Miscellany of strange, curious and magic books - 3

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2016. More posts in English here.

Greetings, munificent readers, today I bring you the third part of muy miscellany of strange, curious and magic books, where I talk about interesting stuff about books and how to apply it to the noble art of role-playing gaming.

As I said previously, these are mostly notes and ideas in case I DM my dream campaign of Bookhounds of Vornheim. It's close, I can feel it in my bones. But meanwhile, if you find them useful or interesting, all the better.

Today we start with walled books, not to be confused with walls of books. :D (Kill me). In 1995, during some works in a house of Barcarrota (Spain), a construction worker took down a wall and found a treasure: books from the 1500's and, among them, an edition of the Lazarillo de Tormes unknown until then and other books that were persecuted by the inquisition back then. Hm... If this doesn't give you ideas, I have some: people that needs help hiding their books during prosecution, mysterious books found unexpectedly or, if the players are bookhounds, that they would have to hide their stock to avoide censorship. This goes very well with the trope of the found manuscript, pretty common in fantasy: "I'm not making this up, I'm transcribing it from an Arabic text I found in a chest with seven locks...". Or things like the Dead Sea Manuscripts: tens of religious texts well preserved in a cave complex.

But there are better places to leave your books. Let's talk a bit about libraries, bookshops and related places.

These have always been a pretty common trope, especially in the more D&D-related fantasy and an outstanding example is the Libarary of Asria from Goblinpunch. On the first part they tell us about how it is mantained by a race o amazon-librarians and their boss: a librarian that turned himself into an analogic computer made of books to perform his functions more efficiently.

And the second part tells us about how the books take consciousness in the library, communicate among themselves and their contents change depending on this.

That reminds me a lot of another library where the books come to life, has so many that it has infinite space, guards the spellbook of the Creator itself and is managed by an orangutan. I speak, of course, of the Unseen University of Ankh-Morpork. One of the things I liked the most about it were the different ways they had to use to contain different types of spellbooks. Sometimes chains were not enough and, for example, they had to keep erotic spellbooks in freezing water.

And, now that we are at it, the Discworld has a lot of other interesting things about books, like the library of the Death, with books that tell the life-story of everybody and are written on real time.

In the Avatar animated series, we also have the library of Wan Shi Tong lost and buried in the desert, with foxes that steal scrolls for the owl librarian who is actually a spirit... And it also has things that are not books, like maps or a planetarium.

And not everything is going to be normal libraries. For example, in places where there is not a lot of money and reading is the main pastime, bookshops that just rent books wouldn't be that strange, like in Forbidden Scrollery.

Or there are also moving libraries, like a library bus, donkey, camel like in Kenya, boat as in the fjords (they already have supermarket boats, for example) or even tank reconverted into a library: the weapon of mass instruction.

Although, of course, on the "age" that is usually featured in medieval fantasy, most libraries are private and can be found especially in monasteries, cathedrals, palaces, universities or great centers of learning like the Library of Alexandria (that, if I am well-informed, had also an observatory, a zoo and a botanic garden).

In summary: you couldn't get there and just take a book. And it would be even less likely for someone to have an idea like making a bird house where you can take and leave books freely: books, even the ones that were badly printed, are still relatively valuable. Something like that would only exist in places like a court to share the last romantic novels that aren't, of course, read by anyone decent.

And, lastly, libraries also have forbidden sections. The one in Hogwarts is based on something very real and, like almost everything else, the Germans have a word for it: Giftschrank, the poison cabinet. Usually these books are preserved because their ideas are considered dangerous and that's why they are to be studied only by an elite to know them and be able to combat them, which is also one of the ideas behind books that can only be sold whith annotations like the Mein Kampf. If you are interested, you can check this other post.

And if you are interested in something to keep in your Giftschrank, what about books bound with human skin or some occult spellbook, including one with strange rituals that allow to summon the being known as the Baktiotha?

Although I really like random facts about books, making a list of this kind of weird stuff is the main purpose of this series of posts.

For example, The Story of the Vivian Girls is a very long epic science-fantasy story written for years by a caretaker that ran away from a psychiatric institution that lived in a small apartment. And the story also had illustrations made with watercolors and photographies. Who knows who much of this is actually true? Wink, wink.

Prophecy books, of which I already spoke on the last post, are also a popular options: like Nostradamos, the Chronicle of Portents and Profecies, or The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter in Good Omens—an unpublished manuscript of prophecies that would be really valuable in a fantasy world. And, about this last one, it would be funny to see how the prophecies include the future of the book itself.

Or, speaking of prophecies, lately [translator note: back in 2016] it has come to my attention that a maya codex found long ago and considered fake has turned out to be real and I can't but imagine bookhounds trying to proof that a book is real so they can sell it or being hired to proof the authenticity of another. After all, that's what they are, right? Book detectives.

Besides, I've found a lot of posts with book lists and tables, so I am just going to leave them here.

First, the great blog Against the Wicked City has a table of 20 things that the scholars could have forgotten to return to the library. And the variety doesn't disappoint: portulanos, manuals, erotic literature, speculative philosophy, woodcarvings, recipes, antique manuscripts, theater, scandalous love letters, seditious songs and music sheets, epic poems, love poetry, moral philosophy, memoires, prayings, political philosophy, bestiaries, bird catalogs, wine treaties...

On Wizard Thief Fighter we find a table of 100 pseudomagic tomes.

And the always great Blessing of the Dice Gods brings us tables to generate books and libraries.

And I imagine that we can finish with books that are physically strange, for example, 3-pages poetry leaflets of which only 25 numbered copies exist. If I were to do that, they would be worth nothing, but the ones made by famous poets are really expensive, specially the numbers 1 to 10.

And speaking of really expensive things, has someone said "bejewelled books"?

And they are perfect candidates to carry traps: there are more original things than poisoning the pages. Like a system of needles that shots when the book is opened. Or a little poison gas vial on the spine, so when you crack it open... And if we add magic to the ecuation, the possibilities are endless.

And what about libros ocultos en otros libros or under the appearance of other books? Like novels that hide pages with political propagand bound in the middle. Again, this has great potential for horror and/or investigative campaigns.

