Book of Eibon

Overview

The Book of Eibon is the testament of Hyperborea's greatest sorcerer, a grimoire composed when ice crowned the world and men still traded with gods who had not yet learned to be shy. It survives in Greek as Liber Ivonis, in Latin with worm-eaten margins, and in English only as quotations that make scholars pale because the quotes are always accurate. Eibon served Tsathoggua's spawn and documented Zvilpogghua with an engineer's precision and a poet's dread.

Where the Necronomicon is cosmic, the Book of Eibon is intimate: spells for survival in cold, formulae for seeing Kadath, warnings about the priests of the toad-god, and autobiographical passages in which Eibon admits he wrote to be remembered after Hyperborea fell, and was remembered by things he did not intend.

Description

Complete copies, if any exist, have not been admitted to Orne Library; fragments show chapter headings on summoning, on astral travel, on the sign of the serpent-and-sphere, and on the black stone that opens where the earth thins. Illustrations depict Hyperborean architecture, caverns beneath Mount Voormithadreth, and entities that are toads, bats, and sloth made one.

The Greek is archaic even for Greek; the Latin adds scholia by medieval copyists who misunderstood footnotes and invented worse rites. Reading produces cold without temperature change and a craving for caves. Continued reading produces the certainty that you have been to Hyperborea and will return.

Historical Record

Eibon fled the inquisition of the god Yhoundeh's priests and vanished into a stone vortex said to lead to Cykranosh, leaving his book to be copied by survivors who froze the knowledge into myth. The text crossed with the Necronomicon in medieval scriptoria; Dee's index mentions Ivonis alongside Azif. A 1926 seizure in Maine linked a fishing village disappearance to a Liber Ivonis page used as charm paper.

Miskatonic's fragments were donated under condition of anonymity by a collector who died in a cave he had never visited in the waking world. The donation letter quoted Eibon in the original Greek. The handwriting matched no living donor.

Archive Notes

Do not combine Eibon formulae with Necronomicon formulae in the same session; the 1929 overlap incident is not to be repeated. Personnel exhibiting preference for cold rooms and damp stone are to be rotated off fragment duty. If you dream of Hyperborea with perfect recall, report before attempting to verify in atlases. The Book of Eibon is a travel guide written by a man who never came back the same way.