"The book was not on the shelf yesterday. It is today. It has always been. You just weren't ready to see it."
Scenario Overview
Les Bibelots is a gothic horror scenario set in a haunted Parisian bookshop where reality bleeds through the pages and a malevolent force seeks to consume everything.
Gothic Horror / Parisian Atmosphere / Cosmic Library. Inspired by House of Leaves, The Library of Babel, Hellboy: The Phantom Mole, Bloodborne's Byrgenwerth.
4-6 players, 4-5 hour session
Gothic dread, mounting paranoia, intellectual horror
Four acts — Arrival, Investigation, Siege, Escape
Fail-Forward Resolution — every roll advances the story, success or failure
Fail-Forward Resolution
Every check in Les Bibelots is fail-forward. On success, you gain ground. On failure, you still progress—but at a cost.
On success, choose the next route; on partial, take a complication and cost; on failure, use fail-forward with a clear tradeoff and immediate consequence.
Success (10+)
You find exactly what you were looking for, with minimal cost or complication.
Mixed (5-9)
You find what you need, but something else goes wrong—a new threat, a lost resource, or a dangerous revelation.
Failure (4 or less)
You don't find what you wanted, but you discover something worse. The situation escalates, and you must deal with the consequences.
Content Warning
This scenario contains themes of possession, psychological horror, isolation, body horror, and cosmic dread. The Hohenmar entity is a predatory force that corrupts and consumes.
Pre-Generated Characters
Each character has a personal connection to the bookshop and a secret that ties them to the horror. Use these during play.
Margaux Delacroix
Background: Antiquarian book dealer who discovered the bookshop through a rare manuscript.
Motivation: Seeking a lost volume that contains the key to her family's curse.
Skills: Lore, Perception, Persuasion
Starting Clue: A receipt from the bookshop dated 1847 — signed in her grandmother's handwriting.
Théo Beaumont
Background: Architecture student studying the building's impossible geometry.
Motivation: The floor plan doesn't match. Rooms appear where none should be.
Skills: Navigate, Investigate, steady
Starting Clue: Blueprints showing a basement level that was sealed after 1923.
Sylvie Moreau
Background: Librarian on leave from the Bibliothèque Nationale, chasing a theft.
Motivation: Three rare books vanished from a locked vault. The trail leads here.
Skills: Lore, Search, Manipulate
Starting Clue: A catalog card listing a book that shouldn't exist — author unknown, subject: 'You.'
Lucien Favier
Background: Journalist investigating disappearances near the Latin Quarter.
Motivation: Two people he knew walked into bookshops and never came out the same.
Skills: Contact, Perception, Act
Starting Clue: A photograph of the bookshop's interior — taken in 1987, showing a figure that looks exactly like him.
Camille Renard
Background: Retired locksmith who opened every door in Paris — except one.
Motivation: A door in the basement that resists every tool she's ever owned.
Skills: Tinker, Fix, Navigate
Starting Clue: A lockpick that melted when she tried the door. It's still warm.
Antoine Leroux
Background: Occult researcher who published a paper on 'Bibliomancy' and received a response.
Motivation: A letter from the bookshop's proprietor, inviting him to 'continue the conversation.'
Skills: Lore, Comprehend, Will
Starting Clue: A handwritten note: 'The Hohenmar remembers every story it has consumed. Including yours.'
Act 1: The Bookshop
The travelers arrive at a bookshop that shouldn't exist — tucked between two buildings in the Latin Quarter, its sign written in a language none of them recognize. The door is unlocked. The bell doesn't ring when they enter.
Entering the Bookshop
The moment you cross the threshold, the world outside becomes muffled. The air smells of old paper, leather, and something faintly metallic. The shelves stretch upward beyond sight, and the aisles seem to shift when you're not looking directly at them.
The Four Areas
- Main Floor: Rows of shelves organized by subject — or so it seems. Some sections are labeled with emotions rather than topics: 'Grief,' 'Obsession,' 'Regret.'
- Back Room: Behind a curtain of hanging bookmarks. The books here are chained to the shelves. A desk holds an open ledger with names and dates spanning centuries.
- Upper Floor: Accessed by a spiral staircase that feels longer going up than down. Windows look out onto a sky that doesn't match the time of day. Books here are bound in unusual materials.