And, to wrap it up, why do old books smell so good?

Would it also happen with a book made out of pieces of an immortal being? Vote below!

And thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

Second part

Miscellany of strange, curious and magic books - 2

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2016. More posts in English here.

I threatened with coming back and by God I'm gonna do it!

An interesting thing about medieval and modern poetry are the romanceros. Poems circulated around, be it in oral form or in loose pages, but a lot of people compiled the ones they liked in a book. Sometimes all of those got compiled in a single anthology. Does this remind you of something?

In D&D that would be a great way to see how spells are transmited. Maybe the wizard learns it or they find it in a loose page (what would a scroll) and they copy it into their book. And printed spellbooks can come out in the same way.

But this whole system has a big problem: there can be many mistakes if a spell is copied and copied again so many times. And at some point it can develop a great flaw that no one noticed. I'd like to see more wizards thst try to get as many versions of the same spell as they can to compare them until they find the most correct version before they try to cast it risking a face explosion. Tip: if it is a compilation of spells just from one author, however got them will likely be more careful than if they were compiling spells at random. There will also be experts that may be consulted.

As they exist in real life. Mostly that's how philology was born--to get the most perfect version of the homeric works, and afterwards, the most perfect version of the Bible to interpret it. Later it would cover other topics, of course, but let's think about a fantasy setting--a scholar would probably pay good money for a version of a sacred text he didn't know about to complete his map of how it's been transmited and copied.

Speaking of the transmission of sacred text. Have you heard about the Septuagint or the Bible of the Seventy? To translate the Tanakh into greek, seventy rabbis got together in a Insland off the coast of Alexandria to do it in the most accurate way possible, so they would do justice to the word of God. Sabotaging a similar event or trying to steal the translation before it arrived or stopping others from doing so can be a great way to introduce and adventure.

About translations and sacred languages I could talk a lot about our friend Alfonso X of Castile. One of the main reasons his famous translators school (which can be ground for a lot adventures by itself) translated texts into Castilian and not into more prestigious languages of the time like Latin, Arabic or Hebrew was because all of these were lithurgical tongues of a religion and he wanted to avoid it.

The court of a wise king is a great opportunity for enterprising bookhounds, as they can basicaly sell almost any books that comes from antiquity: mathematics, science, literature... And also the king himself produces his own books. Alfonso X invented the d8 and he uses it in some of the games from his... Book of games.

A wise king also gives his capitol and atmosphere of city of culture like Bohemia under Rudolf II or London under Elizabeth I with John Dee. In those time and places it would be dirt easy to buy and sell books on alchemy, kabbalah and esoteric matters... Most of them fake.

And, related to this, books with secret codes. We have already talked about the Voynich manuscript, but there are other things, although there are generally very exaggerated, like saying that Plato's books have a secret code based on the harmony of the twelve musical notes. Hidding something in a secret code is not as reliable as hidding an esoteric knowledge through symbols, like alchemy books that used emblems and symbolic carvings. Also, this kind of initiatic books have another funny trait and it is that everything at the beginning is boring fluff to discourage the curious and screen those that are really commited to reaching the knowledge.

Speaking of which, have you heard about the Fama Fraternitatis from the Rosicrucians? It was a sort of manifesto of the order that appeared in the 17th century making a call to the intellectuals of Europe. It was probably a joke made by some funny university students, but people took it seriously and it produced an explosion of similar texts across the continent. Suddenly, everyone seemed to be Rosicrucian.

But going back to the topic of secret codes, I want to tell you an interesting anecdote that could take place in games with a more recent setting. Two investigators were detained by the Spanish police while they were obtaining data for an ethnolinguistic atlas of the Iberian Peninsula, as the Spanish civil war was not so long ago and authorities were convinced that they were soviet spies and their phonetic symbols were actually the cypher they were using to gather data.

Some more details... Someone brought to my atenttion the blog of an illustrator that makes great Cthulhian illos as if they were pages from a horrible tome, take a look, it is House of the necromancer.

On the other hand, I already talked about living books or with living parts back in the day, but I have found something new reading The Invisibles. What if you found the head of a dead prophet that was still saying prophecy?

Books of prophecy like Nostradamus' are interesting and could have a good market. Tell the Sybil about it:

Centuries ago, concurrent with the 50th Olympiad, not long before the expulsion of Rome's kings, an old woman "who was not a native of the country" (Dionysius) arrived incognita in Rome. She offered nine books of prophecies to King Tarquin; and as the king declined to purchase them, owing to the exorbitant price she demanded, she burned three and offered the remaining six to Tarquin at the same stiff price, which he again refused, whereupon she burned three more and repeated her offer. Tarquin then relented and purchased the last three at the full original price, whereupon she "disappeared from among men" (Dionysius).

Or it could also be very interesting to get the records of an oracle with all the prophecies said by the pythoness crossed with the people that recieved them, so you could take advantage of them.

There is also a thing about books really fucking big:

Aren't they great? I haven't seen one THAT fucking big, but I've gotten my hands on an illustrated edition of Dante's Divine Comedy (with the pictures of Delacroix), Spanish in one page and Italian in the other, with big letters. It looked ready to eat smaller books it had to share the shelf with. There goes a picture I took:

Another interesting thing about the transmission of texts and their wisdom are posthumous books like Saussure's Course in General Linguistics or Da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting, that were compilated and published by their students after their deaths.

And I don't want to end without telling you about the "pliegos de ciego" (blind man leaves), that were pretty much proto-newspapers. Blind men wandered around telling macabre stories in verse so people could hear them and give them some coins and, usually, he carried printed copies to sell. Has anyone said that an adventure about tracking a certain blind man to get their story for a rich colectionist is a good idea? Because they ar right.

Thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

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Miscellany of strange, curious and magic books 1.5

This is a translation of the second part of a post originally published in 2014. More posts in English here.

Translator note: this is the second part of the original post, where I added stuff I forgot and was recommended to me.

EDIT 9/6/14 (see how I was forgetting things?):

Master Antonio brought to my attention the severe lack of Milo Rambaldi on this post, and I can't agree more, especially because it lets me talk about to interesting characters.

