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Welcome to today's #WorldbuildingWednesday post! For those of you new to this series, I'm @oblivioncubed. In this series of posts, I break down what Worldbuilding means to me, how I build a setting, *why* I choose to build what I do, and hopefully provide you some inspiration to use in your own Worldbuilding. 

Today we're going to look at **Legendary Items of Trothguard**!

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<div class ="pull-right"><img src="https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/oblivioncubed/F5x9UM3h-20200720_115253.jpg"/><img src="https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/oblivioncubed/qyCJMDzL-20200720_115300.jpg"/></div>So, it's been a while, hey? I haven't put out a traditional #WorldbuildingWednesday in a bit and that's in part because I haven't honestly been doing much worldbuilding of my own... and partly due to the demands of life in the last couple of months. What this means for today is that I'm going to use this post as a bit of a show-and-tell, instead of my usual 'how-to' guide. 

<br>I spent the last couple of evenings making some use of a gift that my wife and son bought me for Father's Day this year, which is this really neat little 'spellbook' style book with blank cards that you can fill out for items, npcs, locations... really whatever you want!

I often find that I'll get gifts like these and then hesitate to actually *use* them because they're 'too nice to ruin' when I make an error - but even mistakes are better than unused gifts sitting in a drawer so I'm pushing myself to make good use of these. I thought it'd be fun to start this book with a reference to some 'Legendary Items' available in my world that have helped to shape the continent and its dominant groups. 

The first set of items I've created are a series of books/scrolls that have exceptional power. Many of these relics have been lost or hidden away, and thus aren't constant sources of global concern. They all have a tendency of resurfacing sooner or later though, and when they do, many interested parties vie for control of them. 

In Trothguard there are currently nine known books of great power (in order to keep the size of this post reasonable, I won't cover all nine of them today. We'll see how far we get in a reasonable word count and then cover the rest in subsequent posts). Some of these are very well known, and the records surrounding them are plentiful and detailed. Others among this collection are more esoteric - known only to a few people in any great detail, and accounts of these are sparse and far less detailed. 

Most well known of all of these is the dual-natured **Book of Vile Darkness/Book of Exalted Deeds**.

For a long time after they were first discovered these were considered separate powerful books - but more recent study has shown that these are actually one-in-the-same. They are two sides of the same coin, existing in a duality that flips back and forth depending on an unknown variety of factors. It is known that the book can be forced to change state by performing purifying or desecrating rituals on it with sufficient time and effort behind them, but the other methods of change are far less well understood and remain a mystery.

Depending on what state the book is in when it surfaces in the world, it can be an overwhelming force for good... or a terrible force of evil. The spells and knowledge contained in its many pages far surpass even the greatest spellcasters known to live on Trothguard, and they have been used many times to both create and topple great kingdoms.  

The BOVD/BOED also seems to have a limited will of its own; if it winds up in the hands of someone who is unwilling or unable to use it - but who wants to keep it none the less - it somehow without fail ends up getting lost or stolen... no matter how much effort is put into keeping it safe and contained. 

Another powerful tome is known as **"The Boneturner's Tale"**. Once contained safely by the Magnus Institute in its vast Archives, it has since found its way into the world at large - and has been an on-again-off-again problem for generations. This book is broadly described as on the surface being an innocuous horror-themed story that is simply vaguely offputting. Many who own it never get past the third page, as they find the sensation of reading it too much and so they toss it out or sell it or give it away. These are considered the lucky ones, and they will spend the rest of their days haunted by nightmares of rending meat and cracking bone. 

The tome invariably changes those who read further. In the early stages, they find themselves obsessed with anatomy and understanding the inner workings of bone, muscle, and flesh. At this stage, they will often spend weeks or months learning all they can about the anatomy of any humanoid races they can. As the obsession grows they gain the ability to change their own bone structure through force of will, allowing them a stunning range of shapeshifting abilities. Further down this path, they unlock the ability to integrate flesh and bone with themselves, which is often taken from their victims or - if you're fortunate - offered to them in a bargain.

