Hidden Libraries (Bookhounds)

This week’s post is inspired by recent announcements concerning a hidden medieval library discovered it Romania.  

Briefly: the library was discovered in a tower of the Church of St. Margaret in Mediaș, a 15th-century Gothic structure built by the Transylvanian Saxons. It includes hundreds of documents, books and registers, some of which go back as far as the 13th century. It was probably deliberately hidden during a time of upheaval and is remarkably well-preserved.  

There’s all kinds of articles about it but, if you want more information, it can be had here.  

OK, let’s turn this into a Bookhounds seed.  

What are the basic elements? A lost library, meticulously catalogued by its long-forgotten owner, which has recently been discovered. It was hidden during a time of upheaval, possibly religious, to preserve it. 

The events that best fit that pattern in an English timeline are the English Reformation and the Civil War 1642-51. 

The Reformation destroys the Catholic Church in England, replacing it with Protestantism and in the process scattering Church holdings far and wide. It inspires, among other things, many a tale of priest’s holes and other hiding places for Catholics and their goods. It used to be you couldn’t have a decent ghost story in English literature, or a murder mystery in a stately home, without someone mentioning the long-forgotten priest’s hole hidden somewhere in the walls of the family manor.  

Sourced from Harvington Hall

Sometimes these treasures are protected. E.G. Swain’s ghost tales set in East Anglia feature at least two tales of spectral figures guarding Church relics, who go to some trouble to move those same relics when it looks as if Swain’s Protestant Vicar, Mr. Batchel, is about to get too close to the secret. M.R. James features several similar tales, one of the best of which is probably O Whistle! In which a Templar secret is unwittingly discovered by an academic on holiday. However, for my money the best of all is Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book, in which an academic discovers ‘a large folio, bound, perhaps, late in the seventeenth century,’ filled with collected scraps and illuminated manuscript pages from other books. This is probably the closest to the Romanian story, though the Canon’s Scrap-Book is considerably smaller than the Romanian hoard.  

The Civil War has the added historical bonus of providing romance and a definite termination point to the ownership of this fictional library. Point being that many old Catholic families were scattered or destroyed during the War, which means that you, as Keeper, can trace a definite timeline for the history of this hidden treasure. First kept by the Catholic Church, then moved in a hurry to the family manor of [whoever it may be] to preserve it from Protestant hands, then lost to memory when the last living [whoever] gets killed in the war or dies in exile waiting for the restoration of Charles II. The secret then lies dormant for several hundred years before being rediscovered in the modern era. 

Why rediscovered, though? Could be all kinds of reasons, but let’s say for the sake of the narrative that the manor’s been bought by a new, foreign owner, who has all sorts of modern views about plumbing, electrics and so forth. They wanted to redo the place so it was a bit less like an ivy-clad shithole .. beg pardon, so it was less authentic.  

That’s the kind of owner who could be conveniently off-site when the library is rediscovered. Allowing the Hounds access. 

From all that we get:

The Howling Library

The Buckinghamshire manor Dorney Hall was, at one time, owned by the de la Roche family, but the last of that name died at Chalgrove Field and the Hall has been in the hands of an increasingly impoverished cadet branch of the family ever since. The Rochedales finally decided to offload their white elephant and sold it to an American, Norwell Cupman, who made his fortune in automobiles. The Cupman Comet is an up-and-comer in the racing world and the Cupman Coupe is a solid, commercial brand. 

Cupman wanted Dorney Hall but he wants it to be a little less drafty and damp, so he brought on board an architect, Ernest Brenchley, to do the place up. Brenchley is well known to the Hounds; he's a buyer of Italian incunabula and, depending on your plotline, might have Arabesque, Sordid, or Technicolor flaws.

Cupman is in New York this month so what he doesn't know won't hurt him.  However, he's due to visit the works in a few weeks so time is of the essence. All the more so when Brenchley finds the old priest's hole in a forgotten corner of Dorney Hall.

This, the Hounds can discover after some research, may well be the infamous Howling Library of Dorney Hall. Allegedly salted away by the de la Roche, whose Catholic connections are well known. Rumor has inflated the size of the collection over the years, and its contents, but it could include almost anything from a Necronomicon to an incomplete version of Monstres and Their Kynde, with particular attention paid to something called the de la Roche Changeling. Or perhaps that's just an old wives tale, but there's definitely papers up there and if Cupman ever finds out about them he'll probably give them to Cambridge or some rot. Denying hard-working Hounds a profit.

