After handing you the maps, Sekiri takes a handful of dried frog pills and gulps them down. "Right" he says, twitching wildly "onto the major libraries and other sources of spells."
Handing you a list, he adds "We went through where you can find a copy of the following in each institution, but here's a list of the spells the book actually contains for your reference."
Begynners' Magick
Contains:
- Amazing Silicate Blorpler
- Boolywog's Forbidden Pleasures
- Collatrap's Instant Pickling Stick
- Eringyas' Surprising Bouquet
- Finneblaugh's Thaumic Float
- Friddlefrod's Hydratic Extrusion
- Grisald's Chilly Touch
- Independent Recurring Vocaliser
- Malich's Penetrating Ocular Lance
- Memories of a Vicious Chicken
- Rugged Victor's Rodentia Vivisection
- Scolorid's Scintillating Scribbling
- Sorklin's Field of Protection
- Torqvald's Many Colours
- Worstler's Elementary Mineralogical Glance
"Ah, the famous, or infamous, Library of the Unseen University, usually known simply as the Library. Note the capital L."
"The Library contains the largest collection of spells and spell books known on the Disc, and as a result, the Library is a twisted, L-space distorted nightmare of a maze, and that is putting a bright face on it. The presence of so many powerful and ancient tomes of magic in what is, well was, a small space has permanently changed the reality of the place. The Library is now technically infinite in size, and very easy to become lost in, and in fact, many students who go in never come out. Because of the instability of the Library, you cannot cast spells whilst inside."
"Navigating the Library is not necessarily easy to explain to someone who has not experienced it, but the key thing to keep in mind is that once you enter, the only directions that exist are those relative to you. Once you step out of sight of the exit, all notions of north, east, south and west are meaningless and you can only move 'forward', turn and walk back the way you came or 'backwards', or turn and walk forward once to the 'left' or do the same but to the 'right'."
Sekiri continues, his eyes intent "For instance, if you look at this theoretical top-down map of the Library, and wanted to direct someone to the location marked with the key '4.', you could not simply direct someone to enter the Library by moving north, move three 'rooms' west, and three rooms 'north'. Those directions simply do not exist for the person in the Library. Instead, one possible path would be to instruct them to enter the Library, move 'left', move 'forward' twice, 'right' once, and 'forward' again twice. An alternative, and I suppose needlessly more complicated, route to get you to the same location would be to enter the Library, move left, right, left, right again to the room with a table, left again, and right. Hopefully that will give you a better idea on how to navigate in there yourself."
"In addition, the hazards of L-space threaten unwary visitors to the Library. If, whilst you are navigating through the Library, you happen to notice a strange distortion in space and time in a certain direction, it would be wise of you not to enter it. If you do so, you will find yourself in L-space. These distortions may directly block the path through the shelves, and if this is the case while you are there, either try another route, or wait for a while, as the distortions for the most part are not fixed and move about. The further back you go into the Library, the more you will find these distortions."
"If you do however find yourself in L-space, you must find a 'gap' through which you can pass out of L-space, into one of the magical libraries around the Disc."
"While the Library contains a great many spell books, the majority of these are far too dangerous for any except the Librarian to approach. If you weren't aware, the Librarian was once a normal wizard like yourself, however a magical accident turned him into a 300 lb orangutan. So, even if you survive those encounters with the books, you may not survive the Librarian if he finds out you've been disturbing his books. Or if call him the 'M' word."
"Nevertheless, there are a small number of spell books that are, well, reasonably safe for you to use. The location of those books has been marked on the map here, and this key lists the spells you can find in each book."
KEY:
"Right, moving on." Sekiri hands you the papers. "The library of the IIL is at once both far simpler, and technically more difficult, than the Library."
"Unlike the Library, the normal N,E,S,W directions still exist. However, the library itself will actively try to confuse your sense of direction, so that when you think you are moving say, west, you may actually be moving north or even east."
"There is therefore, only two methods to navigate this library to get to the spell books you want. One, you can move randomly and hope that you get there eventually, which is somewhat feasible given the small size of this library, or, if you gain sufficient skill in the other.direction skill, the library will be unable to confuse you. A B.Onuster number or 'bonus' a little higher than 200 should be sufficient to accomplish this. Here are the spells that are in each of the books."
"Next, we have the library attached to the Bes Pelargic L-space bubble. As you can see from this map, it's quite respectable" Sekiri says, unrolling a final map. "However, there are only four spell books of particular interest to us, and you can see two of them marked in the top part of the map, and another two in the bottom part of the map. The reason I have mentioned them separately like that is that these spell books seem to be linked in pairs. You will find the two books at the top swapping locations with each other, as will the bottom two."
"Now, you should not need any special skills to get around this library, other than being able to use a map. If you find yourself needing any, please let me know" You nod. "The location you can see marked as 'Start' is, I believe, the location the students first found themselves in after leaving L-space. This area of the library is absolutely full of other gaps to L-space as well."
"Those exits on this theoretical map that are labelled only with numbers indicate rooms that are actually next to each other, despite the seeming distance when we try to translate them to normal space on this map. Those exits that are marked with an arrow, both with and without numbers, are locations where time and space distort and suck you to another section of the library. They are of course one way trips." Sekiri smiles and adds "I said it didn't need any special skills, not that it was completely straight-forward. You may also need to duck a few times, they have had a recent infestation of .303 inch bookworms in the library."
"I've marked the spell books that are in the top and bottom halves of the map underneath it."
"Finally, those artificer chaps at the Academy have recently put together a book of their own spells over in Sto Lat. I can't quite find my map right now, but if you head down aisle 5 a few times and then aisle 2, you should get there."
Thee Secrets of Artifyce and Crafte
Contains:
- Crondor's Marvellous Sequestration
- Doctor Worblehat's Flaming Primate Premonition
- Ellamandyr's Hyaline Amulet
- Fiddelmaker's Auriferous Embrace
- Rubayak's Power Dispenser
Your head spinning, you thank Sekiri for the maps, and head off to rest and recover.
