The Entertainment District
In reply to GM (msg # 103):
Each book is a completely unassuming volume of either music sheets, fictitious work, or history. Nearly every one shows a great deal of wear and tear from ages of use by its previous owners. If these truly do represent the keys you are looking for, you suspect only four are actually needed. The rest are likely red herrings of some manner, just meant to fill in space or send you down the wrong path...
Roses: A Guide. A gardener’s manual for tending to roses. Dating back about four centuries, you find the information in it to be, to your surprise, still just as boring but practical now as it would have been back then. Specifically, gaining the most out of rocky, infertile soil and ensuring that your roses grow in even the harshest of conditions.
Untitled Book of Sheet Music. A booklet of sheet music for a symphony by the famous composer Nethan Rothfield. Penned a few decades before his disappearance nearly 170 years ago, this one appears to simply be titled “III”. It seems the last few pages are missing.
The Headsman’s Bounty. A history of the original council of Tenebria. Specifically, this volume is part 6 of a 19 part collection. This one deals with the life and eventual trial and execution of Merius Xilthus, a corrupt advisor of the Eternal Empress who tried, over the course of many years, to fill her head with thoughts of extending Tenebria’s reach overseas. His honeyed words and venomous intent were eventually discovered and he was executed for sedition about 320 years ago.
Somewhere Far Beyond. A book on cosmology, penned in a form of Common no longer used in any part of Veltria. You suspect this was written well before the rise of Tenebria and the proper scientific astrological research the Empire’s universities brought with them. Even a cursory glance reveals many of the star charts to be completely incongruous with the modern skies above.
Key to the Kingdom. A foreign novel detailing the rise and fall of a small kingdom in a far off land. The royal family is slaughtered one night, all but the youngest daughter who is smuggled away by a prisoner whom the king had condemned to death. The man takes her into hiding and trains her as his apprentice as a mercenary “spell-sword” (which you can only assume is some manner of battle mage in the region the book was written, given how casually the phrase is tossed about). After the mercenary’s death and her acceptance of who she is, the girl, now a woman in her early 20’s, sets off to reclaim the home and birthright she’d been denied all those years ago.
Hens in the Fox Den. A spy novel, written in a form of gnomish that has rarely been seen for the last 300 years. It is the first in a series about a man who ultimately chooses to sell out his former organization to their king when it becomes clear his comrades are plotting a coup. The rest of the series surely goes into the consequences of his decision and where life takes him from there.
Fickle Freedom. A history book containing the collected records of seven different Free Cities similar to Tideswallow which have since fallen into ruin. Not one is currently still standing. This volume basically just traces their path to failure through economic isolation. It paints a grim picture, but as far as you can tell, not one that Tideswallow would ever fall into thanks to its sheer importance as a point of trade.
Each Note a Memory. A book of music from an antique age. Many of the songs herein have not seen the light of day for centuries. This could be worth quite a bit of coin to a collector or an organization like an active Bard College.
Life and How to Live It. A combination biography and opinion piece on the state of the world by a famous bard named Mikale Stype. You know you are passingly familiar familiar with some of his limericks, but can’t actually call any to mind at the moment. Mostly political opinions disguised as catchy tunes, as many of the best songs are. You’re positive one will come to you once you stop actually trying to think of one.
Caring for Our Musical Friends. A treatise on the proper cleaning and maintenance techniques for exotic instruments. Looking around the room, you can match up several of the more bizarre instruments you see hanging from hooks with the designs and diagrams in the is book.
Allegory of the Witch and the Weapon. A somewhat comical short story of an encounter between a Tenebrian devastation-trooper and a horribly deformed drow web-witch. Through a bit of banter between the two, the soldier posits that it is the pinnacle of drow evolution, while the decrepit, hunched creature before it retorts that the soldier is not a drow. That it is merely a tool cast from a mold, where as the web-witch is the result of circumstance and necessity. A true example of what makes drow who they are. The story concludes in an expectedly dark, humorous, but ultimately thought-provoking manner.
Dust in the Wind. A book pertaining to the nature of death and what comes after it. This appears to be a brief history of mortal knowledge concerning the plains of the gods, elementals, demons, and the various afterlives associated with each. A simple map of the planes beyond that of the material folds out from the center of it. A few notes written here and there in the margins relate back to how immortalizing someone in song is as good as keeping them alive forever. Seems this was someone’s textbook somewhere along the line, but likely not at the Bard College; though they almost certainly brought it along with them when they came here. A hefty amount of the back pages of the book are completely empty, and it appears the tome was originally meant to be updated as more planes were discovered or more belief systems worked their way into popularity.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:32, Tue 22 Sept 2020.
