The Cursed Omar

I was intrigued by a story I read from BBC News about an ornately bound copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The idea of a cursed book intrigues me, and since Khayyam lived at the end of the 11th and beginning of the 12th century, a specially bound copy of his work would be possible in Mythic Europe of Ars Magica.

First, the Rubaiyat itself would be a pretty significant work of mathematics, astronomy, and poetry, so for my purposes, it will be a Summa on both Artes Liberales and Philosophaie, with level 7 and quality 12. The original was written in Persian then translated to Latin by a Jerbiton. Now for the rest of the story …

Burhan ex Jerbiton was introduced to Khayyam during his tour of the Levant and areas east at the end of his apprenticeship around 1120. The pair kept in contact, and Khayyam gave him a copy of the Rubaiyat at the time of Burhan’s gauntlet in 1122. After Khayyam’s death, Burhan began the process of translating the book, and decorating it, with the intent of presenting it as a gift to the House. Finally finished in 1165, Burhan’s Rubaiyat was bound in three kinds of leather over rare woods, inset with gold and silver filigree, and studded with gems. It may also have been enchanted, but no lab notes are known to exist. The mage took the book and his apprentice, Sabriye, by boat toward Valnastium, but the ship sunk in a storm. Burhan was able to save Sabriye, but not the book.

Several months after returning to Constantinople, Burhan disappeared for several weeks, and his body was found in a well. An investigation determined he had fallen in and drowned. Sabriye finished her apprenticeship with another Jerbiton, Zahide, who had no interest in the designs for the book. Sabriye hid the plans away after her new parens threatened to and destroyed the original design for the inside cover. Luckily, Khayyam’s original text survived.

From The book that sank on the Titanic and burned in the Blitz

Upon completing her gauntlet in 1172, after a two-year delay by Zahide, Sabriye began planning to reconstruct her first parens’ version of the Rubaiyat. She meticulously copied all that she could from the design, but with Zahide’s destruction of parts of the plans, the fronts piece, showing a skull and vines has a slightly different, and less detailed style than the rest of the binding. Sabriye finished the work, and enchanted it as her talisman. Unfortunately, the maga was killed and her talisman destroyed in the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Her remains and the blackened husk of the book were later buried in a secret location.

In 1215, the letters of Gnaeus ex Verditius, were published as a tractatus on terram (quality 5). In one letter, Gnaeus refers to aiding a maga on the creation of a magical book, with some details matching what was known about Sabriye’s version of the Rubaiyat. Additionally they seem to indicate that a second copy of the magical book was created. Gnaeus’s letters were not widely circulated due to their poor quality and the magus’s overblown prose. Gnaeus’s lab, along with many of his lab notes, was destroyed in a fire, shortly after his death in 1217. It is assumed that the notes on the creation of the book were likewise destroyed in that fire, but no additional evidence of a second book was found.

Story Hooks

• The PCs’ covenant is asked to aid a merchant afraid of a great sea serpent said to be hunting the waters of a trade route. If they kill the monster, the PCs will find Burhan’s original ornate copy of the Rubaiyat.
• The many deaths and losses around the book may be attributed to a secret society of Assassins seeking to eliminate copies of the Rubaiyat which contains a code describing a the hiding place of a powerful artifact.
• A Jerbiton magus asks the PCs for help after acquiring a copy of Gnaeus’s letters, which reference a “book, powerful and beautiful, inset with stones of all manner and influence”. The magus believes he has information about the burial place of Sabriye which may contain clues to the location of the second magical book.