On one hand we have Nostradamus. Books full of predictions of the future written in a cryptic and consufing way are something that should be more present in fantasy worlds, especially if the prophecies can't be totally trusted. That remembers me of more stuff about Terry PRatchett, this time with Neil Gaiman, in Good Omens: the idea of a 17th century witch had written a book of prophecies so accurate that her heirs (one of them the protagonist of the novel) could live up until that point profiting from interpreting the book.

On the other hand we have Da Vinci. What haven't been said about Da Vinci and his books?

The personal notebooks of a genious describing advanced theoretical concepts and slightly anachronic artifacts can also be a lot of fun.

And now that we talk about Da Vinci's notes, maybe more than one of you already know that he wrote them using mirrored script (from right to left, reversing the chracters accordingly). Some say that it was because he was left-handed and that made it easier for him, but there are also some that say that it was to make them harder to read. But of course there are people that say that Plato used to hide secret messages in their texts that can only be decyphered with musical harmony, so go figure.

Before leaving the topic of Da Vinci, don't forget that paintings can also be a valuable source of information, even if they are not written word. See you the next time I remember something!

EDIT 9/6/14 (yeah, more):

Master Tzmize has brought to me an interesting compilation by his own hand dedicated to spellbooks that can be used in World of Darkness. There are both historical ones with links to Wikipedia as well as ones from White Wolf with links to his own blog (my favorite one is el Salmo del Consolador). And now that we are talking abuot compilations, another specially useful resource is this Wikipedia article: "Books in the Cthulhu Mythos".

EDIT 12/27/14 (yeah, more):

Cool books from Telecanter.

EDIT 9/28/15 (wow):

Where are books kept? Famous libraries like Alexandria or Ninive. Some rulers had especially harsh ways to obtain new books... Ashurbanipal justified his conquests in part to obtain tablets with spells that helped him secure his reign. The lost library of Ivan the Terrible with incredible valuable books hidden in the tunnerls under the Kremlin. Books would also be one of the most valuable trasures of churches and cathedrals, which are already full of works of art and relics.

The ways in which books can be kept, like chaining them to shelves or bookrests -- you could easily tell if a book was stolen due to the mark left by the chain being ripped out. Also, keeping it in well closed chests with strong padlocks, that weight so much that it is very hard to take them. Or, if there wasn't enough money for that, a curse written on the first pages of the book would suffice, so it would affect anyone who found it and didn't try to give it back. In a fantasy world these curses would probably be a lot more scary.

I have always found funny those triangle-shaped niches that make it easier to store scrolls.

More formats: bejewelled books or books with fine decoration are luxury objects by themselves. Giant books carved in stone. Bamboo or wooden rods written on and bound. Dwarven books contained in the form of energy in power gems. Oral traditions or people that just knows one or more books by heart.

Indexes of forbidden books and how they are burned. The favorite pastime of Torquemada. Well, besides written them himself. Censorship can also play an interesting role, like parts of the books that are obscured or edited out.

The Burning of books and burying of scholars -- after a period of strong freedom of thought that breeds a pletora of schools it comes a strong state repression. Lots of lost books. It wouldn't be a bad time to start a Bookhounds of Vornheim campaign.

Source

Arnold K. from Goblin Punch, really likes books that affect reality and their readers in a very direct way. For example The Madness of Avool, as we have already discussed, but also the book of Dvang-Ungal, written by an ancient civilization that makes anything who peruses it feel the need to recreate that civilization as it was detailed in the book. Or sickness that are contracted through hearing someone talk about them.

And another thing: the arcane librarian class in D&D3.5. A mage so versed in magical writting that it can cast spells without having learned them. After a while, they themselves can become books absorbing the writting, that is shown in their skin.

Information sources about magic in Slayers.

EDIT 2/15/16:

An essential part of the catalographic description of a book is the transcription of it's first page. [...] In this case the criteria are totally different: the whole page must be transcribed and with as much fidelity as possible. This fidelity has been taken to such an extreme, that there have even been bibliographers that have preferred the rigurous description, with notes about measurements, denomination of typographies, etc. to the page facsímil.

I have already discussed personal journals, but travel diaries like those of Marco Polo are also interesting. It is largely the format in which the setting of Yoon-Suin is presented.

EDIT 2/23/16 (it never ends):

This medallion is something you could perfectly find in a dungeon and is more valuable for the intel it can give than for being just another medallion.

Vinokurov medallion, pass for the Yuan court palace. The text is written in the 'Phags-pa alphabet.

Aren't you tired that your cultists always have a perfect version of the Necronomicon? Check these 16 reasons why it can't be hard to interpret a text.

As seen in that post, censorship of any kind is an important fact whendealing with books. Many adventures could spawn just from trying to get a uncensored version of a text, probably hidden somewhere to keep it from being found by the authorities, like that copy of El Lazarillo de Tromes and other works that were found in a house and changed a bit the interpretation of the text.

Speaking of censorship, here's something from Goblin Punch:

Yes, the Mouthless Order is is charge of making sure that long-lost information stays hidden.  They're the ones that are waiting for you when you come out of the dungeon, willing to pay you handsomely for the ancient tome you just recovered, which they will then burn in front of you. (Those who refuse this generous offer are killed.)  They are (partially opposed) in their mission by the Luminous Order, who work to recover lost knowledge, especially the lost history of the Church itself.

Another thing that can give us information is the text that surrounds the text itself, that is, the paratext, things like the cover with it's year and place of printing, or the dedicatory, or the permit to print it, or the bit that said how much the paper of the book was worth, or the colophon, were, if it was a manuscript, it usually was indicated when the copy was finished, usually, thanking God.

Or also if a text has illustrations or not. Some times, like in the manuscripts we have of El Conde Lucanor, illustrations are mentioned and the space is there, but the pictures where never made. Or, usually, the editor would leave a mark in the shape of a shield or emblem, as mark of his house. It isn't much different to what happens now a days, it's just that back then they rocked more:

Book collections are also interesting. An obvious example are national libraries or great city libraries, although they are relatively news. And they always have a rare book room that can be accessed by anyone: you need to prove that you are an investigator, and in some you may even be required to provide proof of your address to get credentials. It is great.

