Something missing from this library?

[Jon_Dahl]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Magesmiley]

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]

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

[Hyena]

"How to serve man".

[Jon_Dahl]

I'm glad that some of you have liked my work

Spoiler

Show

Good ideas so far! Playgrounders obviously have a solid understanding what should be in Vecnaists' library. Keep them coming.

[BWR]

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]

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]

"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]

Various books on anatomy?

Never enough books of fiendish politics.

Children of various gods?

[Pex]

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]

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]

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]

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?

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]

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]

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]

"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]

Issues of Playcorpse.

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! *ahem* Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Moving on, how about an illithid cookbook for brains?

[Rockphed]

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]

I'm not seeing any tween romance or scatalogical erotica. Your library is a disappointment.

[The Oni]

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

[Mastikator]

"How to serve man".

Chapter 1, With Béarnaise sauce

[Rockphed]

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]

Thread starting to get a funny-haha turn, but otherwise good stuff. More, please!

[falloutimperial]

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/genera...ookspinnerinco

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/genera...ookspinnerbkex

[Jon_Dahl]

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/genera...ookspinnerinco

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/genera...ookspinnerbkex

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]

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]

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.