This is the tale of a group of amnesic goblins, how they teamed up to retrieve their identities and become death gods while travelling through the multiverse.
Les 13 reliques is a French tabletop RPG published as part of the LAB01 anthology. It has been written & illustrated by Yno. In this game the players characters are goblins from the Giant Library, a gigantic place and organisation gathering rare books through the multiverse.
The game is not edited anymore, but its manual and some other documents can be found there, all in PDF format and French:
The five goblins wake up under a pile of books, in what looks like a big library, with no memory. Some glowing magic light emanates from a book on the ground and is slowly dissipating. They grab it. As they regain consciousness and investigate the place, Hardy starts parkour-climbing on bookshelves to get an overview of their surroundings, followed by Ste’eve. They discover they are in a large room filled with huge bookcases forming a maze of narrow alleys.
Suddenly the main double door of the library opens to let enter three big ferocious dogs and a hooded floating creature. The dogs start running in the alleys toward the goblins. Artemis uses her bow to throw an arrow tied to a rope to the top of a bookcase nearby. There, Hardy firmly attach its extremity so that the remaining goblins use it to escape the dogs and get above the bookcases.
There, they notice another rope hanging from a hole in the ceiling, and guess that they came in this library using it. Hardy successfully jumps on it and reaches the attic above. In the meantime, Tankor pushes a bookcase so that if falls on a dog down in the library alley.
As Hardy hesitates as to whether swing the rope to the other goblins or not, the hooded creature whisper some words in a dark dialect and suddenly the bookcases start moving. They slowly move aside along the walls of the library, with four goblins still on top of one of them, and the floating wizard come in their direction.
As they are now standing near a stained glass window, the goblins attempt to break it, unsuccessfully. Panicking as the dark wizard is coming on them, they jump on the rope to the ceiling finally handed over by Hardy. They run through the attic, freaking out as the moon reveal menacing plate armours laying there, and waking up sleeping bats.
Hardy decides to reach the door on one end of the room while the four other goblins help each other to reach a dormer and escape through the roof. They end up sliding in the gutter to reach the manor garden muddy ground. In the attic, some ice starts to propagate magically from the hole in the floor towards Hardy, freezing everything on its way.
Hardy finally reaches the door, and hurtles down the spiraling stairs. He goes down to the ground level where he ends up in a corridor hall with five doors. As he discovers a vast reception hall behind the first door, he feels his right leg and forearm turning into ice. The last thing he sees before passing out as he turns over is the frowning face of a dark skinned elf.
During this time, outside, the four goblins explore the mansion surroundings. The small castle stands along a steep cliff while the rest of the large garden is delimited by a high wall. Tankor & Trogdor decide to get back inside to save Hardy.
The manor front door opens smoothly, revealing a corridor hall with five doors. As Tankor steals the axe of one of the statues there, this activates a secret passage behind it. Both goblins follow a narrow tunnel that leads them to an alchemist laboratory, where Hardy is hanging asleep, chained above above a big cauldron.
In the meantime Artmesis discovers in the bushes along the outer wall a small salamander that seems to recognize her. Ste’eve names it Fluffy.
After raiding the laboratory for potions, Tragdor & Tankor free the poor iced Hardy from its chain, but it falls in the cauldron by mistake. From now on a fluorescent light is emanating from his hand. They then carry iced-Hardy out of the place in a hurry, joining Ste’eve and Artemis outside.
Tankor then blows up a part of the outer wall with a stick of dynamite, opening the way for all of them. They all run to the mountains nearby, and no one seems to follow them. They establish a camp hidden by bushes, and put Hardy under a waterfall so the ice could melt.
As they rest, they try to recall what happened before. With the help of a map found in Artemis bag, some of the goblins remember some blurry memories of a mill through which they passed. They climb up the mountain and spot a town in the valley below, and two mills on the path to that village. They decide to go there and visit the mills on their way.
In the first mill, they meet an old goblin named Siltamen who recognizes the goblins and explains to them a few things: they are young agents of the Giant Library, sent there to retrieve this precious Memory-erasing book. They also learn the drow elf name: Baron Gustav.
Siltamen advise the goblins to go back make their report to the elder goblins of the Giant Library. They walk through a door opening on a totally black space, and the next moment they are seating in a small alcove and opening their eyes, a book open on the knees of Ste’eve : “The blue feather”.
They exit the alcove and start wandering around. They discover the splendor of labyrinthine Giant Library, its Escher-like stairs and never-ending bookshelves.
They finally find their way to Nermin, one of the elder goblins, to who they tell their story. He seems both sympathetic to their fate and concerned about that book. The goblins pretend they don’t have it. Nermin finally dismisses them, explaining he now has to refer to the other elder goblins.
