Orjanian Holy Book (or-yaun-ee-an)

Summary

Ostensibly a book of some kind, its make and material are incredibly strange and exotic, leaving it a novelty to any collector or artisan who happens upon it. While an inscrutable thing to the mortal peoples of Veltrona, dragonkind and jiuweihu are imminently more familiar with it.   Some have even been hunting for it since the downfall of the Imperium which freed it in the first place. According to records and testimonies of survivors, the Orjanian book had been locked away in one of Imperious' treasure vaults. In fact, an entire vault had been built specifically for just this one particular book, much to the intrigue of everyone else. Still, Imperious forbid any to study, decipher, or even gaze upon it.   In her own words, it was a terribly dangerous thing, and since she could not destroy it, she locked it away instead.   The Orjanian holy book was eventually found in the dunes of Dorvar by scavengers. Seen as a novelty, it was sold around and around before landing in the hands of the highest affluent nobles on the continent. Cross-referencing old wokma records eventually correlated this unusual book with an enigmatic history.   Apparently found near the World Gate during the initial excavations, it was pried from a metal skeleton's iron claws. The workers who found it immediately heard some strange whispers emanating, speaking in a language they didn't understand. Their wokma overseer confirmed the phenomenon, and eventually deciphered one distinct, repeating word: Orjania.   So it was she spent great time trying to ascertain the nature of the book and its whispers. When she and her workers failed to report in some months later, dispatched guards discovered them all in a large warehouse together. The scene was never described in the records, but it was noted the guards were discharged from duty due to 'unmendable trauma'.   The nobles were quick to sell it after that discovery.   The buyer was a baarham mage, who was quite taken with the mysteriousness of the book. Alone with it for uncounted years, there was no trace of her when her colleagues came by for a visit one day. The book, however, thrummed with a life it'd never had before, pulsing with a heartbeat, flipping its own pages to one area or another. Its whispers became murmurs, and whether greedy or hypnotized, the mage's colleagues fought among themselves in a savage brawl. So it would be that one emerged victorious, and secreted off with the book.   No one knows where it has been since, but the baarham mage's personal journals have offered tremendous insight into the nature of the book. It is, in fact, a living being, but not the kind of an animal or person. A desire fills it, an intrinsic need to realize the very writings its terrible pages are covered in. How could something be alive and have no mind, yet seek such an esoteric purpose? One detail after the other contradicted the last, muddying every attempt to study her notes. Nonetheless, it was this desire that spoke to her mind, and she suspected it would speak to others.   What purpose it wants to fulfill, however, remains a mystery.  

Appearance

The holy book itself largely matched a book's make: a front and back cover, a spine, and pages contained within. The covers are fashioned from a kind of bone-and-iron compound, giving it a whitish-gray look. Their surfaces are textured in a particular way, creating artery-like cross-sections that had distinctly patterned ridges. Whether a manufacturing byproduct, or some kind of physical script to be read with fingers, no one can really tell.   The spine of the book appears to be a solid block of iron, carved out in a way that vaguely resembled a human spine and/or a rib cage. Sticky black resin, carrying a reddish-colored interior, formed tendon-like connections to the book's actual pages. Pale, white flesh with a slippery and smooth texture formed rigid surfaces upon which red, pulsating veins crossed up and down. The veins seemed to functionally 'connect' all the 'paper' together to form a single page.   Actual lettering, visual imagery, and anything related to printed meaning was evidently made out of a type of crimson crysium. What isn't clear is if the crysium was used to 'paint' onto the pages, or somehow grown into them. The makers' written language followed a vertical writing structure, and emphasized meticulously perfect geometric lettering. Imagery looked more like it'd been chiseled and sculpted out of solid crystal, shaped down to an insanely precise size that wouldn't interfere with the pages.   There's no indication if the language itself should be read top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top, or even from side to side. Worse, the disturbing imagery accompanying much of the book doesn't help translation at all. Alien beings unseen anywhere else on Veltrona appear to be partaking in ritualistic scenes in what might be temples or workshops of a kind. It isn't clear if they're celebrating, participating in violent dismemberment and cannibalism, or breaking down and reassembling different bodies. Some images are utterly nonsensical, but a foreboding harshness weighs on any who see them.