A Lover Clad in Blue

This text is an example of the secret manuals of the Old Realm. On the surface, it is a luridly illustrated story of the torrid sexual escapades of Balablara, the Half-Blood daughter of a sorcerer and his demonic neomah slave. Drawn to her own kind, she seduces the neomah who tries to convince her to poison her father with a hairpin. Overhearing the exchange, her father misunderstands and orders the demon to kill his daughter. Its aim is untrue, and strikes the sorcerer by accident. As she clutches the stiffening body of her father, Balablara banishes the neomah for a night and a day. She knows the demon will return for her the next night, but cannot afford more materials to ward it off. She prostitutes herself for the money to do so. The rest of the book details the year and a day she spends sleeping with various partners so that she can resist the demon, until ultimately the demon is forced back to the Yozi realm.

More than one demon-tainted thaumaturge cult owed its origins to the secret Procedures contained within the book. Solar agents destroyed such cults but never figured out that this tawdry sex tale was the source—no doubt because no Solar Exalt paid attention to such minor cults. Numerous copies of A Lover Clad in Blue survived the Usurpation, and the Shogunate did nothing to eliminate the text as they felt it painted Solars as the Anathema they meant them to be. Two centuries ago, an obscure bookmaker in Chiaroscuro translated the work into Flametongue, with faithful renditions of the illustrations.

Game Effects: Hidden within the illustrations and the text are encoded rites related to demons. If she successfully cracks the codes (Intelligence + Linguistics, varying difficulty), a thaumaturge could gain the Initiate (difficulty 3) or Adept (difficulty 4) Degree in the Art of Demon Summoning. Two Procedures from the Master Degree are contained as well (difficulty 5): The Year and the Day and Beckon Sondok.

Availability and Cost: A Lover Clad in Blue is illegal in Lookshy, as its depiction of demonic sex offends the sohei priests. In the Realm, the Immaculate Order also objects to the text, but the book is easily available to patricians and Dynasts. Copies in Old Realm cost Resources 3, while the Southern translation can be purchased for Resources 2. Should someone ever reveal the book’s secret, it would surely be banned in most civilized states.

Artifact Level: Not an artifact.