I've had a tendency, until recently, to think of these books as simply in-game resources. In the case of Call of Cthulhu, it seemed at first like a simple transaction for the Investigator. They pay a certain cost in Sanity, they gain some terrible knowledge, maybe a spell or two, and they have a resource to use for later. Simple, right?
But man, does that elide a whole bunch of interesting role-playing and world-building opportunities.
At the conclusion of the Zone Rouge mini-prequel-campaign, the Vienna Club investigators picked up a very old book. The Latin title was clear enough: De Vermis Mysteriis. [Ominous thunder rolls in the background.] We didn't have time to dive into the book in-person, so we saved it for off-screen discussion via our FB group.
Here's how I framed it for the Investigator who was heading up the research into the book. Mechanics details come from the CoC 7e Keeper's Guide:
"First, the initial inspection:
The book is a great, hefty thing. It's bound in leather, though it's a strange sort of leather indeed. No visible pores, none of the usual crinkles common to products of the time. This is either exceedingly carefully bound, or else made of some other material... or both.
Picking it up, the first thing you notice is that the cover feels... gritty, somehow? Like that time you went to Coney Island with Albert [ed. note: his brother] when you were kids, and you swam all day, and then you remembered your mom said to come home an hour ago so you went home without showering off, and all the rest of the night you felt gritty and uncomfortable.
Despite being a little uncomfortable to hold, you really admire the raised lettering of the title: "De Vermis Mysteriis." It catches your eye, and you spend a full minute or two just following the curves and surfaces with your vision.
You know enough Latin to puzzle it out yourself: "Mysteries of the Worm."
Only after a few minutes looking at the title do you notice a few splashes of blood - recent blood - on the left edge of the cover and the bottom edge of a few of the pages. That, you reason, belonged to von Sebottendorf, before your friend caused his head to become mist.
Flipping through it, you notice a few things:
*It's mostly printed in a very ornate German Blackletter style. ******Reading this with any degree of speed requires a successful Language: German roll. ******Translating is possible - with the help of a fluent translator, it can be done in 1d10+4 weeks, If trying it yourself, without any German language, it's going to take 4d10+12 weeks, and will be full of errors.
* Throughout, there are marginal notes written in a much more modern German hand. These are easier to translate, and can be done without a roll, but it will take time if you are not fluent. In some cases, a German term appears in the margin to be translated into both Turkish and Arabic. [ed. note: These notes are by von Sebottendorf, though I don't know if the players will pick up on that.]"
The CoC Keeper Guide urges you to make Mythos Tomes feel weird and dangerous, and that's absolutely right. This is, in a sense, what separates Mythos knowledge from Occult knowledge. This is not just having to think about things that seem strange to a rational modern mind. This is having a direct, tactile, emotional and intellectual experience of the strange. It may trigger memories. It may affect your ability to concentrate. It's going to throw you off a little bit.
They wanted to dig more into the history of the book:
"By asking around the Occult circles and checking in certain disreputable books, you learn the following:
* The book is credited to a man named Ludwig Prinn, and indeed that name appears among the blackletter Latin in the first few pages.
* The only printed copies the occult community is aware of were printed in 1542, in Cologne, Germany. The original text is supposed to be much older, though whether written by Prinn or someone else, no one can authoritatively say.
* It was vigorously suppressed by Church authorities at the time - you can infer what vigorous suppression looked like in 16th-century Cologne. 15 copies were known to have survived at the time, but some have since disappeared. It is not known what happened to the author.
It is known to discuss, in part, the Arab and near-East world of antiquity, and supernatural entities and occurrences of that time. One account by an 18th-century scholar in Yorkshire says that the part she was able to understand mentioned "the habits of creatures such as the famous djinn of lore, and how one might attract such a being." Other sources dispute this as a translation error."
Finally, as they turn their attention toward researching Ludwig Prinn, the likely author of the piece, I plunder liberally from the Wikipedia entry on the (fictional) book, and make a few tweaks to tie it more directly into the 11th-century Constantinople setting, where [SPOILERS FOR HORROR ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS] a gentleman named Sedefkar is being tutored by one he calls "The Skinless One..."
After much searching, following of fizzled leads, and chasing of circular references, you track down a copy of an English book currently held in the Swiss Academy of Art in Geneva. Written in Kent in the mid 1700s, it is titled: "Lives of the Lesser Magi: Being an Treatyse upon Severall Ockult and Heretickal Persons of Minor Repute."
In its two pages on Prinn, you find:
* An "alchemist, necromancer, [and] reputed mage" who "boasted of having attained a miraculous age" before being burned at the stake in Brussels during the height of the witch trials (in the late 15th or early 16th centuries).
* Prinn, maintained that he was captured during the Ninth Crusade in 1271, and attributed his occult knowledge to studying under the "wizards and wonder-workers of the Seljuks and Ottomans" before and during his captivity.
* Prinn once makes mention of time spent in Byzantium or Constantinople in the 11th century, writing that "there are legends among the crusaders concerning my deeds and those of my fellow Seekers of Truth.
And that's where we've left it for now. The descent into terrible knowledge and madness awaits! As well as a pair of somewhat-but-not-devastatingly-useful spells, which may help out in the coming Orient Express campaign.
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