Option One: Rival Shenanigans. This is actually a scheme cooked up by the Hounds' rivals, who suborned Brenchley with a promise of incunabula. The idea is to get the Hounds to swallow this hook and take on board some cunningly faked-up manuscripts, and then reveal the fraud just as the Hounds are about to make a profitable sale. This will cause a Reversal. Anything supernatural about the Library is a fiction put about by the rivals, who have some magickal skills and use them to fake up a haunting.

Option Two: Mutton Dressed as Lamb. Well, it looked promising. It could still be promising, with a little help from a forger. But the best stuff has gone to the worms; insects got into the Library and snaffled the manuscripts, over the years. Peculiar little things, too, all legs and plump white bodies. Brenchley's looking a little ill, but that may be because he had to make promises to Elihort to keep body and soul together ...

Option Three: The Changeling. Apparently, there's one de la Roche still living, technically speaking, and the Changeling's been standing guard over the Howling Library these many centuries. Hence the name Howling Library; the Changeling's peculiar cry in stormy weather chills the blood. However, there's a near-complete copy of Monstres at stake, with illuminated pages. If the Hounds can figure out a way of keeping the Changeling off their backs, the prize is there for the taking. 

That's it for this week! Enjoy!  

My Buddy The Library (Bookhounds)

Product endorsement incoming. 

For a long time I’ve been noodling with the idea of creating a library record for my collections, movies and books. I resisted because all the apps I looked at wanted a subscription and I couldn’t see the value in that for me. Even if it’s a couple bucks a month … why? If I’m not going to pay 20-odd bucks a month for Netflix why the hell am I shelling out for something to keep my library organized? 

Then I discovered Kimico’s Buddy apps. $5 one-time, and I get to curate everything I own with a quick scan of a barcode. They do a version for films as well, and while I don’t have as many barcodes for those (the boxes go in the bin pretty quick) I can search by film title and that works, for the most part. When it doesn’t there’s usually an understandable issue; I love the 1931 Peter Lorre film M, but if you put in M as a search term … hoo brother. 

Also, it can be a bit fuzzy on ISBN. Not the modern stuff; they're great on that. I've noticed that the old numbers - the ones on the flyleaf in books from 1970-ish - just don't compute. The Brain Says No. However, minor quibble.

Yes, I did just spend several minutes of my valuable time (and yours, for that matter) gibbering about an app. Well, sometimes I gibber. These things happen. 

I mention it because, first, there may be some of you out there who want some Kimico love. Second, because it got me thinking about libraries in general, and how they’re portrayed in games. 

Religious libraries are probably the most interesting, from a gaming POV. I expect you all know that monasteries in Europe preserved the history of [Rome/architecture/theatre/civilization in general]. Then there’s institutions like Baghdad’s House of Wisdom, lost, as so many wonders are; the Mouseion of Alexandria, ditto; Saint Catherine’s at Mount Sinai; institutions created by preservers of knowledge like the Kanazawa Library (Bunko) which became a Buddhist temple. 

What makes them interesting from a gaming perspective is, first, their collections are eclectic, unusual, and often penned in a dead language which adds a layer of mystery and exoticism to a document that might just be about ungumming a blocked toilet. Still, it looks more elegant in Latin.  

The Matrix

Second, their collections are often private or secured in some way, like the chained libraries once so popular in Europe. Or there might be curses laid on the book to discourage theft which, in a fantasy setting, might have more substance than the would-be thief expects. 

Point being, if you put barriers up that encourages players to find clever ways to break those barriers. It’s the same for every other rule or system; the minute you put one in place someone tries to find a way to break it. This is a low-key form of conflict, and conflict breeds plot. 

Destroyed libraries are also handy for gaming. It’s the Maltese Falcon in book form; the more exotic the backstory, the more interesting the McGuffin.  

The Maltese Falcon

It’s even better if you can still get to the destroyed library somehow, perhaps in dreams or through magic. That’s the main story arc of The Long Con; there’s a repository of destroyed tomes out there and the Devil holds an auction every so often, ransoming those dead books back from a burnt past.  

Academic or antiquarian collections have a similar charm to religious libraries, in that their books are often eclectic, unusual and penned in a dead language. Pride of place here goes to Miskatonic U (rah rah sis boom bah) with its infamous Necronomicon; all manner of gaming fun times have been wrung from that peculiar grimoire and its academic keepers. The Bodleian at Oxford is a similar institution, with all sorts of strange and forgotten tomes hidden away in the stacks.  

Then, of course, there is the Librarian. The one in charge of the books. Sometimes not fit for office, sometimes less than diligent or appointed purely to grub up the stipend and neglect the collection. Or a true scholar, their head in the clouds, incapable of dealing with their fellows. Or hard-headed soul with their feet on the ground and their mind on the job. Or a mixture of all types. 

