Magic Tomes?

[Honking Capabilities]

Haven't played this game in a while....a long while. I don't remember magic tomes in the game before or if they were I never encountered one (I never got very deep) but just now I've encountered three at depth four. I used a detect magic scroll because I had a lot of other unidentified things and all three tomes (all pictured with pentagrams but occupying three different inventory slots) were marked as red. Are all tomes marked thus? I have no idea how these things work or what they do.

[SolarFlar3]

I don't know if they are always marked as red but I'm pretty sure they always do something bad at least. I think they usually do something good too. I would recommend reading them on a floor you aren't planning on going back to right as you are about to leave because a lot of them will summon a bunch of monsters in addition to giving you a permanent +1 lore for example.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

They don't *always* do something bad, and it seems to depend on the type of tome.

*All* of Grevious' tomes (with the bull) I've used have spawned monsters (sometimes really beefy ones, too), I forget what they gave me.

Lady Sophie's tomes (with the owl) seem to go about 50/50 spawning monsters, but seem to always give a Life Potion effect.

I forget if I've found and used any other totems.