Tome of the Essential

Summary

The Tome of the Essential one of the four Essential Gifts. Its form is a massive leather and iron bound book with pages that appear to be parchment. It can't be damaged by ordinary means.

The Tome lives in the Great Library at Caldera Academy and is cared for by its own staff of librarians. It's said to contain all the knowledge in the universe if you know how to look for it. There is no index or table of contents. The title page is written in sidhe script and reads, "Seek here with a clear mind and no secret will evade you."

The Academy carefully controls access to the Tome as its use has been known to cause madness and death.

History

The pages of the book were prepared by Fi the Arcane and the bindings created by Saevel the Artificer. It was given to Queen Cyrene when the sidhe departed yn-av-Agova along with the Stone of the Essential. There's a story, almost certainly apocryphal, that says Yrol I, Cyrene's husband, looked into the book in order to know her true heart and that this glimpse is what turned him into a bit of a monster in his later years.

Regardless, when Cyrene left Yrol and traveled to Caldera Lake with Goa to found the Academy, she brought the Tome with her.

Game Mechanics

Opening the tome with a specific question in mind requires a will check DC 20. Failure means the viewer is stunned for fifteen minutes and shaken for twenty-four hours with no useful information retrieved. A critical failure causes insanity, catatonia or death. A successful viewing grants the viewer some insight into the question they're asking. The more specific the question, the more specific the answer. The Tome will use Identify, Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, Legend Lore, Vision, Discern Location, Greater Scrying, Precognition, and Postcognition as a 36th level wizard to answer questions and can do so either in text or a multimedia fashion. Questions that require prophecy suffer from the same vagueness and uncertainty that all prophecies have and yield to the Skill:Interpret Prophecy skill.

The librarians who are designated to ask questions of the Tome take levels in Skill:Defensive Reading. With at least three skill levels, a reader won't die from a critical failure, but will still suffer a minor insanity or temporary catatonia.

Looking into the tome without a specific question or distracted by side concerns will trigger the tome to cast Detect Thought and try to answer the most pressing question in the viewer's mind. If this is required, the will check is at DC 25.