Ambric’s Compendium of Natural Lore
From GURPSworld Wiki
Ambric’s Compendium of Natural Lore is very large (24 lbs.) book, consisting of hundreds of pages bound between covers made of a slick green leather-like material. Some of the pages have been torn out. Some pages are smeared with a blue-green ichor but remain legible. Written in Latin, it includes drawings of a wide variety of fantastic plants and animals. A great deal of writing accompanies each entry. The book includes long-winded treatises and trivia about fantasy creatures, their environments, magical and natural phenomena, natural and man-made weather, history, and so on. The book is comprehensive and factually accurate but has no logical order. There is no index or other guide to the book.
Finding useful information in the book requires 30-IQ minutes of searching and a successful roll against Research or relevant IQ-related skill (Biology, Naturalist, Poison, Zoology, etc.) For each 5 times the book is used, subtract 1 minute from the time; the time can never go below two minutes, however. After the first five uses, Eidetic Memory adds +3 to the roll required, while Photographic Memory adds +6 to the roll.
Sufficient study of the book also allows the self-teaching of 1 point in Hidden Lore (Naturalist).
Contents
The following entries have been discovered by a successful search of the book.