The Necronomicon as a Pathfinder item

[shadowlodgemember]

For those unaware, the Necronomicon is the holy gospel of the Ancient ones. Long story short, I am running a PF campaign where an ancient one is sealed deep in a mega-dungeon of death.

Plot is some bitter old sociopathic lich wants to bust out an Old One is sealed beneath Golarion in a dungeon exactly 44 levels deep. Towards that end he's raised an army of undead and manipulated local Orc tribes into believing he's helping Orcus. He's playing some Rovagug cultists off the Orcs and also even has a few NPCs in Lastwall under his command, resurrecting powerful adventurers as part of his plot.

He leaves the Necronomicon out so that the PCs trapped in the dungeon might read it and survive longer, but also so that he might gain knowledge at the price of someone else's sanity being lost. Ultimately he needs many sacrifices and must feed the minds and souls of the powerful and true to the ancient one.

TL;DR: So how exactly would the Necronomicon translate into a PF item? :P

[Claxon]

Probably something like the Codex of Infinite Planes.

Also, Cthulu was added to bestiary 4, so you can straight up pull the Great Old Ones. Also, the Dark Tapestry and all the Great Old Ones exist in Pathfinder lore.

[Expletive]

Well, the Necronomicon itself isn't inherently magical. The reason it's typically shown as sanity destroying in Lovecraft and other's work is because the knowledge contained within is so contrary to the learned man's understanding of the world. This is one of the reasons Lovecraft's protagonists are typically scholars, or artists or others of higher education. If you put a lovecraftian horror in front of a scientist, it should repulse them, because it's something that, from their limited perspective, can not exist. It would bring about a revelation that everything they know about the world is fundamentally wrong, that things are not as they seem, and a realization that the only thing protecting the poor insects populating the world is their ignorance of the universe's true nature. So I think it would be a challenge to properly translate it into a pathfinder RPG's narrative, as the typical adventurer can be quite insulated from horror by their own ignorance. It's part of their daily routine. They could look at this odd book, and declare it the work of some mad simpleton, or overlook it entirely, precisely for the same reasons that it might drive another man insane. Because when someone looks at a piece that doesn't fit, they can discard it, or they can make it fit, thus shattering their previous view.

[Experiment 626]

Legendary Games has a "gothic" series that's pretty helpful in this regard.

[Velcro Zipper]

Lords of Madness for 3.5 had an item called the Codex Anathema that was effectively the D&D version of the Necronomicon. Reading the book granted a one-time only +2 Int, -2 Wis, 5 ranks in Know: Dungeoneering, 2 to Arcana and 2 to Planes (these are actual ranks, not just a skill bonus.) If I was making an Al Azif for my campaign, I'd probably mash that up with the Anathema Archive from Rise of the Runelords and toss in a bunch of spells converted from the Call of Cthulhu RPG. Since Lovecraft wrote Abdul Alhazred was killed and devoured by an invisible monster in broad daylight in front a large number of witnesses, I'd definitely throw in a curse attached to the book; perhaps a cumulative % chance per use that some extra-dimensional horror arrives to claim the reader of the book.