Finally, there are the Thieves. For there are always thieves, sneaky-minded, light-fingered weasels who connive their way into the stacks and make off with the most valuable tomes. The Three Blind Mice are always on the lookout for new treasures … 

With all that in mind: 

Coleshill Abbey 

This is, or was, a manor house on the outskirts of London, in Kilburn. Its library is supposed to have contained a number of medieval manuscripts including a copy of [insert Mythos tome here], which – along with the rest of the library – is supposed to have been destroyed in 1915 when bombs dropped in a Zeppelin raid set fire to the Abbey. 

In the late 1700s, Josiah Goll made the money. His son Newman spent it. His grandson Vincent, being a more tight-fisted soul, kept what was left and used the books his father Newman collected as the basis for an antiquarian library held at the family manor. Vincent was a scholar, not a moneymaker, and when he died without heirs he left a stipulation in his will that the estate be used to run the library, open by subscription to certain scholars. Mostly friends of Vincent and fellows of Vincent’s old Oxford college, though the list included a scattering of worthies who got in on merit alone. The library was in operation from 1872 to its destruction in 1915. 

It’s long been rumored that the Abbey’s last librarian, an eccentric would-be occultist named Edwin Sykes, had a profitable sideline in stolen books. He’d get one of his forger pals – Winona Pryce was one of his favored contacts – to copy the book in question and use that to replace the stolen tome. After a suitable grace period the book would be recorded as lost and the forgery destroyed, to prevent anyone discovering the truth. Since the Trustees of the library were grey-haired academics who cared more about nice lunches than academic rigor, the scheme went unnoticed. 

Sykes went up in the fire. If there was any truth to that old rumor, it went up with him. 

Or so everyone thought at the time. 

Winona Pryce, now an old woman, says she has the [insert Mythos tome here]. She was tasked with copying it but hadn’t finished the job before the bombing. Sykes was the only one who knew who the customer was and since she couldn’t find a way to make an immediate profit she squirrelled away [insert Mythos tome] as a kind of pension. She knew there was a market for it; she didn’t know how to reach that market.  

She contracts the Bookhounds to sell it for her, in a special auction. One item’s up for sale and one only. It’s a valuable piece; the Bookhounds stand to get a nice little sum in commission, and Pryce will walk away with a lot of money. 

If only she didn’t suffer an inconvenient heart attack. Her body was found at what’s left of Coleshill Abbey; nobody knows why.  

Nobody knows where the book is either. The one she left with the Bookhounds turns out to be a forgery. 

Now there’s a lot of well-heeled annoyed customers at the Bookhounds’ doors. What to do? Where’s the book? What was Pryce doing at Coleshill Abbey? 

• Option One: The Library Eternal. Sykes died in 1915 and the Abbey burned to the ground, but that didn’t mean it was gone forever. Sykes used his occult skills, and his Megapolisomantic ability, to turn the Abbey into an eternal institution just as the flames consumed it. It still operates to this day as an antiquarian library for … peculiar … customers. However, when Sykes heard that Winona was trying to auction off one of the library’s better pieces he sent an agent to make sure the book was returned and Winona brought to the library so she could be dealt with. Now she’s a very junior member of the library staff for all eternity and the library has [insert Mythos tome] back; if the Bookhounds want it for themselves, they’ll have to break in to get it. 

• Option Two: An Unhappy Customer. When Sykes died before he was able to hand over [insert Mythos tome] to its buyer, the disappointed purchaser assumed that it went up in flames. Now, to their chagrin, they learn that the book survived. It’s not as if they can enforce the contract; but they could use Sykes’ ghost and the spectral memory of Coleshill Abbey to take revenge on Winona. However, they’d hoped to get the book as well. That didn’t happen. Looks like Winona pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes. The question is, where is it now? 

• Option Three: Grand Albert. The book is more self-aware than anyone gave it credit for, possibly due to a direct connection with an Old One. It wants to be cherished, honored, given the proper respect. That was what happened at Coleshill Abbey. Then Sykes tried to sell it on to some parvenu, a middling occultist with no intention of putting it on a grand shelf or displaying it at its best. That would never do. So Sykes went up in flames and the book went to live with Winona for a while as a stopgap. This wasn’t ideal, but better than nothing and certainly better than the middling occultist. Then Winona tried to sell it and the risk, once again, was that some bungler bought it, not the powerful sorcerer it was looking for. So Winona had to go, but now the book has a problem: how best to ensure it gets the owner it deserves. Enter the Bookhounds …  

That's it for this week. Enjoy!