Speaking of things, not so long ago, New York's library has liberated a lot of maps, so you maybe would like to check them out.

Another case are archives where some author's writtings and related stuff are kept, for example, the one for Miguel Hernández. It is interesting because town councils have to pay the family to keep it and not so long ago it had to be moved because the poet's hometown decided that it wasn't profitable.

Or sometimes a collectionists appears and takes just everything because he likes it, like Archer Milton Huntington. He came to Spain on the first years of the 19th century and started buying old codices, paintings, laces and anything that smelled like Spain. He even bought the whole library of a noble that was drowning in game debts. He took it all back to America and founded the Hispanic Society of America, that is still today one of the main places to look for codices and manuscripts. This is the kind of unexpected and extreme event that can make the PCs a fortune or leave them beaten down if they don't know how to react.

Or, for example, a rich NPC that buys any text related to a topic that he is obsessed with is always a good idea.

If someone from the 17th century saw The Book Barn, they would have a heart attack. Half a million books left there without any order:

Source

Back then paper was so expensive that people used to take notes on books. Probably not many people ever saw so many books together in their life. Speaking of that, sometimes a book can be more important due to who it belonged rather than what it is. Imagine all the things an interesting guy could have been writing in the margins of his books lacking other way to do it.

Speaking of not having something at hand. Have you heard about nictography? It is a kind of tachygraphic writing that is made with a device that allows to write in complete darkness with its own alphabet. I wonder if someone who has to spend a lot of time underground and needs to save torches and lamp oil would see any use for something like that...

Source

Thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

PS: do read the original comments, where there are more cool things!

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Miscellany of strange, curious and magic books 1

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2014.

This post is a list of references and ideas with enough developement to look like a blog post. Yes, I could keep it to myself, but if I have to explain it to you, when I reread it some years later, I will remember what obscure piece of pop culture was I talking about more easily than if I was to read "dragon book" in a forgotten notebook. Maybe it will even be useful to you. If so, you are welcome.

I am here today to talk about books and magic documents or special in general. It will come in handy if I ever make something like Bookhounds of Vornheim.

To categorize them somehow, we can start with books that have human, animal or living features. Bird-like fllying books are a classic, especially in the Unseen University's library at Ankh Morpork, where there is usually so much magic that books have to be bound with chains to keep them from attacking the students.

Or that Harry Potter book that went around biting people. I don't know who ever thought that was a good idea.

Or that book from Hocus Pocus. I don't know if the movie about witches and Halloween rings a bell, but their spellbook that they got straight from the Devil was fucking metal. Take a look:

On the other hand there are books that, although they don't look alive, they do seem intelligent like the Book of Shadows in Charmed, that knew how to avoid the minions of evil. When they got close, the book backed a safety distance like a magnet of the same polarity. And probably cornering it wouldn't be such a great idea. Maybe it was a simple security measure, but I wouldn't be surprised if booms as old as that one (that had literally grown after each generation of witches) had developed some degree of sentience.

There are alsl other books that may be difficult to consult or apprehend. We can find the classic book protected by a mechanism that makes it self-destrly if opened incorrectly (tip: vinegar disolves parchment). But there are many other nasty things you can do if your book has something as simple as a lock, like poisonous needles and the like. Or you can take more drastic measures like makin the book burst in flames if you access it wrong, which can of course be weaponized.

About hard to conserve books (as if it wasn't hard enough already), I remember especialmy those mentioned by Pratchett sometimes, with erotic spells so powerfuk that they must be kept in a cold basement and submerged in water to prevent them from setting fire to themselves.

And once opened books can not be easy to read either, of course. There can be mundane reasons like them being written in a different language,with some kind of invisible ink, through symbols and pictures like alchemy manuals, in code... Have you heard about the Voynich anuscript?

It is probably a fake, but there are people who think that someday, when we will be able to decode it with ternary computer, we will solve physics or something. I don't know, I am just a humble philologist.

Speaking of hard to read books. A huge part of the inspiration for this post has been a manga that belongs to the printed works of Touhou Project and is called Forbidden Scrollery. (Spoilers) The story is focused on Kosuzu, the daughter of a family of librarians who collects youma books, magical tomes written by monsters or that contain monsters or related creatures. They are also impossible to read to humans. The girl, however, haa the ability to read them and wants to increase her collection, which of course only brings trouble. Some of the most notable things are the kanji edition if the Necronomicon (not in Japanese, but an unknown language) or a fieldguide of hell's flora written in old Tengu language.

And now that we bring the topic of youma books, one of their characteristics is that they usually have monsters lr spirits traped inside. The one that is featured the most is a scroll that contaibs a version of the Hyakki Yagyou (the parade of one hundred demons), which actually summons demons when read, thatcs why they only do so once a month under a full moon. At a certain point an evil dragon uses it to return to it's original form. (End of spoilers).

Of course there can also be books possessed by ghosts and demons. Or books whose content is so powerfuk that it is alive itself. Pratchett gives use another example of this (this man really likes books) with the spellbook that held the [eight spells of creation. They were so powerful that they had a mind of their own and could in fact jump from the book to someone's mind.

Because the mind can also be a book. People can learn a book by heart (do a Fahrenheit 451) or more, and for a lot of time this was the only way to conserve works. Someone with photographic memory can memorize thousands, like Index, a girl that memorized the 10,300 spellbooks of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

On the other hand, the format of the book can also be important. Even just if it is a manuscript or a printed book can make a huge difference. Manuscripts are unique pieces on its own an can easily inclue things that would not be available in other versions of the same texts like addenda or different pictures. And it comes without saying that the people who copied it were especially inclined to leave notes on the margins (usually about how frigging hard is copying whole books by hand). Books copied by a special person can be magical just by virtue of that. On the other hand, magical or cursed printing machines are an interesting concept.

Source.

But there are many other formats like scrolls, inscriptions on bone or wood (like runes, ogam or other type of chamanic writing) or in stones or walls, cuneiform tablets or tattoos or skin mutilations.

