Authors of the Book of Vile Darkness

Pour

First Post
Intelligent tumors that grow in your body.

Or the twin you didn't know about that you devoured alive in your mother's womb and exists now as a maniacal fetus snuggled between your appendix. He takes control of your writing hand every night...
 

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Matthias

Explorer
I'm not sure why you would want to slap any fictional author's name on it. The most interesting examples of historical literature are those which are so confounding that the best archaeologists, linguists, and historians can't even begin to guess who could have written it. Some works do have multiple authorships and this just lends those works an added air of mystique which you probably want to introduce to your own document.

Examples: Book of Soyga, Key of Solomon, Voynich Manuscript

There are several books in the New Testament whose authorship is disputed. In a few cases, computer analysis of vocabulary, grammar, and writing style has narrowed the field of possible writers, favoring some over others. Some analysts theorize that the Book of Isaiah actually has two different writers, for similar reasons.

Another good example is the Art of War by Sun Tzu. While not occult-related, some version have commentary from other authors seep into the main text simply because the editors of the work cannot always tell where Sun Tzu's original writing stopped and the commentary begins.

So for your book of darkness, you might try writing different passages in different styles.

If you can enlist the aid of some co-conspirators who are also good at writing, you might put down most of the book yourself, then give your collaborators selected parts of what you've written and then have them rewrite these parts in their own words.

Or, you could give them a very general outline of a particular section, such as "write about how some wizard Denculus cursed some nearby village for insulting his cat familiar" then you yourself write out in technical terms what the curse does and how to cast it.

Human beings also write differently according to their mood, and even write differently given enough time. You could try writing some long passage. Then you wait about a month; wait for some day when you are in a completely different mood or stress level from when you originally wrote that earlier section. Then go back and take out a half or a third of the passage, and completely rewrite it from scratch--leave as little of the original wording as possible, BUT keep the same general ideas and purpose. Then fold your rewritten text back into the original. If you did it right you might notice a different feel between the two parts.

Another method you could try: Pick out two or three songs or albums that really put you into a happy mood. Then you take the happy songs and listen to them over and over while you sketch out some evil but happy character's personality as expressed by that music. Figure out what evil things he probably likes to do for fun, things like that. Give him his own thoughts and dreams. See if you can come up with a few catch phrases or slogans that he would probably use. Then try to put yourself into his personality. Think like him. *Be* him. Then, write parts of your book of darkness, write like he would write, write about what he would enjoy doing. After this, go pick out two or three others that really get your blood pressure up, or make you feel kind of lonely or depressed, etc. Create characters or personalities that really resonate with these other musical selections. Then write other parts of your book in a similar fashion.
 
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I'd like to see anything that deviates from the Lovecraftian, Far Realms type stuff. Of course the New Weird stuff based on Lovecraft is in my experience usually a bit less in your face than the D&D Far Realms stuff.

Really though if the book really is from different cultures then the ideas about evil should also vary to an extent. Of course it'll be less subjective than the real world since supernatural evil exists and places like Hell and the Abyss have their own cultures.

I just don't want to see the same old Cthullu stuff, or at least not have the book consist solely of that kind of thing.
 





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