Finding the Chronicle of the Righteous

[Madokar]

Time to pick the community's brain. I'm writing my first campaign, and one of the main enemy factions is the Cult of Haagenti. They are led by a Succubus Oracle who has completed the Rituals of Fiendish Apotheosis. She accomplished this through visions from Haagenti that directed her to the Demonic Book of the Damned.

Now, I would like the PCs to be able to match this advantage. So I'd like them to earn the right to use the Chronicle of the Righteous towards the end of the campaign. And truth be told, they'll need that advantage. Depending on how the PCs play out the campaign, the final boss might be a Half-Balor Antipaladin of Haagenti.

The Chronicle can bestow many benefits. Primarily of which, it can be a repository of information that the PCs can be creative with to figure out advantages to win the final boss battle. This ranges from discovering fiendish weaknesses to the locations of Celestial weapons and armour.

Thing is, I don't know how to present the option to the PCs. I toyed with the idea of the PCs being directed to the current guardian of the Chronicle. But it seems like it has too many cogs. They'd also probably have to leave the country to find him.

Also, once they found the location of the Chronicle, they'll need to pass some tests to prove they are worthy of the knowledge. Which I feel shouldn't just be combat. But tests of character and roleplay skill.

Any thoughts?

[JMAP94]

1) have some sort of demon who is posing as a disciple of the secret order whose job it is to protect the secret of who the person who holds the chronicle is and are responsible of passing it down from keeper to keeper. Each day have disciples in the town dissappear. The town Sheriff hires the adventurers investigate the murders, the town members don't seem to care much because these disciples are weird cultish people (and actually believe that the dissappearences are voluntary and part of some ritual). Over the course of the investigation, the party learns more and more about the chronicle and the order. They eventually find the imposter, and gain the trust of the order.

2) some rare book collector (could be a demon as well) offers them a megaton of gold (like almost almost absurd levels) to go find and bring him or her the chronicle, then the players learn about the books supposed power and habe to choose between selling the book or doing the trials to see if the tales be true.

3)have the keeper die and his disciples must find the new keeper who's a pc chosen by prophecy.