The Book of the Damned is a double artifact of Invisible Cities: the first Bible translated into the language of the people, and the bound prison of the three Horsemen-jurors of the Apocalypse. Its mere existence destroys purgatory.
| Type | Artifact |
| Chronicle | Invisible Cities |
| Bearer | Judith |
| Spanish entry | El Libro de los Malditos |
Description
As “the book of the Protestants”, it was handed by a Luther-like figure — a fanatical cleric, not the Earth one — to the illiterate stowaway Judith, a member of the Héroes de Poca Monta, with orders to destroy Mount Analogue.
Inside its pages live the three Horsemen who sit as jury of Charon’s contest for the office of Horseman of War.
Properties
- It abolishes purgatory. Translating Scripture into the common tongue denies the authority of the celestial hierarchies that administer salvation; in Antiterra this amounts to repealing Mount Analogue, which is purgatory made mountain.
- Indestructible except by a ritual that divides it into four with holy water. Whoever fails the test of that division is trapped inside the book.
- In its reddest version — the “Skull of the Dead God”, the book of the first damned — it consolidates and imprisons the Horsemen, and its purification splits it into three or four.
Role
The final arc of Invisible Cities, around Mount Analogue and the Network of Religion, is at heart the dispute over whether purgatory exists: the Reformation played as a cosmological question, with this book as its trigger. Luca defends the vanguard of the Mount so that purgatory remains standing.