Puzzle Help

[Nilbog]

Hi All

I'm designing the second part of my campaign and need help with a puzzle I'm trying to set.

The basic set-up is that at the end of the first part, the groups mentor, a wizard, was killed by a creature of the far realm, in his dying breath he told them to seek the eternal library. In his hands he clutched a piece of paper.

The basic set-up I'm aiming for is that the entrance to the eternal library is hidden. The clues to finding it are hidden in books several books around the country, the piece of paper in the wizards hands is a list of these books.
The first one will be found in his library.

The area I'm struggling with is how to use the contents of the books to give the location of the library entrance. I suppose the obvious would be to have a page, paragraph and word number at the side of each title, and have each word spell out the location (eg book 1 = steaming, book 2 = the, book 3 = lake), however i was wondering if anyone had any other ideas that may challenge the players a little more?

 

[Nagol]

Watch the movie The Ninth Gate for a good take on this.

All the books are ostensibly the same, but each has a few unique pictures. Each picture holds a clue on how to unlock the gate -- the location, the time of day, expected preparations, etc.

 

[ACreepierFolklaw]

there was a great puzzle in the film 9th gate, if you haven't seen it it involves differences in near identical engraving plates in different editions, kind of like a spot the difference game, keys switching hands that sort of thing.
Perhaps the puzzle could be part of the illustrations in the books rather than the text? for example two copies of the same book, in one the background picture is a lake, and the other includes a clock. this would give them two locations...
if they expect it to be in the text, the whole text would serve as a red herring.

 

[Nilbog]

Two suggestions for the Ninth gate, i should really watch that movie!

I love the theory of the illustrations, but i'm not sure my artistic/photoshop talents would stretch to that! Something i will look into though

 

[DEFCON 1]

Are you willing to make replicas of the books themselves, or do you want the puzzles to remain written in nature and thus you only have to write up a page or two from each book?

Reason I ask is that if you're willing to make replica book covers... you could line up say ten books side-by-side in a particular order so that all the spines face out... then draw a map across the ten spines. When you then take each book separately, you can then add the title and author of the book (making sure not to cover over any important parts of the map), and hopefully the lines of the map become just pretty background designs on the spine when looked at individually.

This forces the players to go get most (if not all) of the books, so as to make sure they have all parts of the map. Especially considering if you don't mention that the actual puzzle is a picture and not written inside them... the players won't possibly realize what the puzzle is until they have the physical books in front of them and they just happen to line the books up next to each other and notice that there's a picture drawn across all ten spines.

 

[Nilbog]

Some Awesome suggestions, thank you guys!

I'm not sure i have the time resource, to do the books, but i love the idea, if i can pick up a few cheap books i may give it a go

 

[Aeolius]

When I think of "Eternal Library" and the far realms, the last thing that pops into my mind is an actual book.

Envision these as "books":

Or perhaps:

Or at the very least:

Though the temptation to have a vellum-hued dragon covered in runes... a Bookwyrm... would be great.

 

[Random Axe]

I also remember in the TV show Angel, I think at the end of the 3rd season when the gang crossed over into Lorne's demon dimension to find "Fred", there was a series of magical books, each of which made no sense on their own, but collected together, the passage of one page continued onto the same page of the next book, and so on.

So the piece of paper held by the wizard could simply have been one book name, but a list of locations, so the party would have to search all the locations to get all the copies of the book. And as a twist, the paper doesn't mention his own library where the key, the Rosetta stone if you will, is held. So even if all the other books are collected, they still won't open up the eternal library without the wizard's own key (usually a shrewd party will think of searching the home library sooner than later).

 

[karlindel]

Here are a few ideas which are not all mutually exclusive:

The note could contain information on the books' original locations, along with some research on where they have travelled since (so it's a quest to try to find the books, some of which will require a bit of travelling).

The dates the books were written (which can only be obtained from inside the books themselves) correspond to movable star charts on the front door of the library.

Each book has a star chart as one of its illustrations, each chart having one star "out of place" based on the date it is meant to depict. In actuality, if the out of place stars are considered to be in the appropriate place, they show the location of the library's entrance (you need to find a location where the stars align properly). The star charts might also be the key to opening the door, locating them all properly on the ground to open the gate to the library.

In addition to the clues, each book was created from the tanned skin of a different far realms creature, and each functions as a key to one room of the library. This opens up the possibility of someone else having one of the books the party couldn't find, or even stealing one from them.

The foreword of each book has a coded message containing the location at which a Legend Lore ritual can be performed to learn how to get past one of the eternal library's guardians.

The eternal library was sealed off for a reason. The books actually contain the soul/power of a far realm creature that was seeking the library's power, but could not find a way in. It created the books as something like a phylactery in order to find someone who could make it past the obstacles to get it to the library.

The books are actually faerie tales, each of which gives a general idea of what the next step is to enter the library (for example, something like Jack and the beanstalk would indicate a need to get into the sky and battle a storm giant, Hansel and Gretel would indicate a maze you could easily get lost in with a powerful witch or the like).

 

[AeroDm]

You could do something where each of the books shares the same image and in the margin are strange lines. It turns out that the lines are pieces of letters such that if you overlay the lines on top of each other you can read the message. This tends to work best if you use graph paper and write really boxy (think digital alarm clock letters). If you get really fancy, you can spend an insane amount of time tweaking the sayings so that if the wrong two images are overlaid it gives a red herring.