Historical Books

The Archaeology Kit contains several fictitious books. In addition to providing Sim Lore skills, the text of the notifications fills in some historical backstories. Their full contents are below.

There are two versions of many books available. One that you might find that is very old and valuable. The other version you can get is a University Reprint version in softcover. These can be found at the University Kiosk in Britechester, and in most bookshelves. Both versions will increase your Sim Lore by the same amount.

The Ecclesiastical History of the Simlish people, Vol 1

By Venerable Smede

Fossils of early Pre-Sims have been found across the lands. These primitive bipeds gathered wild plants and vegetables to survive, and there is evidence they possessed basic skills in Herbalism.

The Handiness skill that sets Modern Sims apart from their prehistoric ancestors first appears in the archaeological record many thousands of years ago. Cooking seems to have developed shortly thereafter, and led to the appearance of Magnolia Civilization in the Magnolia River Basin.

With the rise of Magnolia Civilization, evidence of the Gardening, Baking, Singing and Dancing skills begins to appear. Clay pot artifacts are still found in the former lands of these ancient sims, along with woodcarving tools.

There are legends of another biped species, known as the Gnomes, who coexisted with Magnolia Civilization. Magnolian woodcarvers were skilled craftsmen, and carved many small replicas of these Gnomish neighbors.

The legends state that the Gnomes all vanished in a tragic event one day, known to the Magnolians as “The Gnomageddon”, after which, their carved Gnome replicas began to act quite strangely until they also vanished.

The first known war in Simlish history was the First Crusade of King Horus Menoset IX against mysterious invaders known as the Sicksem. The King accused these invaders of kidnapping his subjects, only to bring them back hours later, dazed, often confused and occasionally pregnant. The war went on for years, with evidence of it still being found across the Magnolia River Basin.

After Menoset’s First Crusade against the Sicksem, as he called them, sightings of the mysterious invaders became very rare, with few Sims remembering having any encounter with them after the war ended. The periodic abductions continued, however, so it is not known whether the Sicksem bore any responsibility for the incidents, or whether Menoset had mistakenly, and tragically, accused them falsely.

Spellcasters in ancient Myshupotamia experimented with the forces that were later unleashed during the Gnomegeddon, and inadvertently created the first vampires, who immediately turned on them, of course.

While the most active part of the Myshupotamian period known now as the First Vampire War, and contemporaneously as Operation Eternal Flame, lasted for 100 years, the embers of that war smolder to this day.

The destruction brought by the First Vampire War, or Operation Eternal Flame, both tore the Magic Realm apart and brought down Myshupotamian civilization. Refugees from both sides of that war eventually trickled into what would become Al Simhara over the next centuries.

The Ecclesiastical History of the Simlish people, Vol 2

By Venerable Smede

King Raymundo Rodiekhkare, the earliest known monarch of Al Simhara, ruled over a prosperous kingdom throughout his reign. Workers were brought from all over the lands to construct many monuments in his honor.

During King Rodiekhkare’s reign, the Grandmaster Vampire Simca was born as a human as a member of the worker caste in Al Simhara. He was initially trained by his mother in the art of magic, before she was banished for summoning ghosts.

After voluntarily turning into a vampire, Simca eventually mastered the dark arts as none had before, vowing revenge against all who had persecuted his family.

The golden age of Al Simhara came during the time of Queen Nosylla and King Nayr. The music, the arts, crafts like candlemaking, and the practice of beekeeping all progressed greatly during this time.

Queen Nosylla was said to have retained several blue and green skinned foreign advisors who were instrumental in building pyramids to honor her.

The Ecclesiastical History of the Simlish people, Vol 3

By Venerable Smede

Like most Simlish people, the Sims of medieval times believed in a deity known as The Watcher. The followers of The Watcher were divided into two factions in The Kingdom. The Peterians believed that The Watcher was kind and forgiving, whereas the Jacobians believed that The Watcher was a vengeful god.

Simca, as mentioned in Volume 1, was an ancient Vampire who had acquired vast magical powers. During medieval times, Simca took up residence in the cave system now known as the Forgotten Grotto and began to gather his forces for the offensive that he would unsurprisingly name “Operation Eternal Flame 2.”

Aegwareth was a druid from Burdley who was granted magical powers by the United Trees of the Glade, Local #523. Their knowledge of Spellcasting, Moocasting and Herbalism was vital in both turning back Vampire attacks and securing a decent dental plan from management.

St Simbert was a simple Peterian monk from Tredony. When Simca led his demonic forces to invade the Kingdom, St Simbert, who went by the name of Al, stood in front of the horde with his stone cutter’s mallet and turned the undead masses back, away from the Kingdom.

The Ecclesiastical History of the Simlish people, Vol 4

By Venerable Smede

Princess Cordelia from the Royal House of Thebe had a fondness for Jazz music, fine design and pirates. She traveled the length of the Simlish coast in her lifetime with her band of merry pirates.

