Every now and then our SG gives the players homework to flesh out details of our troupe's shared world.
I was asked to come up with some interpretations of the Duresca scrolls. I was wondering if you could review my ideas
They are true, Guernicus was considering a plan to conquer the Order.
1a) for the good of the Order after a certain set of events looked in his eyes to derail everything. Then the "crisis" resolved itself and he shelved the plans.
They are a misinterpretation, as Guernicus was exhorting his followers to be better Quaesitors using allegories and analogies based off of the House philosophy.
It is 2), with a couple of scribal errors that change the meaning unexpectedly. eg an example I found on the internet "help your Uncle Jack off a horse" vs "help your uncle jack off a horse".
3a) scribal errors inspired by a demon.
They are a forgery by a Quaesitor, shortly after Guernicus departed, who wanted his fellows to think he had received special attention from Guernicus. It was never meant to be seen outside of a small cadre of local Quaesitors.
A master wrote a deliberate forgery as a training exercise for his apprentice to determine which of x documents were true.
They are a parody/satire written by a bored apprentice, who never expected anyone to find it and read it.
He wrote it as an exercise to show the weakness of the Order and what would be needed to prevent it from happening. A Tremere magus was assisting him, because he was an expert in strategy and manipulation.
Later on, the Tremere magus passed down his knowledge to his apprentice and the House started to work on taking over the Order, leading to the Sundering...
They are true, Guernicus was considering a plan to conquer the Order.
1a) for the good of the Order after a certain set of events looked in his eyes to derail everything. Then the "crisis" resolved itself and he shelved the plans.
Guernicus could have had plans to influence the order, or set up secretive organisations to right wrongs that the Code doesn't allow for. Maybe they have Tremere-style contingency plans, or maybe there's a secret agency controlled by a handful of Guernicus that guides all of history. You can justify anything you like with this.
They are a misinterpretation, as Guernicus was exhorting his followers to be better Quaesitors using allegories and analogies based off of the House philosophy.
In our modern day, there's plenty of conspiracy theorists who consider the United Nations and European Union documents to be sinister plans to enslave everyone under a single world government. This is entirely plausible
It is 2), with a couple of scribal errors that change the meaning unexpectedly. eg an example I found on the internet "help your Uncle Jack off a horse" vs "help your uncle jack off a horse".
3a) scribal errors inspired by a demon.
What if it's not just a few scribal errors (as per The Satanic Verses, but the whole scrolls are in fact a demon in corporeal form? The demon tells you what you want to read, based on your personality flaws - a paranoid magus sees the Duresca scrolls, a proud magus sees an exhortation to take over the world, a pious magus sees divine revelation to found a Christian Theocracy of magi, a slothful magus finds a book telling you that striving after greater magics only send you into twilight so why bother? Then, in true horror story fashion, our hero escapes by burning the sinister scrolls...just like supposedly happened to the Duresca scrolls
They are a forgery by a Quaesitor, shortly after Guernicus departed, who wanted his fellows to think he had received special attention from Guernicus. It was never meant to be seen outside of a small cadre of local Quaesitors.
That's a lot of effort and might get you in serious trouble if even a single one of your fellow experts in the law sees through the forgery. Who would be desperate enough?
A master wrote a deliberate forgery as a training exercise for his apprentice to determine which of x documents were true.
This is a much more satisfying explanation for a forgery
They are a parody/satire written by a bored apprentice, who never expected anyone to find it and read it.
Some satires catch on simply because everybody believes the worst about the target.
In my saga, the Duresca Scrolls are the Hermetic equivalent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, perhaps the most influential forgery in history. While you can get the gist of this terrible forgery and libel from Wikipedia, for my money the best recap is that found in Will Eisner’s THE PLOT.
Interestingly enough, I was just reading a book on calligraphy and came across Titivillus, the "patron demon of scribes," who was alleged to be the root of all scribal errors. In addition to messing up people's manuscripts, he watches the clerks to take back information on missed prayers or mispronounced words to add to the judgment the clerk would receive in the afterlife.
I'd love to see him statted up. I am still really learning the game and creatures of different realms are still outside of my bailiwick, or I'd put some though into it.
Guernicus penned the manuscript as a "know your enemy" exercise and challenged his disciples to determine the best way to counter such plans After he died someone had the great idea that if the plans were copied and distributed through the order then anyone trying to follow them or something like them in the future would come across great opposition.
Alternately, they were written during the schism war by tremere trying to break the power of Guernicus.
Don't have the books with me at the moment, but there was a demon with that name in 3rd, don't remember if in an adventure or in the Iberia book, and was statted out with those rules.