So, in my latest game, the travelling group of wizards have managed to the hydra-version of Polymathes, the librarian dragon. Polymathes has long been seeking libraries and book collections, and stealing them when opportunity arose. His latest shenanigans involved stealing the mundane libraries from two Theban mystery cults, and setting each cult up to appear as the guilty party to the other.
The players, of course, managed to discover the real meat of the issue, and tracked down Polymathes to his lair beneath the volcano on the island of Milos.
Polymathes' was initially targeted for destruction, until Helios the Quaesitor realised that a Hydra and his attendant library would likely fulfill some of his Study Requirement Flaw needs for Mentem and Intellego for a good long while.
So, diplomacy became the issue of the day, and so the players are going to work out a deal by which the Hydra receives new books (as well as shelves and magic items to turn pages for the hydra's heads, and an organizational system), the cults get their books back, and access to the Hydra's lair-brary is available to the Mystery Cult that Helios belongs to (the Mystical Fraternity of Samos) and perhaps the player covenant.
NOW, my issues is... I've told the group that the hydra's lair is just chock-full of books. The Hydra recognized the name Bonisagus and said it thinks it had a book by him in that pile of books over there. The complete Critias and the lost Hermocrates of Plato also are known to exist somewhere in the Hydra's lair.
I'm tempted to slap the PDF of Mundane Books from the Atlas site down and say "you have access to all of these".
But can any of the students of history note any cool, possibly lost books that the bibliophile hydra might possess? He's known to have been stealing books since written language was invented, and has to some extent taken advantage of the the sack of Constantinople, and may have set fire to the library of Alexandria to cover his theft of the books therein etc. etc.
What might the book by Bonisagus be?
What ideas might people have for interesting books to be found therein?
Thanks for reading!
Vrylakos
. The full history can be found in Houses of Hermes: True Lineages, pgs 8 et al.