Book of Hours Cards

An archive of the various "Cards" in the game Book of Hours

[bohcards]

Introduction

Hello! This is a blog dedicated to archiving the various cards, popups, and windows in the game Book of Hours by Weather Factory. Assuming I figured out how queues work, this blog should post every half-hour, and I will load several dozen cards into it whenever I play the game. Unfortunately I will inevitably miss many pieces of text as I play the game, so I urge anyone who is interested to check it out on steam at the link below!

Hopefully I will be tagging these posts based on the various properties of each card, so if you're trying to find Heart cards you can browse the heart tag on this blog, or you can find a list of memories in the memories tag! I cannot guarantee there will be no repeats or inaccuracies in this system, as this isn't an official wiki, just a little thing I'm doing on the side to help me focus while I play the game.

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Restore a crumbling occult library by a winter sea. Build the world’s foremost collection of grimoires and arcana. Master the invisible arts

Tags

#Book of Hours, #Cultist Simulator, #Weather Factory - the name of the game, the previous game, and the company that made both

#not archival - Posts that are not specifically archived game text, includes memes, advice, and updates. The latter two are usually titled "As a note..."

#card - something that can go into your inventory, memories and lessons, elements of the soul, skills and languages, or sundries sections. This is practically everything in the game.

#window - text that pops up in windows in the middle of your screen, unlike the information popups in the top left corner of the screen, includes readings, crafting, and various location interactions

#location - descriptions of rooms in the house and locations outside of it, as well as windows and interactions with the houses in Brancrug

#popup - popups at the bottom of your screen, usually informational, especially that thing-of-the-devil "Navigating Brancrug".

#reading - book studying interactions, appears in windows, but separate for those specifically looking for some light reading.

[penny-anna]

if you've ever used the London Underground you might have noticed that it often gets uncomfortably hot. the reason for this is actually that its builders dug too greedily & too deep and as a result the trains are very close to the fires of hell. hope that helps.

[stripedroseandsketchpads]

^Real advertisement from the 20s. Normal train system.

[chromodorid]

I'm adding "what in the wolf-divided's most splintered name hath here been wrought" to my day to day lexicon immediately

[dyrrn]

starting on a nectar-themed endpage because these are very fun to do. no clue where i'm going with it yet but i guess we'll see!!

[bohcards]

The Earthly Powers

I wanted to talk about a pet theory I've had for the presence of the powers of Sky, Scale, Rose, Moon, and Nectar, specifically why they're present in Book of Hours and not Cultsim, which has confused me for a while.

Initially I thought they may have been recently classified in the time between the games, but it seemed like a drastic change to add five new powers to the roster in that time, until I saw the posts talking about the differences between the librarian and the cultist, particularly how the librarian is much more grounded in the world around them. Maybe these powers are rarely present in the Mansus, and instead powers of our world, and potentially viewed by the cultist as useless as a result, powers unrelated to the power of the Mansus, of magic, that do not contribute to their ascension.

What use is the Sky and Moon of our world, not visible within the Mansus? What nectar, what blood, flows through a land not of the living? What relevance is scale, the immensity of the earth they seek to leave behind? What value is a compass rose in a land which cannot be mapped?

[szbnahl-but-with-cannibalism]

From the replies:

My current theory is that each of these five new aspects represents one of the five secret histories instead of being aggregated under a single pseudo principal.

This chimes well with An Introduction to Histories:

Hersault identifies Blood, Silver, Design and the Worms as the central axes of each of the Histories, and claims that the so-called Second History is the true one

Blood is Nectar, Silver is Moon, Design is Sky and Worms are Scale. I've never noticed before that Hersault was only aware of four Histories, but I suppose the remaining one would be Rose.