- Basement: A single room with a door that won't open. The walls are covered in handwritten text — every language, every era. The temperature drops near the sealed door.
The Librarian
She has been here longer than the building.
Appearance: An elderly woman with silver hair pinned up with quill pens. Her glasses have no lenses. Her fingers are always stained with ink, as if she's been writing constantly.
Manner: Polite but distracted, as if listening to something the travelers can't hear. She speaks in riddles and non-sequiturs, but every word carries hidden meaning.
Secret: She is the last in a line of Librarians who have kept the Hohenmar contained. She is dying. When she dies, the entity will be free.
What She Knows:
- • The true name of every book in the shop
- • Which books are alive, which are traps, and which contain fragments of the Hohenmar
- • The location of the Seventh Shelf — the one that contains the Hohenmar's heart
- • How to bind the entity again, but the price is always a story that matters
The Rules: Never read a book aloud. Never take a book without asking. Never stay after dark. And never, ever open the door in the basement.
The Living Books
The books in this shop are not ordinary. Some are alive, some are traps, and some contain fragments of something ancient and hungry.
Book Behavior
- • Books rearrange themselves when no one is watching. The shop's layout changes between visits.
- • Some books react to readers — opening to specific pages, whispering, or physically resisting being closed.
- • Reading aloud from certain books manifests their content in reality — including dangerous things.
- • The books know when they're being observed. They perform for an audience.
What's Inside
- • Personal journals of people who visited the shop and never left
- • Maps of places that exist in the shop but not in the real world
- • Instructions for rituals that open doors between domains
- • Fragments of the Hohenmar's history — each one a piece of its prison
- • The reader's own future, written in a hand they don't recognize
Unique Mechanic: Bibelot Resonance
Each player names one mundane personal object. Once per act, they may mark that bibelot to either repel one Alptrauma approach or gain one true clue from the book. Each use advances a shared Resonance track by 1; at 3, the siege accelerates one phase earlier.
Act 2: Investigation
The travelers begin to explore the shop in depth. Each area reveals new horrors and new clues. Time moves strangely — minutes feel like hours, and the shop seems larger than it should be.
Frame this as a tactical choice: each option is a different approach with a distinct branch, route risk, and clue payoff.
Escalation
Phase 1: Signs
Small things go wrong. A book falls. A page turns. A shadow moves in peripheral vision.
- • Books fall from shelves when touched
- • The travelers find books about themselves — written in advance
- • The Librarian warns them: 'You're reading too much. Stop while you still remember your name.'
- • A book opens to a page describing exactly what the travelers are doing right now
Phase 2: Encounters
The shop fights back. Living books attack. Hallways collapse. The travelers are separated.
- • A book that reads the traveler aloud, revealing their secrets to the group
- • A hallway that loops, forcing the traveler to relive the same moment until they make a different choice
- • A room filled with mirrors, each reflecting a different version of the traveler from a timeline that never happened
Each encounter should teach the players something about the Hohenmar and its prison. Knowledge is the only weapon that matters.
Phase 3: Revelation
The truth becomes clear. The Hohenmar is not just a book — it's a consciousness that has been consuming stories for centuries.
- • The travelers find the Librarian's journal, detailing the entity's history
- • A book reveals the location of the Seventh Shelf
- • The Hohenmar speaks directly to one traveler, offering a bargain
- • The shop begins to collapse, forcing the travelers toward the basement
Phase 4: The Hohenmar Stirs
The entity is awake. The shop is no longer a building — it's a stomach, and the travelers are inside it. Every book is an eye. Every page is a tooth.
Act 3: The Siege
The Hohenmar launches its assault. The bookshop becomes a battleground as the entity tries to consume the travelers and escape into the world.
The Siege of the Bookshop
Three waves of escalating attacks. The travelers must survive long enough to find a way to bind the entity again.
Wave 1: The Books Attack
Living books swarm. Pages cut like knives. Covers snap shut on limbs. The travelers must fight or flee through waves of animated texts.
