Inside the Tome

So What is inside this book? Any suggestions?

The Following is declared Open Game Content.

D30 What Is Inside The Mysterious Tome Table

1. Magical notations describing, and capturing, the psychic despair of all insects throughout history ever entombed in amber. The energies will aide those seeking to escape imprisonment. [From the Sorcerer's Skull]
2. The reader's future diary, chronicling from the moment they found the book up to the seeming moment of their death--but the last page is missing, and the narrative ends in an abrupt fashion. [From the Sorcerer's Skull]
3. An alchemist's diary, recording in exacting detail his daily diet and excretory records, weighted and measured. This is all written in a backwards ancient language that can only be read by a 6th level magic-user. [Rended Press]
4. The dashing tales of derring-do of Waldo the Ubiquitous, that esteemed ancient adventurer known to have visited all the realms at least once, and half of them twice. Rumored to have been lost on his third voyage to Eastern Umfulkampf, it is said to contain the true secrets of how to travel light but still be ready to dungeon delve on a moment's notice. [Rended Press]
5. No mutton? No lizards? No way! Everything in moderation, says Drugahl, Chief Cook to the Orc King. After all, some days only blood or flumpf will hit the spot. In Chef Drugahl's 30-Slaves to Get Ready Meals, the bestselling cookbook author serves up another helping of creative, hassle-free recipes that are ready to rock your tastebuds with the help of less than thirty slaves. Here, at last, are recipes for those who just cannot and will not live totally slave-free: Meat dinners made mostly with slightly rotted meats and no vegetables, fresh elven and dwarven sausage wraps, camp-style meat-pies, and tons of scavenging ideas—with and without fins and feathers!. With more than 150 new dishes, plenty of time-saving tips, and a generous serving of Drugahl's “I will kill you” attitude, 30-Slaves to Get Ready Meals proves you don’t have to go to extremes to eat Orc-style! [Rended Press]
6. It's clearly a hoax. [Countdown to Gametime]
7. A transcription of a dialog between Orcus and Graz'zt debating the relative merits of entering into demonic pacts with humans. Halfway through, the text changes to a partial translation of the ninth chapter of The Necronomicon for about 50 pages, and then there's this weird purple stain covering the rest of the pages in the book. Anyone touching the stain must make a Save vs. Insanity, or immediately strip off all their clothes and attack the nearest dwarf. [Rended Press]
8. The design plans for a cave complex for a keep somewhere near the borderlands. [Rended Press]
9.  A series of variously-sized and sequentially-numbered tables. The entries are hazy and unclear, but the numbers stand out clearly and seem to float above the page.
   Should a means of determining a random number, such as a die, be available to the characters - and courage be mustered to use this - a table of any kind and from any gaming resource may be chosen by the GM and the appropriate die rolled by a player. The text of the table entry rolled will clarify on the page of the tome, and may be read from the GM table by the players. Reality will flex almost imperceptibly and this table result will manifest in the experience of the characters in the game. It should be incorporated by the GM at the earliest opportunity, ideally at once.
   For each additional entry determined in this way by any character, the flexing of reality also sees that character suffer one repercussion from the d100 table at Quckly, Quietly, Carefully. [Porky's Expanse]
10. Blueprints, schematics and operating tips for the dream-harvesting engine, perpetual motion dungeon turbines (handy for re-setting traps, powering spinning rooms, etc.), geodesic microverses, low-cost flat-pack insta-dungeons, and the like.
    Also includes cuttings of articles on the use of purple worms in macroculture soil aeration, Myconid hunting tips, the political economy of pillaging, etc. All the above are written and illustrated in the breezy style of the Whole Earth Catalogue, although occasional hints of loss and horror intrude. [Vaults of Nagoh]
11. A treatise exploring the failure of treaties between the elves and the dwarves, between elves and drow, between drow and dwarves, and the roll of gnomes in instigating the 1100 Year War. [Rended Press]
12. It's just a lich's coloring book. [Rended Press]
13.  A rambling, unedited, stream-of-consciousness discussion of various spellbooks and scrolls that Verdananmium the Mad found to be inspirational in his own magical research and spell creation. Several of his references are to tomes that clearly do not exist or attributed to the wrong arch mage or necromancer. The names of spells are often confused with other, similar sounding names, and many of the spells, if cast in the form that Verdananmium has recorded them, will result in severe miscasting catastrophes. A message from The Wizards Guild stamped on the inside front cover strongly encourages its members not to trust the accuracy of the tome's contents. Those attempting to read the tome must make a Save vs. Insantiy or be severely grumpy for 1d4 days. [Rended Press]
14.  It's a Cult of Baphomet tattoo codex. [Rended Press]
15. Why, it's a long lost copy of Paladin Kanamit Damon's "To Serve Man". [Rended Press]
16.  A full rendering of the life to date of a randomly-determined member of the party, including innermost thoughts and feelings, and abstract expressions of the most fleeting experiences and half-perceptions. Leafing through, the text is seen to be writing itself, running on line after line, and the act of this reading appears. The number of pages remaining may be of significance, and the corporeal relationship of book and subject is unknown... [Porky's Expanse]
17. The book is a trap*. If read, it will gradually steal all memories of the reader and add them to itself after the last recorded page, in the form of a story. *It was originally read by those that were dying to preserve their life. [Lunching on Lamias]
18. A census of the realm, including the amount collected or owed in taxes, rent, crops, etc. There is also an evaluation of each subject's fealty to the current ruling power. Each PC's name appears in the tome. There is a 35% chance that the information recorded for each PC is incorrect. [Rended Press]
19. It's a copy of Uncle Screwtape's Infernal-to-Common Travel Dictionary.[Rended Press]
20. Initially nothing, but a sharp reader may notice a slightly raised surface on the spine that when depressed causes the pages to light up and images appear, which may then be unlit in the same way. While the tome is hardly portable, extensive study may reveal wonders, represented by further rolls on this table. Unfortunately the tome will one day fail to respond. Further use will require discovery and application of the flow of a property of subatomic particles producing and interacting with a fundamental force. [Porky's Expanse]
21. That ain't a book--it's a dwarf Mimic! [Rended Press]
22.  Its not really a book. Its an elaborately disguised top to a chest. Its meant for arcane types and scholars who likely leave many open tomes in their workspace. Insert key into the thin black space on the conveniently place writing implement, and the whole top of the table, book included, will lift to reveal the storage area. (Roll again on this table to determine the fake contents of this fake book.) [Brian Liberge]
23.  It's a Tome of Many Tongues. [Rended Press]
24. Upon these pages are writ the dreams of the Jeliai the Prophet. Known in his times as the dream scribe of King Aronus, Jeliai possessed an unusual adeptness at interpreting the dreams of others to predict right courses of actions. His own dreams, however, were plagued with nightmares of choices wrongly made and future catastrophes beyond his own time. Scholars and mages have been arguing for ages over the correct interpretations of these recorded dreams and Jeliai's attempts at interpretation, which are often written in vague snippets of doggerel poetry. [Rended Press]  (If the adventurers choose to read a page, roll 1d4 on the following sub-table.)