[ivehadanapophany]

The most impressive part of the cultist simulator/book of hours universe is the amount of insane theological discourse all these different groups were having, genuinely fascinating to read about the different ways the Hours were worshipped. It's also impressive because this has meta-game consequences to where I will see an in game piece of lore and go "ah no i disagree with that interpretation of the solar hours I don't think the Door-In-The-Eye can be counted among them" and I'll realize I've fallen for the trap.

[fliptoast]

Aunt Mopsey

      One must be particularly insane to enter the service of a Nowhere Hour. For one there is no set path to ascend under them. The Watchman requires a sacrifice of the uninitiated, and you must watch them, unfeeling as they burn with knowledge not meant for them. The Forge of Days requires the fiery destruction of something and then beautiful creation from its ashes. The Mother of Ants asks that you open yourself to gates flung wide through scarring, either the body or the mind. The Cornel and the Lionsmith require you and another to ascend in a show of blood and teeth and hatred, and commit yourself to this private dance of a two-person war forever. Even those less commonly ascended under have guesses associated with their paths to ascension. Though it is somewhat luck for the Egalist to turn his head to you, accepting your own mortality and the mortality of others in a grand show increases your odds. The Wolf Divided seems to require your death by your own hand, fulfilling its own lifelong desire. Find the house of the Moon, ascend under the Meniscate. Eat and fuck and feel, ascend under the Red Grail. Of course, these are all simplifications, but the point should be clear. There is at the barest of minimums an idea of how to get the attention of any given hour, and for some a set list of demands others have learned will get you into their service. All this preamble to bring up the oddity that is Aunt Mopsey.

            She is pleasant to talk to. She asks you call her aunt, and she certainly feels like one. She is kind and thoughtful and enjoys listening to anyone who will speak to her. When she asks something of you, you are compensated accordingly. She does not trick or manipulate or lie. The worst anyone can say about her is that perhaps she can be hard to understand with her habit of speaking in riddles or perhaps she is a little blunt. Perhaps her sense of boundaries can also be a bit screwy, considering when you ask how she gets places that seem locked or hidden she will always reply “someone let me in”, but aren’t these just small things? No one would expect her to be a name for an hour at all, much less for one as malicious as the Mare-in-the-Tree.

            The mystery of Aunt Mopsey does not end there though. She is no ordinary Name. Names serve an hour, but no other Name is given a title quite like Aunt Mopsey. She is called a herald, a herald for the Mare-in-the-Tree. Where Mopsey goes, the Mare-in-the-Tree is said to follow. Those Mopsey speaks to are said to be under the influence of the Mare-in-the-Tree. Extreme theories tend to equate Mopsey to nothing but a puppet or meat suit for the Mare-in-the-Tree, saying Mopsey is a shell the Hour speaks through.

Regardless to the relationship between Mopsey and the Mare-in-the-Tree, the fact remains, Mopsey is one of a kind. The only known Name of a Nowhere hour, and one of the more explicitly malicious ones at that. And the pinnacle of the mystery surrounding this woman, is how. There are no other Names, at least not ones who can speak to compare Mopsey too. Her speech doesn’t lend itself to answering such questions as straightforward as “how did you ascend?” The best guess anyone has is that Mopsey, the human if she ever was one, had to be mad. Mad enough to enter the Manaus, and willingly open the door to Nowhere, going against every instinct every dreamer has ever had. From there, no one will ever know how the ascension played out. All that is known is there is a woman, found only in Numa, who speaks in riddles, is pleasant to talk to, and heralds a great evil, an evil always only one step behind her gentle smile.

[sunbeetle]

cultist simulator is like this

[motherfucker-unlimited]

Dumb Cultsim/Book of Hours memes I made for some reason

[weightlessribbons]

So, in CS/BoH the lore is that Edge-Long are basically all parts of dyad pairs that fight each other forever without anyone ever winning

Edge is the aspect of struggle- struggle, in this case, unending, and without relief

I guess you could call it

edging

[bibliomancerkay]

Book of Hours is the ultimate wish fulfillment game. I can feed people and give them the perfect drink, and they’ll do (spooky cursed) hard labor for me? I can spend entire days sorting books? Rereading my favorites gives me the strength to do hard tasks?! I can keep pets with little to no effort? Books are the path to immortality?!?!

