RPG Superstar 2008 Top 16, 2010 Top 4
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A cleric in my game who follows the Whispering Way philosophy wanted to get a hold of a copy of Whispers of the Immortals (detailed in the adventure Hungry Are The Dead), and this got me wondering: How much would a dark text such as this go for? I know he couldn't pick one up in Sandpoint, but places like Riddleport, Geb, or Katapesh are sure to have places that sell such things.
This, of course, got me to thinking on what other like tomes would be available on Golarion. The Great Old Ones love to have gnarly old books written about them, don't they? And what of outlawed anatomical codexes (and does Golarion have an Anti-Hypocratic Society?) of the sort found in 2nd Edition's Complete Book of Necromancers?
Any help on these topis, offical or not, would be greatly appreciated.
Creative Director
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I suspect creepy books go for a wide range of prices. Something fairly mundane, like the holy text of a well-known evil god, probably won't go for much more than a standard book cost (depending on your preference and how expensive you want the baseline of "book" to be in your game, that could be anywhere from a few gp up to 50 gp or 100 gp). Past that, I'd just treat rare books as art objects, and price them at whatever felt right for the adventure. Something found in a low level adventure might only be 300 or 500 gp, while something found in a high level one could be thousands or even tens of thousands of gp in value. Once they start getting magic properties, of course, they should be priced as appropriate for a magic item.
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 16, 2010 Top 4
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I suspect creepy books go for a wide range of prices...
Thanks, James.
We currently use 10 gp for basic (un)holy texts with cloth cover and no pictures, and 100 gp for nicely illuminated (un)holy texts bound in the same manner as spellbooks. So 50 gp for a copy of Whispers of the Immortals sounds pretty good.
Anyone got any other titles for me? (I'd especially like a name for the holy texts of Belial, Nocticula, and Nocticula's brother whatsisname.)
I've got a number of tomes of lore, both dark and otherwise, included in what I've got in the works for The Great Beyond like the 'Book of Serpents, Ash, and Acorns' for example. And quite a few CA Smith easter eggs, and -obscure- lovecraft references too.
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 16, 2010 Top 4
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I've got a number of tomes of lore, both dark and otherwise, included in what I've got in the works for The Great Beyond like the 'Book of Serpents, Ash, and Acorns' for example. And quite a few CA Smith easter eggs, and -obscure- lovecraft references too.
Book of Serpents, Ash, and Acorns... this wouldn't be a nod to Ygdrasil and Asatru for the Ulfen faithful would it?
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I've got a number of tomes of lore, both dark and otherwise, included in what I've got in the works for The Great Beyond like the 'Book of Serpents, Ash, and Acorns' for example. And quite a few CA Smith easter eggs, and -obscure- lovecraft references too.Book of Serpents, Ash, and Acorns... this wouldn't be a nod to Ygdrasil and Asatru for the Ulfen faithful would it?
If you look over the products with a fine toothed comb, you will find many book on all subjects. I had a list going before the wiki monster ate it, in PF1-7, the gazetteer and Guide to Korvosa there are at least 25 books mentioned by name. I want to say I was closer to 30, but i don't remember, and that was a lot of work.
I've got a number of tomes of lore, both dark and otherwise, included in what I've got in the works for The Great Beyond like the 'Book of Serpents, Ash, and Acorns' for example. And quite a few CA Smith easter eggs, and -obscure- lovecraft references too.Book of Serpents, Ash, and Acorns... this wouldn't be a nod to Ygdrasil and Asatru for the Ulfen faithful would it?
Well yes on the Yggdrasil reference/easter egg. The intent was to have folks read into it what they wanted to read into it, providing it with any deeper meaning they wanted to, or that they saw implied by the name. Without commenting on how I wanted it to absolutely be interpreted, it's something of a backhanded easter-egg to this guy based on a story I wrote a while back involving Yggdrasil, Nidhogg, and the demiplane of time.
Presumably it's not Harishek ap Thulkesh the baernaloth, but the easter egg is there if anyone wanted to directly go that route with it, yet at the same time there's nothing in the text that pins down any specific origin for that book in particular (and indeed a few details blur it a bit). It's an easter egg (and even if I could openly use the character I wouldn't because that's not a pandora's box I want to open on Golarion's cosmology).
I suspect creepy books go for a wide range of prices...Thanks, James.
We currently use 10 gp for basic (un)holy texts with cloth cover and no pictures, and 100 gp for nicely illuminated (un)holy texts bound in the same manner as spellbooks. So 50 gp for a copy of Whispers of the Immortals sounds pretty good.
Anyone got any other titles for me? (I'd especially like a name for the holy texts of Belial, Nocticula, and Nocticula's brother whatsisname.)
Socothbenoth.
Maybe base them on their monikers, Socothbenoth is the Silken Sin.
So Perhaps the Silken Grimoire.
For Nocitula maybe the Book of Shadowed Desires, etc. There may be official names in the demon lords write up in PF 18. I havent got it yet, so i dont know. Hope that helps!
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 16, 2010 Top 4
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Maybe base them on their monikers, Socothbenoth is the Silken Sin.
So Perhaps the Silken Grimoire.
For Nocitula maybe the Book of Shadowed Desires, etc. There may be official names in the demon lords write up in PF 18. I havent got it yet, so i dont know. Hope that helps!
It does indeed help. Very cool names, and unless PF 18's artcle says otherwise, these'll be what I use.
Thanks!
So... anyone have thoughts on the legality of anatomy in Golarion. Is there a secret society such as the Anatomical Academy or Anti-Hypocratics lurking around, paying body snatchers and doing strange flesh-golomy experiments?
Almost certainly. Nothing official springs to mind, but this is easy to envision in both Taldor and Absalom, and indeed Cheliax. Certainly it too could be related to a demon cult, or perhaps they follow a philosophy of transendance through understanding the flesh, through surgical and personal exploration of the human condition, i.e. dissecting the unwilling for perverse philosophical kicks.