The Grand Library

The Grand Library is located in the upper-class district of Toreon, near the city's old royal palace. It is one of the most important surviving institutions of the Age of Wonders and, by the time of Under the Bus, the greatest known repository of collected knowledge in the world.

During the Age of Wonders, the Library was second only to the great library of Aegea. When Aegea was destroyed, its library was lost with it, leaving the Grand Library in Toreon as the undisputed center for collected knowledge.

The Institution

The Grand Library is not simply a single building filled with books. The institution occupies a large complex spanning several city blocks, with surrounding buildings forming part of the greater institution.

The Library considers itself an institution of learning, and its layout resembles that of a university. Scholars, students, and other intellectuals regularly occupy the complex. The courtyards and surrounding grounds are places of study and discussion, with people reading, walking between buildings, or gathering in groups to debate and exchange ideas.

The central Library itself serves as the repository for the institution's collections, while the surrounding buildings provide additional space for its broader academic functions.

The Library maintains controlled access to its research facilities. Anyone wishing to study there must register and receive a pass. Registration costs 5 gp per month. Researchers can also rent private rooms for 5 sp per day; otherwise, research must be conducted in the public areas of the Library.

Knowledge is not inexpensive.

Research

The Grand Library's collections make it possible to conduct research across a tremendous span of history. Particularly difficult research may require comparing multiple sources, cross-referencing unfamiliar terminology against writings from the same period, and then comparing those findings against translated copies or related works.

This makes the Library particularly valuable for researching ancient civilizations and writings whose original languages or meanings have been lost or obscured.

Scholars working at the Library can sometimes be recruited to assist with particularly difficult research. The Library therefore provides access not only to its accumulated knowledge, but also to a community of scholars capable of interpreting it.

The Party's Research

The party came to Toreon specifically because they needed the resources of the Grand Library.

After killing Deskin in a village south of the The Gap of Otheron, they discovered a strange disk covered in symbols they did not recognize. When they brought it to the Tower of Plinth, the Chosen recognized the writing as belonging to the same language used by Pythia the Mad Prophet. They were unable to decipher it there.

The party therefore traveled to Toreon and brought the disk to the Grand Library, hoping to determine whether its contents were connected to the plague that was turning people into werewolves.

The research proved substantially more difficult than initially expected. The symbols and words on the disk had to be compared against surviving writings from the relevant period and then cross-referenced with translated material and similar works. The work ultimately required months of research.

The party eventually recruited five scholars from among those working at the Library. Because they were concerned that the information on the disk might itself be dangerous, they made copies of the disk and divided the material among the scholars rather than giving any one scholar unrestricted access to the entire document.

The research eventually revealed information about the plague, including its similarity to Cackle Fever, its greater virulence, and an invocation capable of infecting a weakened victim with lycanthropy. The disk also contained information about how the plague had been created, although it did not explain how to defeat it.

During their research, the party learned of an older outbreak of a similar plague associated with the founding of Aegea. This led them to investigate the lost records of that outbreak and ultimately search for information concerning a book called The Quest for the Cure.

The Grand Library did not possess the only known copy of that work. According to the librarians, the surviving copy had been kept in the library of Aegea, which had been destroyed along with the city.

Significance

The Grand Library is one of the greatest surviving links to the knowledge of the Age of Wonders. Its importance increased enormously after the destruction of Aegea, when the loss of Aegea's library left Toreon's collection as the world's foremost surviving repository of accumulated knowledge.

For scholars, historians, and researchers, the Library represents one of the few places where knowledge from civilizations and eras separated by thousands of years can still be brought together and studied.