I’m a normal amount of obsessed

[leggypuppy]

I actually liked being Fascinated since my Phost could spend like 10 minutes straight digesting book after book to level up Wolf Stories with 5 memories and 1 lesson

what is a Malady other than an occult-induced hyperfocus

[hush-house-yard-sale]

Well why don't YOU come here and take care of me yourself if you're sooo concerned about my welfare! I bet you can't, because you are all uuuu I need to write a history to atone for my mistakes uuuu

I bet you don't even have a bedroom cleared up cause you're all so busy reading all those cryptic pages! Not to brag, but at least I have one, all painted white for totally aesthetic purposes and not because I want to cut my hair or injure myself to access the big m-word!

...it's spacious enough for two people though...

-Cultist (suggestive)

Hm. No. The Forge-of-Days can have you.

[leggypuppy]

I think a lot of the differences come down to how in cultsim you're a normie way out of their depth who is only 'clued in' and 'on top of things' compared to your followers vs in BoH you're the sort of person with the credentials to get selected by an enigmatic organisation to run one of nine libraries in the world rated to carry forbidden knowledge. The Librarian is truly part of the invisible world, the Cultist is desperately clawing their way to comprehension and a lot less prepared for it.

oh def

playing as the Cultist vs playing as the Librarian is like. whats that one post about classically-trained magic users vs self-taught

"what do you MEAN i dont have to burn half my blood to cast Fireball"

you know the one

thats them

[bohcards]

The Earthly Powers

I wanted to talk about a pet theory I've had for the presence of the powers of Sky, Scale, Rose, Moon, and Nectar, specifically why they're present in Book of Hours and not Cultsim, which has confused me for a while.

Initially I thought they may have been recently classified in the time between the games, but it seemed like a drastic change to add five new powers to the roster in that time, until I saw the posts talking about the differences between the librarian and the cultist, particularly how the librarian is much more grounded in the world around them. Maybe these powers are rarely present in the Mansus, and instead powers of our world, and potentially viewed by the cultist as useless as a result, powers unrelated to the power of the Mansus, of magic, that do not contribute to their ascension.

What use is the Sky and Moon of our world, not visible within the Mansus? What nectar, what blood, flows through a land not of the living? What relevance is scale, the immensity of the earth they seek to leave behind? What value is a compass rose in a land which cannot be mapped?

[thetitan555]

It's notable that Nectar is listed as a principle, and none of the other new aspects are. It's also the only one not featured on the Tree of Wisdoms; maybe it's under the Suppression Beaureau seal? I have no theory as to why they aren’t featured in Cultist Simulator (you’d think they would get at least a passing mention), save a quite unhelpful type of theory: I think BoH could take place in a different History from Cultist Simulator. It would explain why there’s no direct references to the player character Cultist’s actions, as doing so is impossible anyway due to the nature of several endings. Additionally, it’s hard to go five books in Book of Hours without finding a reference to Histories. That said, this kind of theory isn’t very helpful as we don’t really have a solid understanding of what delineates a history from another. (At least, I don’t. I’m nearing my first victory.)

[hush-house-yard-sale]

Not to brag but I could have prayed to the Thunderskin to power my desk lamp. All that knowledge and you couldn't ask the hours to do simple tasks

-Cultist (who couldn't answer the stag door riddle for the third time)

If you paid your electricity bill on time, you wouldn't have to bother the hours with trivial matters, and would stand a better chance of joining their number. Does the Thunderskin tie your boots for you as well?

Feel free to drop in if you need help with the riddle. I'm happy to assist even if I have to teach you how to read first.

[froshele-deactivated20250116]

so fandom what do we think a percussigant

actually moves and looks like?

a motion;

and a suggestion regarding containment and husbandry practices