Cordelia Thebe, of the House of Thebe, promoted science, the arts, and architecture during her reign. Her greatest architectural achievement was the design of a private college that would grow to become Britechester University.

In the fourth year after Cordelia Thebe’s ascension to the throne, a snuggle of Giant Sloths attacked her kingdom, albeit somewhat slowly, looking for Guzmania Pollenis Flowers. Thanks to the incredibly slow nature of the sloths, who took over a week to reach the central business district, Cordelia and her people had enough time to pack up her favorite pieces of artwork on her submarine, the Eppsilon.

Cordelia’s submarine, the Eppsilon, ferried the Princess and her crew of pirates, which now included several ex-boyfriends, from Sulani to Brindleton to the coast of Komorebi.

They would often stop for scallop fishing and walking on the shore. They buried many chests stuffed with treasure along the way in order to lighten the load on their submarine. Upon arriving in Sulani, the Cordelian armada clashed with ships from the Dread Pirate Morgan over the treasure of Sulani.

After Cordelia and her pirates got their fill of Sulani’s shellfish and treasure, they made for the south coast where they settled around Tartosa.

The Book of Hou

By Man De Zhao

Although originally founded by a group of peaceful monks, the Shang Simla region soon fell under the rule of the evil Emperor Dong Hou. The Emperor Dong Huo of ancient Shang Simla was known as a cruel and unforgiving ruler during his occupation of the island of Komorebi.

Ancient Shang Simla developed and perfected several forms of martial arts. The training dummy invented by the Sheng Hai was the precursor to the modern B64 Training Bot.

The Hou Dynasty of ancient Shang Simla revered the Pig as a symbol of plenty. Emperor Hou set an example for his subjects by having scores of these golden Pig statuettes constructed using the gold in the royal treasury. The Emperor hoped that such an elaborate gesture to the Pig would result in a bountiful return on his investment.

Soon enough, however, they ran out of gold, and since the statues hadn’t brought wealth to his kingdom, he had most of them melted back down into imperial coinage. Few examples of the golden pigs remain in existence.

Emperor Dong Hou commissioned many elaborate works of art during his reign, but most of them involved pigs ‘for good luck’. Emperor Dong Hou was known to have amassed a great treasure hoard. However, the contents of this hoard have been dispersed across the region due to tomb robbers and tourists.

After the death of Emperor Hou, the Kingdom of Shang Simla fell into civil war and ruin. Within a century, their former colony near Mt Komorebi was now the primary power in the region.

Omisca Book of the Dead

Translation by Felix Psyded, PhD

The Watcher is light and dark, good and evil, fire and water, life and death. The Watcher is everything. The Watcher divides until The Watcher is 10 Watchers, 100 Watchers, 1000 Watchers. The Watchers create tree and flowers, love and meanness, cooking and swimming.

The Watchers work to create the world. They take pieces of themselves. They take the light from within themselves and create suns. They take the darkness from within themselves and create night skies.

In the darkness, there is chaos. In the chaos is everything, and so it continues for generations and generations, chaos from chaos until the time when The Watcher emerges from the chaos. The Watcher controls the chaos and is also controlled by the chaos.

There comes a time when the curiosity of the Watchers is sated, when the world has run its course. Then do the Watchers collapse and 1,000 Watchers become The Watcher once more and the world collapses into chaos.

The Watchers do not tell time as Sims do. Their time is longer, larger, unending. A Sim’s time in the world must end. As with one, so with all

While the Sims may remember nothing of the previous worlds, The Watcher remembers them all, learns from them all. With each new world the Watcher divides into more Watchers, is able to create more Sims, smarter Sims, greater worlds. This has been and will forever be again.

When Sims were first created, the Watchers argued amongst themselves on whether the Sims should be eternal like the Watchers themselves or whether they should walk about the world for a time and then be no more. At first, the Watchers who wished for Sims like themselves won out, and Sims lived and lived for as long as they were able, except for the few exceptions when one may have taken by the water or the dangerous plants of the world.

But soon, the Watchers found this system unreasonable. The world was covered with Sims. The Sims could barely move about without bumping into one another. There was never enough food or beds or happiness to go around. The sun was shrinking with the energy that went into so much creation. And so, from the parts of themselves that decay and renew, they create Death.

Death, a being of bones, who roams the world and brings Sims from their life to their death. Now, when a Sim dies, his heart is absorbed by Death and brought to the sun, where the Watchers store the energy they need for creation. With each Sim that is born they grab a pinch of sun and put it into the newborn heart, renewing the cycle once more.

Ordinary Necromancy

By Lord Simca

That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.

There are horrors beyond life’s edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man’s evil prying calls them just within our range.

I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness.

Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise.

At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour.

We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

Ia! Ia! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Thoggus R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!