Speaking of what, writing can also spontaneously appear on living beings, like the inside of fruits or petals of a flower. One of my favorites approach to this is the one of Zak Smith: Snakes Are Books, where he tells us about how in his campaigns the skin of snakes can be deciphered and read as if it was a book, and it also applies to serpetine monsters like medusae or dragons.

Speaking of dragons, I already spoke about how dragons would probably make their books modifying the terrain on a large scale. That wasn't a bad idea either.

And a lost thougt about format: books are cool, but there can be other things. Maps are a classic, of course. There is also private correspondence (although of course there are epistolary books) that can be a valuable source of information. Or personal journals, of which I also have very intersting links. On this one, mr. Rients relates how his players stole the personal journal of a salacious [vampiress and made charts of money selling copies (among other things). On this one RPG Pundit explains that the hard thing for a contemporary magician wouldn't be finding secrets, but rather understanding them. And especially on this one, he speaks of the importance of work journals for a magician and how useful would it be to get your hands on one from a rival magician to learn about their secrets and discoveries.

And of course there are stage plays. I guess you already know about The King in Yellow, the fictional play that induces madness and desperation to anyone who sees it. Or the (spoiler) shadow Noh from Forbidden Scrollery, a representation that slowly steals the feelings of anyone that sees it, in theory (end of spoiler). A bookhound worth their salt should keep an eye on the stages.

And now that we are speaking of theater, here goes an anecdote about piracy. On the 15th and 16th centuries, stage plays were tremendously popular, but they were rarely sold as printed books. At the theaters there would usually be a guy that, instead of being screaming with the resta of the public, was listening attentively the dialog and commiting them to memory so he could later sell them to a pirate printer, recited by memory. This was one the main reasons that made Lope de Vega, for example, finally accept that he should print his stage plays.

Back to magical books, there are two types that are especially interesting. One hand ther are books that change themselves, usually to get up to date. For example the books of life that Death (from the Discworl) keeps in his house, that are constantly writing every moment of the life of every person in the world. It is possible to read them to know what they are doing, but not many mortals have reached the house of Death. Another good example is the marauders map of Harry Potters, a sort of magical radar (that can also transform into a perfectly normal piece of paper, which is nice).

Or a certain artifact from Road of Knives, a... webcomic? sadly now defunct where there was a sentient magical book that could communicate through what appeared on its pages and reflect on them the new things it learned.

Additional Entries Under Subheading “Toad, Trespassing”

It was also able to move and defend itself...

On the other hand we have books able to change reality based on what is written on them, like the Death Note or the fictional encyclopedy of Tlön, in one of Borges tales, that was actually (spoiler) creating a new world called Tlön that was steadily joining ours.(spoiler)

And speaking of Borges, this man DID really like books and it some of their tales about this are worth mentioning. Like The Book of Sand that tells the story of an infinite book, without first or last page, so, of course, it is impossible to find the same page twice. O The Garden of Forking Paths, a tale about a novel of the smae title, a labyrinth book where the author tried to write all the possibilities of the story of a character. Or The Library of Babel, that is the description of a strange library where one can find all of the books that can be made with a certain combination of characters. Among others.

We're close to the end, but there are still other three topics I would like to address. For example harmful books. The most famous are those that turn one crazy as their content only leads to madness like the Necronomicon or De Vermis Mysteriis. The Lovecraft circle loved this kind of things. Another possibility that I like a lot is the one offered by Arnold Kempf: The madness of Avool, that is as pamphlet that leads to depression an suicide, not only to anyone who reads it, but anyone that hears enough about it. Although, well, of course the reasons to fear a book can be a lot more mundane like poisoned pages that are used as a weapon, like in The Name of the Rose.

And it is also intersting discussing books that come in groups or cathegories, like the volumes of an encyclopedia. Or those that make pairs of opposites like the books of life and death like in the remake of The Mummy. By the way, books inscribed on metal like gold or deal are fucking...... metal.

There are also books whose objective is finding other books, like catalogs, bibliographic references, states of the art or, a famous example we have already mentioned, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Thos books can be valuable as a key that may lead to others.

The trope of a book or a map divided in parts that must be found is still cool. And I don't say that because I saw Cutthroat Island last night, no sir.

Lastly, now that we are speaking about collections of books, the ones presented by Zak Smith on his post about Demogorgon, king of demons, are really cool. There the spells dedicated to Demogorgon are hir hymns, the songs created by bands named after him.

Finally, a last thought. Mundane problems that affect mnundane books could be worse on magical books, with fatal errata or non euclidean binding mistakes. An interesting example is the magical worm of Forbidden Scrollery that eats words leaving the paper intact and that can only be removed by magical smoke.

When I remember things that I have forgotten, I will probably come back to make a note of them. Or maybe I will make another post, who knows? Thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

Translator note: the original post continued with edits that added more stuff. I will compile them in a different post as a part 1.5 of this series. Coming soon!

Part 1.5

Bookhounds of Vornheim

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2013.

These days I've been reading two modules that are quite interesting.

One of them is Vornheim The Complete City Kit by Zak Smith, from whom you have probably heard of if tou read me frequently. Beyond the description of the city of Vornheim (dark, strange and, above all, metal) it's a tool kit to make your own Vornheim (or any other city) however you want. I like it quite a bit, especially because it gives much thought to books--there are book generators, rules to search in libraries, a dungeon that is in fact a library... And the setting reinforces it too with bits like stating that the skin of snakes (and snake-like monsters) are books and that the animals constantly siss their own titles.

The other module I've been reading is Bookhounds of London, a supplement for Trail of Cthulhu by Kenneth Hite. It offers a dofferent way to present investigation campaigns based on the mythos (although if you use mythos in plural it should be mythoi): the characters are not good samaritans that save the world just because they had an uncle that died or something, rather than that they deal in rare and valuable documents, specially books. And if they save the world on the way, they expect to profit from that. It also provides an interesting description of London in the 30's, designed for this type of campaign.

