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My table's PCs have decided to go the guerrilla warfare route with Cheliax as the way to best support the Glorious Reclamation. I've managed to direct them towards the Archive of Redacted Histories on...
They're going to try to rescue and make propaganda out of the materials that they liberate from there. What kinds of juicy secrets would they find in the books that were supposed to be burned or edited?
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It turns out that the best sources for the secrets can be found from "Cheliax, the Infernal Empire", with extra stuff on Egorian and the Bellflower Network in Hell's Vengeance 4, Pezzack in Towns of the Inner Sea, House Thrune and Kantaria in Hell's Vengeance 2, and Westcrown in Council of Thieves 1 and 6 (the ending tells you who made the call to leave Westcrown as self-governing).
I ended up with 14 pages single-spaced of secrets. They only get all of that if they are somehow able to take everything home.
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Occult Mysteries has several excellent entries that could be useful for Occultist PCs at your table to be found at this Archive. I don't have any of those, but for flavor I'm including Book of 1,000 Whispers, a lay copy of Gospel of Ilhys, and a near-mint copy of The Inward-Facing Circle (early Thrune diabolist). I was really, really tempted to include a copy of the Aucturn Lexicon by Chelish Osirionologist, Paracount Imivus in 4657 ar, but I was afraid that would just be too tempting to lead to anything but utter derailment of the campaign.
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Here's what I went with for doing research projects using materials stolen.
Stolen Archive of Redacted Histories CR 16
To research it: Succeed in a check to do damage to its Knowledge Points
Time: 8 uninterrupted hours per attempt. Cannot take 10 or 20
Knowledge: DC 43 (varies by topic of research)
Aid Another Skills: Knowledge (arcana), Knowledge (engineering), Knowledge (geography), Knowledge (history), Knowledge (local), Knowledge (nobility), Knowledge (religion), Perform or Craft: Writing, Perception (very convoluted filing system)
KP 48
• Research thresholds: 30, 20, 10
Provides +5 bonus to Knowledge: History, +2 bonus to geography, local, nobility, religion.
Bonuses:
• Up to three people can aid another for a +2 each at DC 10. Failure is -2. [Rules say two can aid, but I’m making it three because otherwise one PC has nothing to do]
• Each prior attempt +1 cumulative to rolls
Success on research roll: Primary researcher is…
• 1d12+Int KP damage [if 10 ranks, skill focus, OR 5 ranks and it’s class skill]
o 1d8+Int KP damage [if 5 ranks OR it’s a class skill]
o Others: 1d4+Int KP damage
• +1 KP for every five by which you beat a DC
• Critical success threat: double damage if succeed on second roll (no extra time)
• Natural one: fail and increase KP one-quarter remaining KP
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Here's my calculations of how many books are in the Secret Archive of Redacted Histories:
Western and Eastern Archives: Cubic footage of books (10x15x1): 1800 (table canon, because I eliminated the bookshelves not on the walls) vs. 2700 (real canon on the map). I found a thread for Amazon retailers that assumes ~25 hardback trade books/cubic foot. (The thread specified 36 trade paperbacks/cubic foot.) So each room has 45K-67.5K books.
Repository of Broken Promises: These faulty documents are essentially entertainment for the cultists, so are inessential to take. But if your party does... QLS solutions says that 2200 pieces of paper fit a banker’s box of 1800 square inches. I estimated that 120 banker’s boxes will fit in a cubic square, or 264,000 pages. The room’s total: 12,672,000 pages.
The Library of All: The shelving is thicker on the map, so I went with 5x5x2 per 5’ square: 144 5x5 squares of books (144x144x2): 41,472 cubic feet of books. Amazon assumes hardback books ~25 books/cubic foot: 1,036,800 books.
Treasure Stitching spell makes a 10x10x10 cube of books easy to carry and teleport: 1,000 cubic feet per casting. This is by far more efficient for carrying stuff than handy haversack (12 cubic feet), bag of holding (30-250 cubic feet, depending on type), or portable hole (250 cubic feet).