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Retrival of Lost Words

Cost: 20 motes

Retrival of Lost Words summons forth one of the Celestial Librarians, and sets its mind to the task of finding and recovering a single copy of a given book for the Sidereal (or, more rarely, other Sorcerer) who makes the request. Celestial Librarians are small gods, dressed in white robes which hide their heads completely. Their arms are shock white, with only four digits on each tiny hand. They speak in soft lilting voices, and have a perfect recall of everything they have ever read -- which, in Yu-Shan, is quite a bit! Traditionally bound to the Forbidden Manse of Ivy or one of the other great catalogues of text in the Heavenly City, they tend to react poorly to being summoned but will do their duty in an exacting fashion if they recieve the call. They are not prone to small chat however, and demand that they be given a text to locate for the sorcerer immediately. If they are not appeased in this manner, they swiftly depart and the spell has no further effect.

Upon being given the title of a book (which must be exact, and correct), they dematerialize and use their charms and innate knowledge of Creation to search for the book that they have been charged to retrieve. Most common books can be found in less than an hour or so, and will be in the Sorcerer's hands after that time has elapsed. Any book that is particularly valued and rare takes longer, depending on a roll of the spirits Intelligence + Investigation (11 dice). The base time for a rare book is anywhere from 5 to 30 days, and each success subtracts one day from the time required to find the book. Unique or exceedingly rare books always require about a month, and require the above roll at a difficulty depending on how hard to find the book is -- anywhere from difficulty 3 to difficulty 6.

You can give the spirit a rough topic to search for, though they find this particularly annoying. In which case, roll your characters Charisma + Occult, with a normal difficulty. One success gives you a small but worthwhile collection on the subject, and requires a few days to retrieve. Three successes puts a lot more effort into it, and results in a more comprehensive library with a few impressive texts. Five successes is treated as per three successes, but the Spirit will loan you some texts from the Forbidden Manse of Ivy or other Celestial Libraries.

Books taken by this spell are gone. Most No Moon Lunars and Sidereals guard their library against the depredations of the Celestial Librarians, and the Empress was known to do such as well. Most Dragon-Blooded, much less mortal rulers, are out of luck at protection from this spell.

Comments

Brandon, I like this spell. It is quite cool. I think though, that if the player botches the spirits Int + Investigation roll, they have asked for a taboo text. If a text is taboo, then the Librarian curses them with being illiterate for a week. Not crippling, but very frustrating, especially if the Exalt is under time crunch. What do you think? - JPCardier

Oooh, I like that:) Very cool, and a fitting image! - CrownedSun

I think that's especially important when you consider that the Solars probably tried to make sure that... for example, the Book of Three Circles was out of bounds. I'm sure the Broken Winged Crane is on there (Yes, really, I don't want the power of the Yozi, I just want to keep it out of other peoples hands! *wink wink*) Not to mention, I think some books like that might actually protect themselves against being taken. And in a worse case scenario, assuming that the book isn't actually taboo, but is capable of protecting itself... well, if the librarian has to search and take it, they might be destroyed in the attempt. I am sure that who summoned them is recorded in Yu-Shan and that their fellows will not be pleased. ;)- haren

Neat. - Quendalon