And of course, having a pot for head, I can't help but mix anything that goes in it. Thus I started thinking about how would it be a medidval fantasy campaign centered around document dealing. And it certainly doesn't seem too hard: copy the mysterious words at the bottom of dark dungeons, steal from some wizards to sell to other wizards, provide diabolist cults with summoning rituals, publish the journal of a vampire lady as a romantic novel...

Instead of "recovering" just gold, our brave adventurers would also search information... To sell it for gold. In old school D&D you got experience from the gold you could recover from dungeons, here you'd get experience from... Reading books. It sounds crazy, right? And everything gets easier mixing resources from the two books, like the instructions to create bibliophile characters in Bookhounds or its descriptions of cults with a great interest in books.

The only problem that I can think of right now is that the Middle Ages don't get along with books: they older and beat them. But it is always possible to say that printing press is already invented (which is usually assumed) and that rather than medieval we could go for late renaissancd, XVI century, which I think is cooler. And even then in this age books are rare and expensive--if you had more than ten, you could start calling yourself a scholar. The biggest libraries in the world barely reached a hundred volumes. And let's not forget that hand copied books would not totally fall from use until the 19th century. But even then, with as many past and future cultures in fantasy games there are many places to get valuable information.

If I were to play such a campaign (who knows? With strange aeons even death may die) I would start with the characters in the classic backwater village and with a mission tl finish off a sorcerer that is messing around cursing harvestes and ruining the milk of cows. So, the PCs get to his tower, beat him senseless and now the only valuable thing is his small collection of books. And given that in that god-forsaken village they won't give you a dime for them, you have to go to the big city. From there on it writes itself. The PCs start making contacts with local booksellers, enemies with people that want their books...

I think it is an interesting perspective, although it would probably require players ready to adapt themselves a bit, but I don't think that it will be too hard. After all we would keep everything that you can expect from a fantasy game: you steal from wizards, explore dungeons where you can find books, kill hydras for their skin... But you also deal with booksellers, publish, falsify, research... That's what being a bookhound is.

Thank you for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

Miscelánea de libros raros, curiosos y mágicos 3

Saludos, muníficos lectores, hoy traigo la tercera parte de mi miscelánea de libros raros, curiosos y mágicos, donde me dedico a hablar de cosas interesantes de libros y su aplicación al noble arte de los juegos de rol.

Como ya dije en su día, son sobre todo notas e ideas para cuando dirija mi campaña soñada de Bookhounds of Vornheim. Está cerca, lo noto en los huesos. Pero entre tanto si os puede ser útil o interesante, mejor.

Hoy empezamos con libros emparedados, que no emparedado de libros. :D (Matadme). En 1995 durante las reformas en una casa de Barcarrota (Badajoz), un obrero echó abajo un tabique y encontró un tesoro: libros del siglo XVI, entre ellos una edición hasta entonces hasta entonces desconocida del Lazarillo de Tormes y otros libros que en aquella época era blanco de la inquisición. Hm... Si esto no da ideas, que me aspen: gente que necesita ayuda para ocultar sus libros durante la persecución, libros misteriosos hallados de repente o que, si los jugadores son bookhounds,  tengan que ocultar parte de su stock por miedo a la censura. Esto casa bastante con el tropo del manuscrito hallado bastante común en la fantasía: "esto no lo cuento yo, sino que lo transcribo de un texto arábigo que hallé en un cofre bajo siete candados...". O cosas como los manuscritos del mar muerto: decenas de textos religiosos hallados bien conservados en un sistema de cavernas...

Pero hay mejores sitios para dejar tus libros. Vamos a hablar un poco de bibliotecas, librerías y similares.

Estas siemprrehan sido un tópico bastante común, especialmente en la fantasía más D&Desca y un ejemplo sobresaliente es la Biblioteca de Asria de Goblin Punch. En la primera parte nos habla de cómo es atendida por una raza de amazonas-bibliotecarias y su jefe: un bibliotecario que se transformó a sí mismo en un ordenador analógico hecho de libros para poder llevar a cabo mejor sus funciones.

Y en la segunda parte habla de cómo los libros toman consciencia en la biblioteca, se comunican entre ellos y sus contenidos cambian en función de esto.

Eso me recuerda bastsnte a otra biblioteca en la que los libros cobran vida, tiene tantos que su espacio es infinito, guarda el grimorio del propio Creador y está dirigida por un orangután. Por supuesto hablo de la biblioteca de la Universidad Invisible de Ankh-Morpork. Una de las cosas que más me gustaban de ella eran las distintas medidas para contener distintos tipos de grimorios, a veces las cadenas no eran suficientes y, por ejemplo, tenían que meter los grimorios de magia erótica en agua helada.

Y ya que estamos, el Mundodisco tiene muchas cosas interesantes a este respecto, como la biblioteca de la Muerte, con los libros de la vida de todo el mundo que se escribe solo...

O, de la serie de Avatar, la biblioteca de Wan Shi Tong, perdida y enterrada en el desierto, con zorros que roban pergaminos para, su bibliotecario lechuza que es en realidad un espíritu... Y cosas que no son libros, como mapas o un planetario.

Y no todo van a ser bibliotecas normales. Por ejemplo, en lugares donde no hay demasiado dinero y leer es el principal entretenimiento no serán raras las librerías donde solo alquilas los libros, como en Forbidden Scrollery.

O también las bibliotecas ambulantes en bibliobús, en burro (como el biblioburro de Colombia), en camello en Kenia, en barco en los fiordos (despues de todo ya tienen barcos-supermercado, por ejemplo) o incluso un "tanque" reconvertido en bibliobús: el arma de instrucción masiva.

Aunque, claro, en la "época" que se suele tratar en la fantasía medieval, las bibliotecas suelen ser mayoritariamente privadas y solo se encuentran sobre todo en monasterios, catedrales, palacios, universidades o grandes centros de saber con extenso patrocinio como la Biblioteca de Alejandría (que si no estoy mal informado, también tenía observatorio, zoo y jardín botánico).

En fin, que no podía llegar cualquiera y sacar un libro y mucho menos se le pasaría a nadie por la cabeza hacer algo como una casa para pájaros en la que puedes coger y dejar libros libremente: los libros, incluso mal imprimidos, siguen siendo relativamente valiosos. Algo así solo existiría en sitios como una corte para intercambiar las últimas novelas románticas que se supone que nadie decente lee...