At this point, it is officially a Boneturner and is incredibly hard to kill, possessing durability far surpassing that of any regular humanoid as well as shapeshifting capabilities that allow it to pass as nearly any form it would like. The Boneturner by this point has usually also created a cult around itself, as every Boneturner is driven in the end to attempt to physically manifest the power behind the book as a living god - which would be a cataclysmic event were it to ever be successful.

The last book of power I'll discuss today is **Captivus - The Book of Chains**. This book is fabled to have the power to capture any entity within creation - including gods and devils. Upon capture, they become a new Page in the book, providing the entity's name and a variety of other information about them. Captives can be released from the book by ripping out the page and speaking the entity's name, but they are not under the control of the owner of the book - so doing so can be extremely hazardous. Along with the ability to release a captive entity, the owner of the book may - through a lengthy ritual - safely transport their consciousness into the extradimensional space where any of the captured entities reside. They may spend up to ten minutes speaking with the creature contained therein (even if they don't share a language). This can be an extremely useful feature and provides no physical danger to the book's owner. As such, the book contains many *many* pages that house a vast array of extremely powerful entities.

But, this power comes with a price - and attempting to capture anything exacts an unknown toll on the caster.
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That's all for today! I'll be writing up the remaining books in a subsequent post and will provide some more photos of how they look on their cards/in the reference spellbook. I hope you've enjoyed this
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**Thank you** for reading today's #WorldbuildingWednesday! I hope this has provided you with some inspiration!

*If there's something else you'd like to ask me about, please do so! I will make every effort to answer it next Wednesday.*

|WorldbuildingWednesdays - Prior Posts:||
|-|-|
|0: [Introduction to WorldbuildingWednesday](https://steempeak.com/hive-164611/@oblivioncubed/worldbuildingwednesday-introduction)|10: [Economy & Currency](https://peakd.com/hive-191038/@oblivioncubed/worldbuildingwednesday-economy-and-currency)|
|1: [Starting the World](https://steempeak.com/hive-164611/@oblivioncubed/worldbuildingwendesday-part-1-starting-the-world) |11: [Creating Governments](https://peakd.com/hive-191038/@oblivioncubed/worldbuildingwednesday-creating-governments)|
|2: [Kingdoms, Factions, and Notable People](https://steempeak.com/hive-164611/@oblivioncubed/worldbuildingwednesday-kingdoms-factions-and-notable-people)|12: [Shops & Markets](https://peakd.com/hive-191038/@oblivioncubed/worldbuildingwednesday-shops-and-markets) |
|3: [Creation Facts and Creation Myths](https://steempeak.com/hive-164611/@oblivioncubed/worldbuildingwednesday-creation-facts-and-creation-myths)|13: [Worldbuilding Exercise](https://peakd.com/hive-191038/@oblivioncubed/worldbuildingwednesday-worldbuilding-exercise) |
|4: [Shaping History](https://steempeak.com/hive-164611/@oblivioncubed/worldbuildingwednesday-shaping-history)| |
|5: [Myths & Legends](https://steempeak.com/hive-164611/@oblivioncubed/worldbuildingwednesday-myths-and-legends)| |
|5.a: [Player Visions (Supplemental)](https://steempeak.com/hive-164611/@oblivioncubed/worldbuilding-supplemental-player-visions)| |
|6: [Gods & Lesser Deities](https://steempeak.com/hive-191038/@oblivioncubed/worldbuildingwednesday-gods-and-lesser-deities)| |
|7: [Creating Cultures](https://steempeak.com/hive-191038/@oblivioncubed/worldbuildingwednesday-creating-cultures)| |
|8: [Making Religions](https://peakd.com/hive-191038/@oblivioncubed/worldbuildingwednesday-making-religions)| |
|9: [Building Cults](https://peakd.com/hive-191038/@oblivioncubed/worldbuildingwednesday-building-cults)| |

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