ONE

If there is a bustle in the hedgerow
Don't be alarmed now;
It's just a spring clean
For the May Queen. 

TWOWe're a ship without a storm.
The cold without the warm
Light inside the darkness that it needs;
We're a laugh without a tear
The hope without the fear,
We are coming home.
We're off to the witch. 

THREEGenerals gather at their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerers of death's construction
In the fields the bodies burning
As the war machines keep turning.

FOURGod of thunder of rock and roll
The spell you're under
Will slowly rob you of your virgin soul;
I'm the lord of the wastelands.
A modern man of steel
I gather darkness to please me
I command you to kneel.

25. A full page ad for the toxin InstaGlue:

It stucks on me,It stucks on you,It must be -InstaGlue!
The book is then glued to the person reading it. [Jensan]

26. A full page ad for a new series of collectible, quick-summoning monsters, InstaGrue:

It eats on me,It eats on you,It must be -InstaGrue!
It will then instantaneously summon forth a horrible grue of various size. [Jensan]

27. A detailed and fully illustrated instruction manual for Githzerai martial arts. [Migellito]


28. A pornographic romance novel written in Dwarvish. If the PCs decide to read a page, they will find one of the passages found at This Site. [Rended Press]


29. That's pretty stupid. As you open the tome, a fist appear between the pages and punch you in your face! Just like a "Jack in the Box". Using the right formula ("Klaatu, Burada, Nicto!"), allows you to actually disarm the punching fist and read the book. Roll again on the table to find out about content. [Il Male™ ]


30. The book is a colony of tiny wormlike creatures which form themselves into characters and images in line with pheromonal signals sent by the queen living in the binding. The queen herself is channelling a far vaster consciousness. Part of the colony may migrate with the reader. [Porky]

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Okay then, we now have Thirty entries, so we'll convert this into a free PDF with each contribution linked/credited to the contributors and made available off of one of our file-sharing accounts. Look for details shortly.