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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 7271207" data-attributes="member: 20564">Oh, and here's three books that they found in my campaign.  Context:  One of the characters has a rather pwoerful curse that's connected to a dark ritual.  They found out that a temple of the god of knowledge had a illicit vault of heretical books because they value all knowledge and the books would normally have been destroyed.  So the party did a heist on the temple, trying not to kill anyone in the good aligned temple.  Anyway, the Wizard (Quinn) was a bit of a magical fixer who sourced hard-to-find items, knowledge and the like but was now on the run.  They were in and out very fast, these were the three that grabbed his attention from a *very* quick perusal of a section as the most valuable.(Oh, references to places and names are in the default 13th Age setting.)Codex OccitoThis book contains black divine rituals.  It’s worth about 1500 golden imperials to the right buyer, though probably only half that sold quickly.  Drakkenhall, Axis and Glitterhaegen would have the right type of person, but everyone in Glitterhaegen always wants a deal.  On the other hand, First Triumph or any of the Crusaders’ fortresses might give you more than that – or try to seize it by force if you drive too hard a bargain.While summoning forth divine power is not among Quinn’s strengths, there is one that he thinks he could try with a reasonable shot at success and without sacrificing life or soul.  It involves plucking out one’s own eye and empowering it such that it stays alive and connected so you can spy wherever it’s put.  Eye patches are a bit of the fashion rage right now among the disaffected noble youth in Axis.Azif al Alhazred’s Grimoire of Unfortunate TruthsYou have started to peruse this book to value it correctly, and deduced that reading more of it would lead to madness.  Even what little you read, with the arcane preparations you did before cracking the first page, left you waking with chills.  For sure the knowledge contained is esoteric and rare.  It might also not be understandable by mortals with what would be described as possessing a healthy dose of sanity.  On the other hand, immortals, nagas, elves or the unhinged might pay 4000 imperials or more.  This plus an asylum of mages might be able to bring on a new, darker, Age.  Representatives of the various gods of Light would probably pay several hundred just to be able to destroy it.Compilations of the Words of the ProphetThis book seems grammatically correct but partially nonsensical.  After perusal you feel it’s a translation of an oral tradition in another language, and one that used a lot of clever word-play, idiom and double meanings at that.  Plus you are unsure of that the author translated homonyms correctly from what little you were able to puzzle out.  A period of study should let you work out some of the low hanging fruit.The book originally grabbed your attention because of the immensely fine crafting: gold leaf on fine vellum, and the tangible feeling of power that hovers over the pages and makes the letters dance.  You could probably get 800 golden imperials from most of your old customers or a discerning collector.  Horizon is the type of place with many who would bid for it.  The price could be a lot more if you could translate it back to the original, or even knew the language or author.  Unlike the other books there seems to be no reason why this was considered heretical.(This last one was inspired by being able to write up homonym prophecies, something I wanted to do since watching Twin Peaks many years ago.  "One chants out ..." vs. "One chance out..." sort of thing.)</blockquote>

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