7 Libraries

1. The Mennemah, Library of the High Lords of Terrasquestone

The Mennemah is attached to the Hall of Gifts and is the largest free-access library in Cridhedun. By free access, almost anyone can enter the library to read and study its books. They are not allowed to be removed from the library except under very specific conditions. What makes the Mennemah different from most libraries is that it has an associated guild attached to it, the Brotherhood of the Quill, which exists to maintain the library, keep the books in good repair, and produce replicas of the books as requested. They are scribes, bookmakers, and are skilled in creating parchment, vellum, and all the other sundry goods of the bookmaking profession. The guild has strong ties to the Guild of Adventurers-Upon-Return, and the Civic Wizard's Guild, and the Wizard's Cache Banking consortium.

The main library was formerly a grand hall with a mezzanine that has been converted to book shelving, with a modest central reading area. There are two wings that extend from the main hall and contain most of the books and scrolls in the Mennemah collection, some of which are thousands of years old and under magical preservation. The restricted sections are located in former catacombs under the main hall and can only be accessed with a member of the Librarian Guild, and these contain the magical lore, occult lore, restricted histories, and other more difficult books. The sort not intended for the public.

If there is a book someone needs, there is very likely a copy here. The Restricted Vaults are impressive as well. That is also the drawback, there is so much material finding things can take a long time. There is no Dewey Decimal System, and good luck going through the stacks. In Lord of the Rings, Gandalf leaves the Shire after giving the ring to Frodo and goes to the archives at Gondor and is gone for seventeen years. This is the same. Is there a copy of the Hexakosioihexekontahexacron there? Yes, there are three. Two are damaged replicas with missing sections, and one is somewhere that no one remembers, it going to take some time.

2. The Phentivan Collection

A common thread is that there are a lot of book collections and libraries in Terrasquestone. The Phentivan Collection is the property of the Guild of Adventurers-Upon-Return. It is smaller than the Mennemah, by a good margin, but is also is not intended to be a collection of all books that can be found. The Phentivan is intended to be the great library of adventurers and contains histories, map works, and magical tomes related to the Great Task, plumbing and mastering the dungeons of the world.

Access to the Phentivan is highly restricted and only members of the Adventurers-Upon-Return guild, in good standing, and of above initiate rank, are allowed access. To be allowed unfettered access without an accompanying docent requires a leadership or similar high rank in the guild. The collection itself is held in the guild's fortress, the Grand Hall of Levram or just the Levram, within the middle section of Terrasquestone.

The library of the Levram is a 'tactical library' and is treated as part of the guild's arsenal. 

3. The Burlingame

The Burlingame is a massive library complex that is co-operated by several of the academies and finishing schools in Terrasquestone. At one point each of the centers of learning maintained their own private libraries, and some still do, but they found the overlap of their collections burdensome. There was also the issue of simply maintaining that much space devoted to books and the staff to manage and care for them. It started with two schools merging their collections at Burlingame Hall, a sort of middle ground that had been abandoned when the Burlingame Academy folded after allegations of necromancy. By the end of a decade, 70% of the academies and magic schools had shifted their collections to the Burlingame, and made it a restricted resource. Only students and faculty of the various schools can enter the hall and handle its books.

The Burlingame is the school's library, and its collection is deemed safe. There are no damned, evil, or otherwise dangerous works present. Young wizards often have internships here to learn how to make their own books, vellum, ink, and how to properly maintain their grimoires and tomes. 

4. The Parmassecombe

(From 30 Locations within Terrasquestone)

The Parmassecombe is an unusual place deep in the bowels of the castle, easily dating back to the first stone walls being laid and the first cellars being dug. What makes this location of note is that it is the ass end of the extensive libraries and archives of Terrasquestone. The castle has a number of libraries, and it is haute couture for the Lords, and the nobility to keep their own libraries, the various adventuring guilds have amassed their own book collections as well. The various magic academies are famous, or infamous for their respective libraries. Terrasquestone is literate, and it loves it books, scrolls, and manuscripts, and have gone so far as to have created the printing press, more on that elsewhere.

The Parmassecombe is a mausoleum for old works of literature, great and vast iron-bound tomes, scrolls as large as a halfling and literal great heaps of mouldering grimoires litter the chamber. There are tables, thick and heavy as roofing trusses, and meandering paths worn through the detritus of centuries of discarded books. The thing about the Parmassecombe is that it can reward those with the patience and focus to look and keep searching.

5. The Kavan Collection

The Kavan Collection is an apocryphal library located in Doomguard, the black fortress of Tir an Scathanna, and was formerly the property of the liche Kavanastre Blackmantle. While not the largest library in the land, it is likely the oldest, and has the largest percentage of evil, damned, and cursed tomes of work. On top of this black library, the Kavan Collection has a 'vault of inequities' museum that has heaps of debris piled with priceless legacies like pieces of the Panoply of Atrocity, or the vitrified head of Zul'dox, the greatest and most evil goblin ever.

Access to the Kavan Collection is almost impossible, as it is held in the bowels of Doomguard, the greatest and most ancient fortress in the Land of Shadows. A silent order of deathless librarians protects it and several sections of the library are held in magical protections that are inimical to life, such as one section having no breathable air in it. Hardly an issue to a liche, not being able to breathe,

6. The Laurinor Palustar

The Laurinor Palustar is probably the most ancient library in existence and is cryptic, weird, and unsettling. The beings who built the library were not humanoid, so the dimensions are wrong for vertical organisms like humans and demihumans. The books are large and heavy, and the writing is either incredibly fine as if scripted with the aid of magic, or coarse as a child's handiwork. There are no smatterings of the modern language, and the elves and naturalists have found the site strange and unusual, but admit that since being opened, the odd resonance of the site is decreasing, dissipating.

Some of the texts, once translated at great difficulty, describe Cridhedun before the appearance of the Sun, and that there were guiding stars, periods of darkness, and the appearance of supramagical beings who lived among their people as living gods, and that these gods crafted the Sun and hanged it in the sky.

7. The Imperial Library of Palisander

The Imperial City of Palisander, the great fortress of the people who grew so powerful they turned dungeons into factories and dungeon cores into power sources. They were mighty folk, and when their regime ended, it ended spectacularly. The ruins of the city can be reached, but it takes a boat ride, and then crossing to the middle of another continent, but it can be reached. After passing through the magical wastelands, then through the remaining magical defenses and partially active defenders and contingency systems, a daring band can reach the Imperial Palace. Inside the palace is the Grand Library of Palisander.

The collection there is staggering in its size, scale, and scope.

Its also completely worthless since all of the books have been turned to vitrified glass and cannot be read, opened, or otherwise used.