Un Paladín en el Infierno: Miscellany of strange, curious and magic books

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?