Birmy
Hero
I've just rewatched Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves on bluray (like it even more on rewatch!), and in the deleted scenes is an extended version of the Speak with Dead sequence. In it, the corpse which, in the film, is asked what it's favorite book is, goes on at length listing all of his favorite tomes (seriously: this goes on for six full minutes).
I thought it would be fun to take a look at the books he lists. I only really recognize a handful of the more obvious people (Volo, Battlehammer Clan, Vecna) and places (Sembia, Silver Marches). Some must be in-jokes (a reference to Tom Morello, for example) and some have obvious analogues to the real world (The Little Triton, The Manticore King, and other fables). Are many/most/all of these canonical from the game? If not, what do you reckon these books are actually about?
A full list of every book mentioned follows.
Poetry:
Roffarin's ballads
The Brightwind Elegies
The Twine of Vayhise
Nodroph Rand's 16 sonnets
Reflections on a Windbound Gauntlet
Stage plays:
The Potter's Ground of Penelope
Lumad Dukie and the Beggar's Moon
Foland Grondpath's later works
The Temptations of Reavis Pogue
Sunrise Over Dava Dune
The Chambermaid's Predicament
Tamon Malket's Needle
The Learning of the Encyclopedic Man
O'er the Speckled Hills of Rasalanta
Travelogues:
Hinch Finpin's Ten Tawdry Taverns
The Bonny Lakes of Silver Marches by Sampson Basil
Enduring Weathercote Forest
My Pilgrimage with Lofas McHardings
Volo's Guide to Spirits and Specters, "as well as his musings on extraplanar aberrations"
"Other tomes:"
The Anecdotal Follies of Vecna's Veech
The Pacing of Visceral Immediacy
Cradle Songs of Love's Adoration
The Ascension of Laakis
Grog Hovels
The Beardbound Book of Battlehammer
Jocelyn's Frequency
The Occult Properties of Gemstones
The Trials of Barnaby Buckles
Lancegrove's Travels
Farce:
Never Trust a Tortle
How Wrong Can One Sembian Be?
The Odorous Cottage
Bleppy Hollister's Chaddy Handbook
Things enjoyed "as a young man":
the lascivious parables of Twilbert Cherry
Lonra Among the Laakso
The Wretched Life of Usadi and Luselman
Usi Gullibar and the Spine of the World
Rising a Buckard by Dess Jancer
The Magical Wonders of Netheril
Lizard Language and Common Tongue Grammar
Tome of the Unicorn
Triumph Exemplar
Primordials and Their Servitors
From the Dawned Cataclysm to the End of All
Treasures of the Fire Lords
The Origin Myths: A Treatise
"The fables my mother read to me as a child...":
The Featherless Owlbear
Stimms Griply
Lady Bormath and the Nine Gnomes
The Little Triton
The Manticore King
Illuminated manuscripts:
Kings Bury the Halpern
Dark Morello of Fireshear
The Lurkwood Chronicles
The Cloisters of Evil Rock
Wellems, Mithral Bridge (not sure if this is supposed to be a single title or two)
The Nature of the Sahuagin
Romantic elegy:
The Learning of the Encyclopedic Man (repeat from above--he must have really liked that one)
Occurrence at Twizzel Bridge
A Fortnight and a Ha'penny
A Trick House for Barnable
The Chaotic Clusters of Clandeboye
It's easy to see why this longer version was cut (if, indeed, it was ever intended as anything other than a lark). The punchline it arrives at many minutes later is that he has listed every book he has ever read and, having answered the question, falls back dead again.
I thought it would be fun to take a look at the books he lists. I only really recognize a handful of the more obvious people (Volo, Battlehammer Clan, Vecna) and places (Sembia, Silver Marches). Some must be in-jokes (a reference to Tom Morello, for example) and some have obvious analogues to the real world (The Little Triton, The Manticore King, and other fables). Are many/most/all of these canonical from the game? If not, what do you reckon these books are actually about?
A full list of every book mentioned follows.
Poetry:
Roffarin's ballads
The Brightwind Elegies
The Twine of Vayhise
Nodroph Rand's 16 sonnets
Reflections on a Windbound Gauntlet
Stage plays:
The Potter's Ground of Penelope
Lumad Dukie and the Beggar's Moon
Foland Grondpath's later works
The Temptations of Reavis Pogue
Sunrise Over Dava Dune
The Chambermaid's Predicament
Tamon Malket's Needle
The Learning of the Encyclopedic Man
O'er the Speckled Hills of Rasalanta
Travelogues:
Hinch Finpin's Ten Tawdry Taverns
The Bonny Lakes of Silver Marches by Sampson Basil
Enduring Weathercote Forest
My Pilgrimage with Lofas McHardings
Volo's Guide to Spirits and Specters, "as well as his musings on extraplanar aberrations"
"Other tomes:"
The Anecdotal Follies of Vecna's Veech
The Pacing of Visceral Immediacy
Cradle Songs of Love's Adoration
The Ascension of Laakis
Grog Hovels
The Beardbound Book of Battlehammer
Jocelyn's Frequency
The Occult Properties of Gemstones
The Trials of Barnaby Buckles
Lancegrove's Travels
Farce:
Never Trust a Tortle
How Wrong Can One Sembian Be?
The Odorous Cottage
Bleppy Hollister's Chaddy Handbook
Things enjoyed "as a young man":
the lascivious parables of Twilbert Cherry
Lonra Among the Laakso
The Wretched Life of Usadi and Luselman
Usi Gullibar and the Spine of the World
Rising a Buckard by Dess Jancer
The Magical Wonders of Netheril
Lizard Language and Common Tongue Grammar
Tome of the Unicorn
Triumph Exemplar
Primordials and Their Servitors
From the Dawned Cataclysm to the End of All
Treasures of the Fire Lords
The Origin Myths: A Treatise
"The fables my mother read to me as a child...":
The Featherless Owlbear
Stimms Griply
Lady Bormath and the Nine Gnomes
The Little Triton
The Manticore King
Illuminated manuscripts:
Kings Bury the Halpern
Dark Morello of Fireshear
The Lurkwood Chronicles
The Cloisters of Evil Rock
Wellems, Mithral Bridge (not sure if this is supposed to be a single title or two)
The Nature of the Sahuagin
Romantic elegy:
The Learning of the Encyclopedic Man (repeat from above--he must have really liked that one)
Occurrence at Twizzel Bridge
A Fortnight and a Ha'penny
A Trick House for Barnable
The Chaotic Clusters of Clandeboye
It's easy to see why this longer version was cut (if, indeed, it was ever intended as anything other than a lark). The punchline it arrives at many minutes later is that he has listed every book he has ever read and, having answered the question, falls back dead again.
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