Y, por último, las bibliotecas también tienen secciones prohibidas... La de Hogwarts está basada en algo muy real y, como para casi todo, los alemanes tienen una palabra para ello: Giftschrank, el gabinete de venenos. Normalmente estos libros se conservan porque sus ideas se consideran peligrosas y por ello deben ser estudiadas solo por una élite pars poder conocerlas y combatirlas, lo cual también es una de las ideas detrás de libros perniciosos que solo se pueden comercializar debidamente anotados como el Mein Kampf. Si os interesa el tema, podéis echar un ojo a esta entrada.

Y si te interesa algo para meter en tu Giftschrank, ¿qué tal libros encuadernados en piel humana o algún grimorio oculto, incluyendo uno con extraños rituales que permiten invocar a un ente conocido como el Baktiotha?

Aunque me gustan mucho los datos aleatorios sobre libros, listar esta clase de cosas raras es el principal propósito de esta serie.

Por ejemplo The Story of the Vivian Girls una larguísima historia épica de ciencia fantasía escrita durante años por un bedel fugado de un psiquiátrico en un pequeño apartamento... Acompañada de ilustraciones hechas con acuarela y fotografías. ¿Quién sabe cuánta verdad encierra en realidad? Guiño, guiño.

Los libros de profecías, de los que ya hablé en la entrada anterior, también son una opción popular como Nostradamus, el Chronicle of Portents and Profecies o Las buenas y acertadas profecías de Agnes la Chalada en Buenos Presagios. Un manuscrito de profecías inédito resultaría valiosísimo en un mundo de fantasía. Y sobre este último, resulta gracioso cómo las profecías incluyen el devenir del propio libro.

O, hablando de profecías, últimamente ha llegado a mi atención que un códice maya descubierto hace tiempo y considerado falso ha resultado ser auténtico y no puedo dejar de imaginarme a bookhounds tratando de demostrar que un libro es auténtico para poder colocarlo o siendo contratados para demostrar la autenticidad de algún otro. Después de todo son eso, ¿no? Detectives de libros.

Aparte, me he venido encontrando con posts de la anglosfera rolera con listas y tablas de libros, así que las voy a ir dejando por aquí...

Por una parte, el genial blog Against the Wicked City tiene una tabla de 20 cosas que los eruditos pueden haber olvidado devolver a la biblioteca. Y la variedad no decepciona: portulanos, manuales, literatura erótica, filosofía especulativa, grabados, recetas, manuscritos de anticuarios, teatro, cartas de amor escandalosas, canciones y partituras sediciosas, poemas épicos, poesía amorosa, filosofía moral, memorias, oraciones, filosofía política, bestiarios y catálogos de aves, tratados de vinicultura...

En Wizard Thief Fighter se nos presenta una tabla de 100 tomos pseudomágicos.

Y el siempre genial Blessings of the Dice Gods nos trae tablas para generar libros y bibliotecas.

E imagino que podemos acabar con libros qur son físicamente raros, por ejemplo, folletos de poesía de tres páginas y de los qur solo salieron 25 ejemplares numerados. Si lo hiciera yo no valdrían nada, pero los que hicieron nuestros amigos de la Generación del 27 son carísimos, especialmente si están numerados del uno al diez.

Y hablando de cosas carísimas, ¿alguien ha dicho "libros enjoyados"?


Son los candidatos para llevar trampas: hay cosas más originales que envenenar las páginas, como un sistema de agujas que se dispara cuando se abre o que tenga una pipeta de gas venenoso oculta en el lomo... Y si metemos magia en la ecuación, las posibilidades son infinitas.

¿Y qué tal libros ocultos en otros libros o bajo la apariencia de otros libros? Como novelas que ocultan páginas con propaganda política encuadernadas enmedio. De nuevo, esto tiene gran potencial para partidas de terror y/o investigación.

Y, para acabar, ¿por qué huelen tan bien los libros viejos?

¿Pasaría también con un libro hecho con partes del cuerpo de un inmortal? ¡Voten!

Y gracias por leerme. Valmar Cerenor!

Segunda parte

Miscelánea de libros raros, curiosos y mágicos 2

Si recordáis, hace un tiempo ya hice una miscelánea de libros raros, curiosos y mágicos que estuve editando bastante tiempo. Pero como creo que ya se estaba haciendo larga, creo que es el momento de empezar una nueva entrada. Después de todo amenacé con volver y vive Dios que lo estoy cumpliendo.

Una cosa bastante interesante de la poesía medieval y moderna son los romanceros. Los poemas andaban por ahí ronando, ya fuera de forma oral o en pliegos sueltos, pero mucha gente iba copiando todos los que le gustaban en un libro. A veces todo eso se recogía en un solo libro impreso como la Flor de Romances o el Romancero general. ¿A nadie le suena esto de algo?

En D&D sería una gran forma de pensar en cómo se transmiten los conjuros. Puede ser que alguien se los enseñe o lo encuentren suelto (en lo que viene siendo un pergamino) y lo copien en su propio libro. Y que salgan grimorios impresos de la misma forma.

Pero todo este sistema tiene un problema gordo: puede haber muchos fallos si un conjuro es copiado y recopiado tantas veces y puede ser que tenga fallos de embergadura en los que nadie ha reparado. Me gustaría ver a más magos que intentan recoger tantas versiones como puedan encontrar del mismo conjuro y compararlas hasta dar con la forma más correcta antes de intentar lanzarlo y que le explote en la cara. Una pista: si son recopilaciones de un solo creador de conjuros, normalmente se habrán recogido con más cuidado que cogiendo conjuros al azar. Pero probablemente habría expertos de esto a los que se podría consultar.

Como existen en la vida real. En buena medida para eso nació la filología, primero para tener la versión más perfecta de los textos homéricos y más tarde para lograr la versión más perfecta de la Biblia para su interpretación. Luego ya se extendió a más ámbitos, pero pensemos que en una ambientación de fantasía, probablemente un estudioso pagaría buen dinero por una versión de un texto sagrado que no conozca para completar su mapa de cómo se ha ido transmitiendo y copiando.

