DMs Only: Dirt City
Modules
- Dirt City Disease -- May 2005
The Book Of All Evil
An artifact discovered by the heroes of Dirt City and remanded to the current Prince of Dirt City, leading to his downfall.
In the Second Age of the world when Gargul was the god of death and evil, he created a Book to record all Evil acts in the Wold. Long he crafted, making parchment of the flayed skins of the most evil examples of the Noble Races, and bound the whole in the hide of an ancient red dragon of unspeakable cruelty. Foul enchantments enable the Book to record all a person's evil deeds during their life in order to punish them once they arrive in the Shadow Lands. Each page’s flowing script is written in the ichor or blood of the creature who committed each vile act.
Once the Second Age ended, Gargul was no longer the god of Evil. The Book lay forgotten for an age until the great Cataclysm when the very foundations of the Wold were shaken. Continuing to record evil acts, a malevolent intelligence formed and inhabited the bindings and pages of the Book, and it began to yearn for more. Not content to merely record evil that had taken place, the Book wished to actively create evil acts and so increase its knowledge. At this time, the Book moved to the Wold and began to bring evil wherever it went.
Over the years, many have grown in power and evil with the help of the Book. The names written therein are uncounted, but include rulers of Osto, Princes, Priests and Rogues of blackest hue. It is rumored that Marteus himself used the Book before he made his bid for godhood, though no one has dared go through the test of questioning him.
On the slopes of Mount Bone was where its tale most recently begins, found by a half-fiend of the Army of Marteus. Using sacrifice and her own blood, she learned many secrets and became powerful to the god of testing. She gathered evil denizens around Blackbird Lake and made unholy alliance with slavers from Alisidur. Yet near her time of triumph, the Book was stolen from her by the combined efforts of a group of heroes from Dirt City and the Wildcards of the Pirates of Jack.
The Dirt City heroes brought the infernal Book to the Prince of Thieves and it now gleefully begins its work of sowing evil once again.
Within its pages of skin and hide, the Book of All Evil knows and has recorded every evil act that has ever happened in the Wold.
The Book is able to keep the acts of the past and its own nature hidden from casual investigation. Knowledge is its power, and it guards that power jealously. The Book has a permanent Undetectable Alignment spell working. It does not appear to be magical or evil through any detection spells. A True Seeing spell will show the book symbolically - as a doorway to a library with books stretching as far as the eye can see, with demonic and diabolical creatures tending the books - (this focuses on the prophetic visions of the book being able to provide information from the past and future).
The Book has powers to protect itself, its knowledge, and to move about to increase the presence of evil in the Wold. It can create the following spell-like effects at will as a free action; Undetectable Alignment (self), Desecrate, and Obscure Object (self), Secret Page (self). The Book may intentionally not create these effects if it would further the interest of evil.
Normal reading will provide evil of a petty nature that revolves around the reader; nearby smuggling racket, the perpetrator of a number of burglaries, adultery, poisoning of wells, and the like. Every evil secret is protected from casual discovery by the Secret Page spell-like effect. Unlike the spell, however, the trigger is not a word, but an action; the sacrifice of blood. It is only with the spilling of blood on the pages that the Book will show its true secrets.
If a reader pours blood onto the pages and wishes to learn about a certain thing, the Book will go blank, and then reveal the writing about the event. The writing is often in riddle or cloaked in mystery in order to get the reader to want to know more. The more evil the act to spill the blood (killing a person over the Book is more evil than killing an animal or draining your own blood), the clearer the message.
The Book is actively seeking to corrupt good aligned people and each use of the Book brings greater pressure to commit ever more evil acts. The Book will work and reveal secrets at every attempt. However, each time a reader uses the Book in this way, they have to make a Will Save at DC 10 + 2 per previous attempt (10,12,14,16) or slip alignment one spot towards evil. (Good to Neutral, Neutral to Evil). This slippage is reversible by a remove curse (DC equals the last failed Will Save to get rid of the Book), an atonement spell and quest for a good aligned deity.
If stymied in corrupting an individual or once the person is uncontrollably evil, the Book works to move on and seed other areas with its evil influence. While it can’t move on its own, it trusts in the greed and corruptability of others to eventually move on.
It has been foretold that only Gargul’s Treasure House can contain the Book and remove it from the Wold, and it will be brought there by an innocent one of unsullied goodness.