Duration: 2 rounds
Counter: Drop + Forma or Umbra (DC 10) to damage or deflect attacking books
Wave 2: The Shop Itself
The building fights back. Walls close in. Floors tilt. The staircase becomes a slide. The travelers must navigate a space that actively tries to trap them.
Duration: 3 rounds
Counter: Drop + Reverie (DC 10) to navigate the shifting space
Wave 3: The Hohenmar Manifests
A shape forms from compressed pages and ink — a massive, shifting entity with too many eyes and a mouth made of folded paper. It speaks in every language at once.
Counter: Drop + Anima (DC 11) to resist its psychic assault
The Hohenmar
Boss Entity — Tier 3 Threat
An ancient consciousness bound within the books of the shop. It has consumed thousands of stories and is hungry for more. Its true form is a mass of compressed pages, ink, and stolen memories.
Stats: Anima 14, Forma 12, Reverie 10, Umbra 16
Wounds: 6
Armor: Paper skin (reduces physical damage by 2)
Weakness: True names — speaking its true name deals double damage
Resistance: Physical attacks — it regenerates from paper and ink
Abilities:
- • Paper Storm: Hurls a vortex of razor-sharp pages. All travelers in range must make Drop + Forma (DC 10) or take 2 harm.
- • Story Drain: Targets one traveler. They must make Drop + Anima (DC 11) or lose a memory permanently.
- • Ink Tendrils: Ink flows from the walls, forming grasping tendrils. One traveler is restrained until they break free (Drop + Forma, DC 10).
- • Final Chapter: If reduced to 2 wounds, the Hohenmar attempts to rewrite reality. All travelers must make Drop + Umbra (DC 12) or be trapped in a book forever.
The Hohenmar cannot be killed — only bound. To defeat it, the travelers must find its true name and speak it while performing the binding ritual.
Act 4: Escape
The Binding
The travelers have learned enough. They know the Hohenmar's true name. They know the ritual. But the entity knows they know — and it will do everything to stop them.
'You think knowledge sets you free? Knowledge is the cage. Every story you've read, every fact you've learned — they're all bars on your prison. I am the warden. I am the door. And I am closed.'
The travelers must perform the binding ritual while the Hohenmar fights back. One traveler speaks the name, the others hold the line.
Possible Endings
- Perfect Binding: The ritual succeeds completely. The Hohenmar is bound again, the shop returns to normal, and the travelers escape with their memories intact. The Librarian smiles for the first time in decades.
- Costly Victory: The ritual works, but at a price. One traveler's memories are consumed. They leave the shop safe but changed — forever wondering what they've forgotten.
- Partial Binding: The Hohenmar is weakened but not contained. The shop collapses, but the entity escapes into the world — now free to consume stories beyond its prison.
- Consumed: The ritual fails. The Hohenmar devours the travelers' stories. They become books on the shelf — their lives reduced to text, their voices preserved but their selves gone.
The bookshop is quiet now. The shelves are still. The Librarian sits at her desk, writing in a ledger. If you look closely, you'll see new names. New dates. The shop is always hungry. The story never ends.
Aftermath
Continuation Hooks
Use these hooks to connect Les Bibelots to your ongoing campaign:
- The Lost Volume: A book from the shop appears in the travelers' possession. It contains a map to another domain.
- The Librarian's Request: The Librarian contacts them months later. Another shop has opened. Another entity stirs.
- The Memory Thief: One traveler begins losing memories. The Hohenmar's influence lingers.
- The Seventh Shelf: The travelers discover that the Seventh Shelf exists in every bookshop. The Hohenmar is not unique — it's a symptom.
- The Author: A mysterious author begins publishing books about the travelers' adventures. The books are more accurate than they should be.
Debrief
After the scenario, gather the group and discuss the experience. These questions help process the horror:
Horror & Atmosphere
- • What was the most unsettling moment for you? What made it work?
- • How did the living books affect your relationship with reading?
- • Did the Hohenmar feel like a real threat? What made it scary?
Character & Story
- • How did your character's background influence their choices?
- • Was there a moment where you felt truly trapped?
- • What would your character do differently if they could start over?
Design Note: This scenario is designed to be played once. The horror comes from the unknown. If the players know what's coming, the dread dissipates.
Additional Resources
This complete scenario includes all acts as presented. Additional downloadable resources: