Small Presses of Waterdeep

Endless Chapbooks

The boom in broadsheets that has befallen the City of Splendors over the last thirty years was spurred by the tireless efforts of Emberstone Haumbroad, but made possible in the first place by the large number of independent "backroom" frame presses, calligraphers, and woodcut artists available in Waterdeep. They were there because of an industry that had already been flourishing in the city for centuries: chapbook publishing.

Chapbooks are parchment pamphlets, often having only a dozen pages, but sometimes as many as thirty-six. Most are two human-handwidths across by three handwidths high in exterior dimensions, and about as thick as the edge of a large man's hand (smaller examples retain the same rough proportions). Chapbooks always have covers of dyed and sewn hide (usually of rothé or other livestock), which are sometimes stiffened with metal plates or thin (and often faulty in looks) ceramic tiles. The covers and pages are sewn to thick leather "spines." Although most chapbooks look quite trim when new, damp causes many to bulge and swell into curved "bundles."

Recently, the publishers of broadsheets have discovered an increasing hunger among Waterdhavians for swift, accurate reporting of "the real news" -- even if mysteries remain unsolved and tales untidily unresolved. Fancies of talking fish in the harbor and lost princesses from other realms discovered among nobles' servants just don't have the allure they once did. Waterdhavians still love their trashy serials, but they want sober facts in the front pages.

This trend is by no means so strong among chapbooks, which from year to year display a "stable" mix of publications: religious tracts; oft-scary "feel the wonder" books about magic, for the uninitiated; political rants; smart-mouthed adventurer yarns; lurid romantic tales for hungry male readers; tear-reaping romances for female readers; a small number of useful "hard information" books on spells, herbs, and how-to-do tasks; an even smaller number of histories that almost no one seems to buy; and a very large number of quirky, opinionated "the True Secrets of" tomes on a bewildering variety of topics.

"True secrets" books have yielded most of Waterdeep's bestsellers thus far, in a busy, bustling mercantile city. Most long-term citizens read voraciously for pleasure and "don't want to miss" anything important that could be an opportunity to make money (and so try to keep abreast of any topic that strikes the popular fancy). Like the broadsheets, almost all Waterdhavian chapbooks are printed in Common, and so travel well, and are often found in unexpectedly distant places in Faerûn.

Examples of past "foreseeable" bestsellers include Whisper-Secrets of the Lords and Ladies of Waterdeep; Skullport: the Lurking Evil Below; Lashes of Loviatar: Beloved Pain and Those Who Seek It; and The Exploits of Roral Readysword, Knight-Adventurer.

A few of the useful steady sellers among chapbooks, decade after decade include Engelvaer's Poison and Sickness Remedies; Herbs of the North and How to Recognize Them; and Trade-Roads and Tavern-Notes: A Wayfarer's Guide to Inns, Wells, Taverns, and Perils in the North.

Here follows a sampling of the more unexpected "highcoin" titles:

• Beyond the Dark Door: Sewers, Cellars, and Secret Passages of Castle Ward
• Broad Beneath My Back: Sixty Summers of Mattress-Making in Snail Street
• Feuds of the Founders: Old Quarrels and Disputes of Early Waterdeep
• Hunting Haurauthadoar: The Slaying of a Great Green Dragon
• Jossra's Sayings: Mind-Governing Advice for All Social Occasions
• Lady Naga, and Why I Loved Her
• Lord Malavar's Moustache: A Mirthful Mystery of Old Waterdeep
• Malpurth's Catalogue of Lances, Pendants, and Banners of Fallen Houses
• Moonfall: The Tragic Tale of a Dancer of Waterdeep
• Songs on the Wind: Ghosts of the Old City, and What They Whisper to Me
• That Old Cask: A Drinker's Tales

On any given day in Waterdeep, battered, well-used copies of all these titles can be found by someone who visits a mere handcount of printers or "old tome" shops.

Anyone can copy any book without legal penalty in Waterdeep, and printers amass libraries of chapbooks printed by their rivals so that they can plunder for ornaments and illustrations when a "new" book must be swiftly assembled. Many woodcut artists and apprentices can't craft a new illustration to save their lives, but they can readily and speedily accomplish what they've been trained to do: exactly copy something set in front of them.

Bookshops in Waterdeep tend to be crowded with dusty histories and volume after volume of adventure, romance, or bawdy sagas that are twenty to forty titles long.

