Arifs book
GM NOTES - CONTAINS SPOILERS
As noted above the myth is really non-specific and if you ask one NPC you get a totally different story then if you had asked his neighbor.
The book is in fact a book bound in leather but worn out by time and handling over all the years of its existence. Some pages are loose but every page is still there. Once found it may not be surprising to find it to be encoded. The code is a mixture of several different languages. If translated correctly the contents can be read: it is a cookbook - on first glance at least. The usage of language in arifs book is interesting as well because the words used have a fair share of words used in modern day but also words used a long time ago and some other words used are lost to time and their meaning can only be assumed by context.
If you delve deeper into the book there are a few interesting facts to learn about the world. Ingredient lists may call for some special meat or mushrooms and in cases of rare items there might be places added of where to find said ingredients. Players can learn about flora and fauna they never knew existed in azaran. Apart from ingredient lists there is also the main part of the recipe. If looked through closely you might find a few that seem to be out of place. For example a recipe for eggs and bacon and the intrigue of the blood-dragon is telling about an historic event that noone knows the full story of - until they read this recipe. Other recipes tell the stories of other important historic events, magic spells, and realms of existence. The more you search for information the more you will find. The more often you read the book the more weird things you will learn - and eventually they all prove to be true.
There are several myths regarding a book of unknown content and creator. The common belief says that this book was written by Arif and contains information about azaran and its darkest and best kept secrets. Information you will not believe if you do not know anything about anything working in the undergrounds of azaran and its population - the black market, secret guilds, hireable killers, and more. The author and the general content of the book seem to be the only things commonly accepted as "truth" about this myth, everything else depends on who tells the story and what part of the world you are in. Even the fact that this myth surrounds a book is in some stories up to debate since some say it is a book, others claim it to be a collection of loose pages, yet there are people who swear arifs book is in fact text chiseled into walls of caves or never found ruins.
Since people inhabit this world there have been a lot of attempts to find this book or at least figure out more about the truth of the myth. None of the previous searches got any results except for the getting the myth told hundreds of times with slight variations each time. Even though so much is uncertain about this book, people wont stop searching for it until it is found. What will happen after it is found depends on who gets it and what is written in it when it is found. According to the myth it will most likely not take a pleasant ending.
A lot of the adventurers looking for the book didn't return. If that has to do with "the wraith of Arif" who doesn't want his book to be found (as told in some variations of the myth) or a secret group of people protecting the secret surrounding the book and keeping everyone away from it (as told in other versions) or maybe there is nothing to it at all and the adventurers did not return because the world is a cruel and unjust place (with hungry panthers) and the book has nothing to do with it is unknown.
Summary
There are several myths regarding a book of unknown content and creator. The common belief says that this book was written by Arif and contains information about azaran and its darkest and best kept secrets. Noone knows more than that. Every attempt at finding the book failed and many adventurers lost their lives on the quest for this book.
Spread
This myth is know by almost every inhabitant of azaran. There is a certain fascination for this myth among the people since everyone knows about it so much yet so little. Over time people added parts to the story and forgot others but the general myth stays in the back of everyones heads.
Date of Setting
This myth exists since before people started writing and recording history
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