The five goblins get back to their living quarters, meeting old acquaintances they don’t remember no more. On their spare time, they collect some books: Hardy on world travelling, Ste’eve on the moon, Artemis on magic. Soon, they learn that access to “The blue feather” book-universe has been rendered impossible and that Siltamen cannot be contacted anymore. The Giant Library goblins seem to be fearing something happened to the little library there.
Two goblin henchmen come to request Artemis presence, and bring her to an elder goblin, Nemesti. In his library office, he intensely interrogates Artemis again, and suggests to use magic to make here remember forgotten memories. Despite her refusal, he tries to read her mind. Artemis escapes the two henchmen and starts being chased by them in the alleys of the Giant Library.
The chase takes gigantic proportions as her four amnesic goblin friends help her outrunning her pursuers, but soon almost all the Giant Library goblins are chasing them !
They end up being surrounded on a central crossroad square, and have to fight to defend themselves. Hardy makes himself an enemy in kicking down one of their chasers, as well as Artemis & Tankor with a big goblin named Brogda. As all seems lost, they decide to protect their ears and read out aloud the Memory-erasing book while writing down some last notes to remember what happened this time.
The five goblins agree to give back the book and be kept in a cage to calm down spirits in the Giant Library. Moreover, a rescue expedition for Siltamen has to be prepared as soon as possible. Nermin promises to meet them later during the day.
The cage they are in is hanging 2 meters from the ceiling, in large library room 10m high. It is made of enchanted book covers. Out of claustrophobia, Hardy smashes the closest wall and creates a hole in it ! Him & Tragdor climb down on to the ground on the book shelves to retrieve the goblins equipment.
Tragdor then go onto a stealth mission through the cleaners tunnels to retrieve some cleaners uniforms, chloroforming an already sleeping cleaner on his way. In the meantime, Ste’eve builds up a mannequin looking almost like Tragdor, and Hardy & Tankor translate & study a very rare book they found on animals charming.
Tragdor comes back just as Nermin arrives with a group of other elder goblins including Nemesti, and he cannot get back into the cage in time. Nermin ask them if they got their memories back. Tankor tries to pretend he does, but when Nermin ask why they read the Memory-erasing book, the other goblins silence him. Nermin makes them all promise they won’t cause anymore that much trouble to the Giant Library, nor that they will interfere with the expedition. As the 5 goblins finally refuse to leave the cage - by fear the elder goblins discover Tragdor mannequin - Nermin winks at them while saying good bye.
First of all, the goblins decide to go an rescue Fluffy, their Salamen. They crawl through the cleaners tunnels to the Salamen barn level. There, Hardy successfully pretends to be sent by Nermin to recover Fluffy, and seduces Clarissa, a Salamen caretaker.
Now all assembled, the team decides of their new goal: help Tragdor to become a death god so they can confront Baron Gustav again.
They head up to the index room to find a list of known death gods. On their way they are recognized by Brogda who follows them with 3 other goblins.
To get rid of them, the team makes a smoke bomb and launch it in the crowd in the big hallway where the expedition is actually prepared. The cowceratops resting there and the crowd start to panic. Hardy and Ste’eve try to keep the cowceratops grounded using ropes.
Artemis looks for a no-gravity spell in her magic book, finds one she actually remembers and successfully launch it. Everyone in a 5m bubble is floating for a moment, but then she pushes on her feet and flies into the air, the no-gravity bubble following her and making all the books around levitate.
Tragdor uses this diversion to get to the index room. The others follow.
They find a few death gods listed in the index, including: - Hades, from “Space Odyssey”, a sci-fi universe where there are actual omnipotent techno gods, nanomachine based magic & space travelling squids - Zaraphim, from “The red sword”, dragon of death - Pluto, from “The last dawn”, god of death & the oceans in a post-apocalyptic world populated by orks
They found some story elements about that “The red sword” book-universe: it is a prequel to “The blue feather” from the same author Van Busiek; it depicts a war between the Alliance of dwarves-elf-humans-halflings against trolls-orks-demons; a small group of adventurers has to destroy a powerful mystical artefact, lead by Fradgo a halfling from Silvertown who found the blue feather by chance while trying to steal Zeraphim - the death dragon - gold; evil forces drow general finally vanquished but not killed.
As they are leaving, they face a goblin warrior and 6 of his men at the index room door. Tankor refuses to talk, closes and blocks the door. The goblin warrior makes it disappear with a glyph in its hand, and his men quickly incapacitate the team, except Tankor who runs away.
The goblin warrior leader waves his hand again and a big white wolf materialize above Tankor. By whistling, he manages to tame it, then successfully fight two goblin warriors - with a table & against a net. In the meantime Tragdor poison is opponent and himself; Artemis launches Fluffy & her itching paws at the goblin warriors; Ste’eve frees one of his hands and uses his sling on Artemis opponent.
Finally Artemis throws an arrow at the warrior leader throat and the remaining warriors flee. They all gather together and enter “The red sword” book universe.