Welcome to today's #WorldbuildingWednesday post! For those of you new to this series, I'm @oblivioncubed. In this series of posts, I break down what Worldbuilding means to me, how I build a setting, why I choose to build what I do, and hopefully provide you some inspiration to use in your Worldbuilding.
My world - Trothguard - is a setting I've created as a catch-all location for any tabletop RPG games I run, so everything I build is filtered through a lens of 'how will this improve the game for myself and my players?'.
Today we're going to look at the second set of books I mentioned in Legendary Items of Trothguard. This will be part 2 of 3, as there are nine powerful books/scroll collections that I've created for my game, and it's fun to show them off!
Note that some of these items were inspired by (and often named after) other works. The Boneturner's Tale from Part 1, and the Leitner Scrolls from this part, are largely inspired by the podcast 'The Magnus Archives', which I highly recommend listening to! Both objects were created by those brilliant minds and then stolen and changed by me. Because, with TableTop settings... Steal & Change is a fantastic method of filling out your world.
Now, with all that said... let's jump right into Part 2 of Legendary Items of Trothguard!
Picking up right from where we left off last week, today I'm going to showcase 3 more of the 9 total Legendary Books that are known to exist within my setting. I forgot to mention last Wednesday, but each and every one of these 9 books I'm discussing in this series of posts has played a key role in major world events throughout the history of Trothguard.
The assassination of the Faror family line (the First Emperor's bloodline) for example, would not have been possible without the aid of The Watcher's Crown, The Book of Vile Darkness, and several Leitner Scrolls. Wiping out an entire bloodline in a single day is no small feat, particularly one with many highly capable magic users. The utter bloodbath of that day 2,654 years prior to the current era - thereafter known as Raven Night - is an indication of the world-changing consequences of any single group holding more than one of these powerful relics.
With this example in mind, I'd like to dive into the collection of amassed scrolls known as 'The Leitner Scrolls'.
Normally, scrolls - even massed collections of them - would not be considered worthy of being placed on a list of powerful books with world-changing potential. The Leitner Scrolls, however, are beasts of a different breed. These scrolls were all either created or owned by the Archmage Jomoris Leitner; an eccentric hermit whos arcane studies pushed the boundaries between man and god in the Age of Magic. Leitner disappeared in the months following Raven Night, and eventually, curious mages and adventurers discovered his private sanctum - and among other things - the vast library contained within it. Each item in the library bears the sigil of Leitner, and the known scrolls all have the further trait of being nearly indestructible.
The Leitner Scrolls span every known school of magic as well as several schools of magic that have been lost for millennia. Each scroll is singular in its magical effect or power, but since the scrolls aren't expended upon use and can't be destroyed, they've become quite the collector's item for any magic-user who can read them. Some of the more well-known scrolls provide the ability to control fear, warp reality, or create rifts/doorways to other planes and pocket dimensions. Several of them deal with the lost art of blood-magic, and at least one is known to contain a spell from the lost school of time magic. No one knows the full number of scrolls in the set, and there is speculation that a great many scrolls remain to be found.
Alone, the scrolls are powerful but ultimately not more powerful than anything a modern archmage can dish out. They become a problem when someone collects several of them for a specific purpose. The right combination of scrolls can - and indeed have - helped to accomplish world-changing events.
Next up, let's take a look at the book known as the Liber Primus or 'The First Book'.
What is known about the Liber Primus is that it is something of a living compendium or bestiary of extremely powerful entities. It contains detailed information about a staggering number of Angels, Devils, Demons, Minor and Major Deities, and Extra-Planar entities. It also contains the correct ritual items and spell details to both communicate with these beings, as well as summon an Avatar of them to the prime material plane. The summoned avatar is under the absolute control of the summoner for 24 hours, and while an avatar created in this fashion is severely limited in its power, when you're dealing with entities that are as powerful as those contained in this book it's still potentially cataclysmic in the wrong hands.
The final item in today's showcase is the book aptly known as The Watcher's Crown.
The Watcher's Crown is a compendium of divination and dream-walking spells and rituals, which allow the user abilities. One such ability is to enter the dreams of individuals they are familiar with, which has a wide range of potential effects. Other spells in this compendium provide the ability to locate objects, individuals, or creatures on this or any plane of existence (though rituals seeing between the planes are significantly more complex). There are also divination spells designed to predict future events or to predict the outcome of specific events. While divination of the future is always an uncertain thing, the spells contained in this book have a much higher probability of correctly predicting an outcome than standard forms of divination.
These spells do not come without risk, however. The spells and rituals contained in The Watcher's Crown are complex and detailed. Failing or being unable to complete a spell/ritual once started can have dire consequences. Permanent nightmares, madness, coma, blindness, and a host of other potential problems have been documented in failed attempts. Success, however... is often worth the risk.
That's it for Part 2!
Thanks for reading, and I hope you found some of these items interesting or inspirational. As mentioned at the start, check out The Magnus Archives podcast to see where several of my items are inspired from, or dive into the cryptography mystery of Cicada 3301's Liber Primus which has remained unsolved since 2014 and provided the naming inspiration for my own Liber Primus.
Join me next Wednesday again for the final three books in this series of Legendary Items!
Thank you for reading today's #WorldbuildingWednesday! I hope this has provided you with some inspiration!
If there's something else you'd like to ask me about, please do so! I will make every effort to answer it next Wednesday.
| WorldbuildingWednesdays - Prior Posts: | |
|---|---|
| 0: Introduction to WorldbuildingWednesday | 10: Economy & Currency |
| 1: Starting the World | 11: Creating Governments |
| 2: Kingdoms, Factions, and Notable People | 12: Shops & Markets |
| 3: Creation Facts and Creation Myths | 13: Worldbuilding Exercise |
| 4: Shaping History | 14: Legendary Items of Trothguard (Part 1) |
| 5: Myths & Legends | |
| 5.a: Player Visions (Supplemental) | |
| 6: Gods & Lesser Deities | |
| 7: Creating Cultures | |
| 8: Making Religions | |
| 9: Building Cults |
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