Titles of Note

Any roster of the most popular, important, and useful chapbook titles published in Waterdeep will inevitably be subjective and hotly debated -- but in all such lists drawn up fairly, the following titles must appear. (It should be noted that their resale prices reflect lasting popularity; lesser-known chapbooks usually fetch 2 to 4 gp at most, and many go for less than that.)

Engelvaer's Poison and Sickness Remedies

Engelvaer's Poison and Sickness Remedies is a compendium of alchemical preparations and folk medicines (including herbs and the placing of certain gems and other substances on the tongue of the stricken). Most of its contents have been discredited, but many sages believe some instructions may have limited efficacy if augmented by information deliberately left out by Engelvaer (and rumored to be contained in a second chapbook, the very expensive and rare Coderium that he sold for 1,000 gp per copy).

A growing number of folk believe the convoluted prose of this chapbook contains a coded message regarding the whereabouts of great treasure -- quite possibly a rich hoard of potions or scrolls. No one, so far as is known, has yet deciphered this hidden screed. Engelvaer disappeared some eighty summers ago through a portal somewhere in midair above a roof in Dock Ward; his fate, present whereabouts, and the location or continued existence of that portal are all unknown.

• Format: 12 pages, bound in "dusty blue," with silver gilt stamped title on front.
• Typical Resale Price: 4 gp.
• Sample Passage: For relief from ye shaking fever, take first ye outer leaves of ye salath plant, taking great care that they be not withered but yet retain their prickly hairs, and soak a goodly handful of these in ye blood of. . . .

Herbs of the North and How to Recognize Them

Herbs of the North and How to Recognize Them is a fanciful overview of a strange selection of ground plants found in the Dessarin valley. The roster is considered odd in that none of the plants, so far as is known, actually has healing properties. Each is portrayed in a crude line drawing and identified by common names plus a grandiose title apparently crafted by the unknown chapbook author. Listings of uses follow; readers may learn (some the hard way) that every single use was apparently invented for this work and that attempting many of them may be harmful.

Many of the listed plants do have mild druglike effects such as causing drowsiness, deadening pain, calming (even against magical fear effects), or temporarily negating all sense of taste or smell, and almost all of them have strong flavors that might see use in cookery.

• Format: 34 pages, bound in dark brown, with no lettering on the covers.
• Typical Resale Price: 3 gp.
• Sample Passage: Dragonfire Weed, hight also Common Thrubweed, Bootspice, Rust-Tassel, and Brownshar. A creeping, wilted-looking plant of slender, ragged dusty-green leaves sprouting from a single root without apparent flower. Older, outer leaves turn brown and lengthen into long stalks ending in the shriveled leaf, or "tassel." This plant sprouts wherever fiery dragon-breath touches fertile ground. Uses: Wards off dragons when worn on naked body instead of -- not as well as -- clothing or armor. Cures burns when rubbed on them. Calms troubled digestion and cures drunkenness instantly when chewed and swallowed. When boiled, yields a brown dye that can tint eyes and hair as well as skin.

Trade-Roads and Tavern-Notes: A Wayfarer's Guide to Inns, Wells, Taverns, and Perils in the North

Trade-Roads and Tavern-Notes: A Wayfarer's Guide to Inns, Wells, Taverns, and Perils in the North is a guidebook consisting of very brief (alphabetical, by place) listings of travel-relevant features found along the roads of the Sword Coast North. Out-of-date judgments and curious omissions abound; no maps are provided and the work in general is "only a little better than nothing at all," but despite years of warnings by outlanders and Waterdhavians who've tried to use it "in the wild," the "Trusty Guide" is widely considered reliable by Waterdhavians who've never traveled. If such folk do undertake a journey, most will bring along a copy. In the words of one caravan rider: "Well, let them wave it about. Judiciously used, page by page, it can help get about ten wayfires going."

• Format: 20 pages, bound in green (apt to fade in a mottled manner) with the letter "T" stamped on the front cover.
• Typical Resale Price: 3 gp.
• Sample Passage: Drowned Lady Well. A day east of Calling Horns along the Evermoor Way: seek small hill crowned by three tall pines, cairn like ram's head at west end. Well covered by large flat stone below cairn, flows out into stone-lined basin. Watched by wolves. Drinkable water, no drowned ladies. Troll country; camp with ring-fires.