Library of Venoria: Places, Cities and Regions: The Great Library
The Great Library
(Free city Scholarium)
(Written by Narratio)
Many cities boast large and impressive libraries. Whether it's in the Golhordian public library system, or the specialized, and closed, libraries of the Guild Halls in Guild City. There are libraries everywhere. But the largest of them all is that located in the Free City.
Here are gathered the remnants of the great libraries of fabled Jynass. Here, in the Scholarium and the Institute of Knowledge are gathered the worlds largest collection of books, scrolls and manuscripts. It's doesn't have copies of every tome ever written, nor does it have some of the more fabled books, but it has the most.
The library is divided into 2 sections. The first and largest is that of the Public Archives. Here can be found works on flora and fauna, life and death, art and romance, mysticism and mayhem. Government rules and regulations are kept here for viewing by all and the doors never, ever close.
The second section is that known as the Restricted Archives. Here can be found original works of documents, many of them ancient and only readable to few people learned in forgotten tongues. It is this section that keeps the great religious texts and mystical works. Here are the true records of military campaigns and the works of doctors and shamans, wizards and wise men, viziers, pontiffs, counselors and generals. In essence all of the things that could be dangerous if made general knowledge.
And then there is the third section. It has many names. Officially it doesn't exist. Unofficially, and known to only a select group, it is known as the Black Archives or the Malefic Collegiate. Here are kept the books only hinted at in myth and legend. The dark tomes and tablets that speak of things mortals were not meant to know. Here resides the only known copy of the 'Necrotelecomnicom' or the Book of Names of the Dead and how to summon their spirits. It is a book with out borders or end. Here is held the 'Woo Tang Wah' or Book of Hands. A long study of this and the precepts will enable a man to kill with a soda straw or cherry stalk. Here is held the last Census of Jynass containing the names of the 17 who, during the fall of that city, walked though the streets in the midst of battle unharmed. Here is held the Book of Style. A tome so forbidden and proclaimed against that nobody has opened its dark covers in over 1,000 years.
And it is here, in the secret depths of the library, where light is brought through pipes containing cunningly arranged mirrors, that the true books of wizardry talk to each other. Those parchments which contain the first spells ever written, the first incantations ever noted, the first rituals and rites ever laid down. Here they reside, in the locked and warded room of the forgotten section of the secret Black Archives in Free City. Few visit this place. Of that few, some do not leave by the way they entered. The librarians do not come here. The Senior Archivists do not admit that it exists. Only the Chancellor and the King carry the seal breakers to allow access to this area, and the King has never had need to use his.
