Connects to: 29.07, 29.07.03 and 29.14.40.
All know that the court of the Bloodied King (29.07) has lived in the Kingswood for a thousand-thousand years.
After such a long stay, the elves have hundreds of thousands of books, scrolls, tapestries and tablets. These they store in the Pit, a sinkhole that opens beneath the king’s throne. The Pit plunges an immeasurable distance into the earth.
Most of the shelves of the Library are bolted to the sides of the Pit. A few thousand documents - those most often referenced - are stored in suspended shelves that can be winched up when needed. But those that line the Pit must be reached by climbing the web of ladders, ropes and thinly-cut stairs.
The grip of the librarians is legendary - even in death, it is impossible to wrestle something from their grasp without cutting off their fingers. The Chief Librarian is an unseelie elf without legs, but he climbs as well as any of the others when he is not winched about in a silver box.
Recently, a librarian who fell into the Pit decades ago crawled out. He died soon after and was laid to rest in the crypts, with something still clutched in his fist.
It is said that the contract between the Prince of Men (29.07.03) and the elf king was dropped into the Pit.
Subhex:
- 28.07.01 (The Rojarshans): a tribe of humans known as the Rojarshans live deep in the library.
Connection:
Hooks:
- Who was the climber and what is in his fist?
- Why does the Chief Librarian serve the court?
- What is at the bottom of the Pit?
The Rojarshans
Hex 28.07.01
Connects to: to be added.
There was once a handsome lad named Roger who was taken into the Kingswood by an elfish lordling. This elf was feeling somewhat bored one day so he sent Roger, along with several of his other playthings, down into the Library without a Floor to fetch his dear grandmother’s mushroom cookbook and to tidy things up a bit while they were there.
Roger himself died long ago but his sadly rather inbred descendants, a tribe now known as the Rojarshans, live deep down in the dark stacks forgotten by even the librarians. There they have constructed crude huts made out of discarded shelves and live on the bloated white worms that gnaw on the leather covers of books, while the sunlit world recedes ever farther into myth and legend.
One day the Rojarshans will uncover the holy writ itself, the book spoken about only in whispers, The Delights of Edible Fungus and ascend up into paradise as was promised. But until that blessed day the Rojarshans continue to “tidy up” the library and now large swaths of it have had its books organized according to an impenetrable system that only the Rojarshans understand.
Hooks:
- How have the negative effects of inbreeding (due to a very small founder population) manifested themselves among the Rojarshans?
- What are the myths that the Rojarshans tell each other about the outside world?
- How do they react to strangers that come among their selves?
- What strange and interesting books that even the elves have forgotten have the Rojarshans found and read? What effect has living among so many strange books had on them?
- Will they ever find The Delights of Edible Fungus?