Hablando de transmitir textos sagrados. ¿Habéis oído hablar de la Septuaginta o Biblia de los Setenta? Para traducir la tanaj al griego se tuvieron que juntar setenta rabinos en una isla en la costa de Alejandría para hacerlo de la forma más adecuada posible, de forma que no traicionaran la palabra de Dios. Sabotear un evento similar o intentar robar la traducción antes de que llegara a ninguna parte o evitar que otros lo hagan puede ser una gran forma de introducir una aventura.

Y sobre traducciones y lenguas sagradas podría hablarnos mucho nuestro amigo Alfonso X. Una de las principales razones de que en su célebre escuela de traductores (que ya de por sí da para cantidad de aventuras) se transcribiera en castellano y no en lenguas más prestigiosas como el latín, el árabe o el hebreo era porque todas estas eran lenguas litúrgicas de alguna religión y quería evitarlo.

La corte de un rey sabio como este es una gran oportunidad para unos bookhounds emprendedores, porque básicamente pueden dar salida a casi cualquier libro que venga de la antigüedad: matemáticas, ciencia, literatura... Además de que el propio rey produce sus libros, ¿sabíais que Alfonso X fue uno de los inventores del dado de ocho caras y lo usa en algunos juegos de su... Libro de los juegos?

Además de que se crea un ambiente importante como ciudad de cultura como la Bohemia de Rodolfo II o el Londres de Isabel Primera con John Dee. Anda que no sería fácil comprar y vender libros de alquimia, cabala y esoterismo... La mayoría falsos.

Y, muy relacionado con esto, los libros con códigos secretos. Ya hablamos del manuscrito Voynich, pero hay otras cosas, aunque por lo general son muy exageradas, como decir que los libros de Platón tienen un código secreto basado en la armonía de las doce notas musicales. Esconder algo en un código secreto no es tan fiable como esconder un conocimiento esotérico mediante símbolos, como los libros de alquimia que lo ocultaban en emblemas y grabados simbólicos. Además, esta clase de libros iniciáticos tienen otra cosa graciosa y es que normalmente todo el principio es paja de la más aburrida para descorazonar a los curiosos y cribar a los que realmente están decididos al llegar al conocimiento.

Hablando de esto, ¿habéis oído hablar de la Fama Fraternitatis de los Rosacruces? Fue una especie de manifiesto de la orden que apareció en el siglo XVII haciendo un llamado a los intelectuales de Europa. Probablemente era una broma hecha por unos estudiantes universitarios cachondos, pero la gente se lo tomó en serio y produjo una explosión de textos similares a lo largo del continente. De pronto, todo el mundo parecía ser Rosacruz.

Pero volviendo al tema de los códigos secretos, os quiero contar una anécdota interesante que podría pasar en juegos ambientados en una época más reciente. Dos investigadores fueron detenidos por la policía mientras recopilaban datos para el Atlas Lingüístico de la Península Ibérica porque hacía pocos años de la Guerra Civil y las autoridades estaban convencidas de que eran espías para los soviéticos y los símbolos fonéticos que empleaban para recopilar datos eran información cifrada.

Algunos detallitos más... Me pasaron el blog de un autor que crea grandes ilustraciones cthulhuianas como si fueran páginas de un tomo horrible, echadle un ojo, es House of the necromancer.

Por otra parte, ya hablé de libros vivos o con partes vivas más arriba en su día, pero me he encontrado con algo nuevo leyendo The Invisibles. ¿Y si te encontraras la cabeza de un profeta muerto que sigue dando profecía?

Los libros de profecía como los de Nostradamus son interesantes y podrían tener un buen mercado. Que se lo digan a la Sibila:

En otra ocasión, la Sibila se presentó ante el rey romano Tarquinio el Soberbio como una mujer muy anciana y le ofreció nueve libros proféticos a un precio extremadamente alto. Tarquino se negó pensando en conseguirlos más baratos y entonces la sibila destruyó tres de los libros. A continuación le ofreció los seis restantes al mismo precio que al principio; Tarquinio se negó de nuevo y ella destruyó otros tres. Ante el temor de que desaparecieran todos, el rey aceptó comprar los tres últimos pero pagó por ellos el precio que la sibila había pedido por los nueve. Estos tres libros fueron guardados en el templo de Júpiter y eran consultados en situaciones muy especiales. En 83 a. C. el fuego destruyó los llamados Libros Sibilinos originales y hubo que formar una nueva colección que no ha llegado hasta nuestros días porque en 405 el general romano Estilicón, ordenó su destrucción. Estos libros ejercieron gran influencia en la religión romana hasta el reinado de Augusto.

O también sería muy interesante hacerse con los registros de un oráculo donde quede constancia de todas las profecías pronunciadas por la pitonisa y cruzados con las personas a las que se las ha dado, de forma que pudieras sacar ventaja sobre ellas.

Por otra parte están los libros jodidamente grandes:

¿No son geniales? Yo no los he visto TAN jodidamente grandes, pero he puesto las manos sobre una edición ilustrada de la Divina Comedia (con las imágenes de Delacroix), español en una página e italiano en la otra, con letra grande. Y ya parecía dispuesto a comerse a libros más pequeños con los que tenía que compartir estantería. Ahí va una foto que le saqué:

Otra cosa interesante sobre la transmisión de los textos y el saber son los tratados póstumos como el Curso de lingüística general de Saussure o el Tratado de pintura de Da Vinci que fueron recogidos y publicados por sus alumnos tras su muerte.

Y quiero acabar por hoy hablando de los pliegos de ciego, que eran en buena medida protoperiódicos, los ciegos iban por ahí narrando historias escabrosas en verso para que la gente lo oyera y le diera la voluntad y, a menudo, traía copias impresas para venderselas a quien las quisiera comprar. ¿Alguien ha dicho que una aventura en la que hay que rastrear a un ciego en concreto para conseguir su pliego para un coleccionista rico es una buena idea? Porque tiene razón.

Gracias por leerme. Valmar Cerenor!

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