gain new properties.

Hope some of these help

Eldan
2013-11-29, 09:17 AM
You have books on weapons and armour, but one thing that may or may not be missing is training manuals. Many weapon masters had elaborately illustrated books on fighting techniques done.

Perhaps on the very mundane end: things like tax records, census records, shipping manifests and so on? Not that anyone except maybe historians would be interested in those, but they were stored there at some point and never moved out.

BWR
2013-11-29, 09:39 AM
No official name: Tax records and treatises of the county of [Flanshire], Years X-Y [insert appropriate area and age a couple of centuries ago].

Mostly a boring work but there are copies of boundary agreements. A close perusal of the relevant documents and the area they describe show several large discrepancies between that and the current acknowledge boundaries between two powerful nobles. The old boundaries are notaried by the then-ruler of the lands and no one can come up with any copy of the treaty, especially one that is official regarding the new border.

The piece of land can either be relatively unimportant in itself, or it an important resource (perhaps a gold or silver mine) can have been found there.
In either case, for whatever reason, once the documents come to light the rightful owner will press his/her claim and the current owner will refuse to let it go. The two could come to blows over the matter. The PCs can support either side they wish, perhaps just giving the records to the current owner so he can quietly fix some modern contracts about it and cement his hold.
Perhaps there will be a small civil war over the matter. In either case it's an excellent opportunity for the PCs to get involved with the nobility, or strengthen existing bonds.

Jay R
2013-11-29, 01:07 PM
Shipping manifests and trading agreements might show the existence of a rich island nobody else knows about, or that a certain currently peaceful nation is hiring lots of mercenaries at present, indicating a planned invasion. They could also document an illegal slave trade. The castle owners might be trading with the owners of a hidden mithril mine. (Or an old map might show the location of an unknown mine or island, or a long-lost city whose ruins are worth exploring.

Pick the next adventure, then invent the clues in the library.

Rockphed
2013-11-29, 02:27 PM
No official name: Tax records and treatises of the county of [Flanshire], Years X-Y [insert appropriate area and age a couple of centuries ago].

Mostly a boring work but there are copies of boundary agreements. A close perusal of the relevant documents and the area they describe show several large discrepancies between that and the current acknowledge boundaries between two powerful nobles. The old boundaries are notaried by the then-ruler of the lands and no one can come up with any copy of the treaty, especially one that is official regarding the new border.

The piece of land can either be relatively unimportant in itself, or it an important resource (perhaps a gold or silver mine) can have been found there.
In either case, for whatever reason, once the documents come to light the rightful owner will press his/her claim and the current owner will refuse to let it go. The two could come to blows over the matter. The PCs can support either side they wish, perhaps just giving the records to the current owner so he can quietly fix some modern contracts about it and cement his hold.
Perhaps there will be a small civil war over the matter. In either case it's an excellent opportunity for the PCs to get involved with the nobility, or strengthen existing bonds.

Other possibilities in this vein include supposedly lost genealogies of various nobles a couple generations back, probably with notes on which town houses a better heir to a title than the current heir apparent.

Jon_Dahl
2013-11-30, 01:04 PM
Okay, easy enough. If you want to tell a bit about the campaign, party level, and where you want things to head I'll be happy to try and tailor them to be more specific to your set-up, but here are a few general ideas.

- Noble X is secretly spying for another nation. What to do?
- Noble X was working and getting away with subterfuge/sabotage. Black mail or expose?
- There is a Noble working against the nation/another noble (or really you could replace Noble/Nation with any organization). Discover which?
- Consortium of merchants is plotting to overthrow kingdom and install puppet ruler.
- Disappearances happening around city Y are due to the cult of the X which was thought to have been destroyed years ago.
- location for imprisoned angel/devil/demon.
- list of demon/devil true names (though you'd have to home brew what this means)
- Though the nation publicly executed some assassin it was an elaborate ruse and they're now using him to their own purposes.
- Captain of the guards is secretly a member of cult X and is helping them build up to some sort of scheme.
- A band of adventurers was lost while in the Mountains of X but actually stumbled into some demi-plane and became trapped. Rescue mission?
- Cult X which possessed the treasure Y was destroyed years ago but the treasure never recovered. You've found out where it was secretly hidden. Let's go looting!
- The secret identity of the guild of assassins/thieves.
- Mage X has been building power and plans to use it to summon something nasty and set up his own empire.
- The ancient dragon living not too far off used to be fond of a particular statue that was lost and would probably reward anyone who could retrieve it.
- The ancient dragon has a hatred of a particular song and is well known to fly into a rage when hearing it. A weakness to exploit? (rage, no spells, no tactical thinking when the song is playing).
- A battle fought long ago between a powerful celestial/demon ended and one (whichever more convenient) fell to the earth. Where it's body landed a pool of water came to be. Items immersed in the pool under the full moonlight gain new properties.

Hope some of these help

Thank you so much Brookshw! The library is 1000 years old and part of a defunct empire, so some of those do not apply well, but overall they are useful.

Thanks for the great ideas everyone! The library might see its first use tomorrow...

Brookshw
2013-11-30, 02:28 PM
The library is 1000 years old and part of a defunct empire

Even more fun! Here's a few more to get your creative juices flowing.
- Huh, there used to be a powerful wizard looking to turn himself into a lich. Wait, isn't there some notable family with the same last name?
- An ancient seer left powerful scrolls of prophecy for later generations, but in his paranoia they were encoded and no one's broken the code. Hey, I think we just found the cipher!
- A demon worshiping cult was planning on reforming themselves as the Church of X to operate in the public eye. That doesn't sound anything like the Church of X I know of, does it?
- Ancient maps
- huh, there used to be some rich city. I've never heard of it nor have any of the learned people we know. I wonder if there's anything left....
- Oh, the temple of X used to house Artifact Y and was located on an island off the coast. Wait a second, there's no island there. Where'd it go?

-The ancient empire used to have a special prison it used to hold powerful items? Hey, interesting, here's the journal of the guy who ran the place!
-The empire had a contingency plan for if it was ever threatened and was going to move it's wealth to location X. Huh, well they never arrived but we have a map of the course they were going to take.....
- Huh, an ancient treaties between two modern day kingdoms. Wait, do they remember this treaties?
- Oh, the ancient king of the dwarves was said to have been extremely knowledgeable about [whatever mystery]. Perhaps he left a legacy?

And a general aside, do you use the plane of shadow? One of the set ups I occasionally use is to have the party travel into the plane of shadow to look for the reflection of the past. The kingdom is fallen but the wards are intact, we can't get by the whatever. Quick jump to the plane of shadows to find the well deceased reflections of those who used to live in the kingdom. I bet they know how to get past the wards. Something to that effect.

Anyway, have fun storming the castle, let us know how it goes :smallbiggrin:

Moriwen
2013-11-30, 11:29 PM
Surely there should be some reference books in there? Dictionaries (both of the definition sort and of the translation sort), encyclopedias, almanacs, and of course a catalog of the library. Consider some meta- stuff too: "Tugog's Guide to the Prophetic Works of the 14th Century: A Brief Overview" could discuss which of the prophesies are likely to be more accurate, which are believed to be later interpolations, what translations are best...