> morgramen wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I`m wondering if ayone can throw me a bone or two regarding a neato-keen way of getting the Book of Days OUT of the College of Astronomy (or College of Sorcery as it may be) without it being noticed immedaitely. I figure the wizzies would have it warded up the ying-yang.
How about something like this:
Stealing The Book of Days:
Here is the non-magical way I might try to get it. First, it would require patience. Hire on as a servant. Work your way into a position of some trust, something like head maintenance. Spend time in the room with the BoD. Let the keepers become familiar with you. Carefully engineer a problem with the room – could be water leakage, vermin, or mold.
The room will need to be cleared to avoid damage to the irreplaceable items. When the items are brought back into the now fixed room, our handy dandy rogue replaces the book with a look alike. He put the original in a concealed carrier (false bottom) and has it removed from the facility by a stooge.
If need be, our thief can replace guards and other laborers with accomplices on the day of the heist. The place will be very busy and no one will have time to check out why Terrik the day guard came down with dysentery. With luck the thieves should have 6-10 hours head start and the college will not know who they are looking for. The infiltrator should remain in place for 2-4 days and then disappear. To execute this correctly, it would take 2-5 years but when the carrot is big enough to feed you for the rest of your life that is pocket change.
Reasoning behind why it would work – nothing can be permanently warded. People have to move the book around, clean it, and do general maintenance in the area around it. It is very unlikely that the wizards perform these tasks themselves. People tend to keep the most valuable possessions together, so replacing one book in a stack of many is not likely to be obvious. It will not be until much later when the books are put back into place that things will become suspicious. This is a very real type of problem that frequently occurs and requires extensive manpower to repair. The wizards and librarians are going to be on high alert for poachers who will still valuable but non-obvious items like curios and golden knobs. Our thief might even arrange for 1 or 2 of those to be caught red handed, providing even more distraction.
IMO - the few wizards in BR do not go around warding everything, there are not buzzers at the door if you try to leave with a book that has not been checked out, and they do not have the ability to summon things back into place. This should be a tricky - but largely non-magical theft. Keeping yourself for being found by said wizards after the fact is likely to be the hardest part. Many of them can scry on the book or use other forms of divination to figure out its location.
HTH,
Eosin
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