Post by Azzy on Aug 7, 2016 20:36:31 GMT -5
Arcturus Ashmore
The grand library was absolutely true to it's name- it was a positively gigantic structure. Within the city of Arcadia, only the academy itself could come close to the library in terms of sheer magnitude- and that was the building where the arcane council ruled the entire city from. It boasted numerous large halls and lounges fully furnished for comfortable reading and study, with many of texts containing all of the most commonly sought after information carefully organized and dwelling within easy access for those who walked through the main entrance.
Beyond the periodically renovated main halls and newest additions to the building, however, the library descended into a veritable labyrinth of winding passages, rooms and endless stacks and shelves of books and papers. Within these walls, entire civilizations worth of information had been stockpiled in various states of disorganization. No matter how many hours the library staff worked and no matter how many new workers they brought in, there was simply too much to properly organize. Nor did anyone seem to agree upon a single method by which the library should be sorted. Some argued for things to be sorted by year, others by culture or civilization while still others insisted on sorting by topic. A large faction simply insisted on alphabetizing everything, yet then the problem of which alphabet to use divided that group further. All in all, too much to sort and no single way to sort it meant that, beyond the most commonly traversed parts of the library, everything else quickly devolved into a disorganized jumble. It meant that sometimes things fell through the cracks and hidden gems could be found by those who put serious time and effort into uncovering them.
Arcturus Ashmore was one such individual willing to invest that time and effort.
Come to think of it, the library went well beyond the superficial structure and almost certainly descended into the undercity. That made this a sort of dungeon in some respects. Having played his fair share of Dungeons and Dragons back home, Arc thoroughly enjoyed thinking of himself as an adventurer delving into the world's most interesting and monster-free dungeon.
Thinking of hobbies back in the old world brought a small smile to Arc's lips. Hearkening back to when he was still in a place where wifi was a thing made him think of some of his ways of procrastinating away hours upon hours when there were more important things to be done. In particular, any sort of wiki based on one of his many nerdy interests. Often, he would go in looking for something specific, say: 'how many civilians were on the death star when Luke blew it up?' or 'Baratheon family tree'. An hour later he would have thirty different tabs open and find himself reading about something entirely unrelated, with the original topic being completely forgotten. Now, he got that way with books down here in the library's stuffy underbelly. He would come down here with perhaps a somewhat vague sense of what he was looking for, lose track of time and realize hours later that he was exceptionally hungry and carrying a dozen or more tomes with him. He liked to assure himself that it wasn't just wasting time and that this was some sort of convoluted divination shit guiding him towards some ultimate final destiny or whatever.
With that thought in mind, he randomly reached out a hand and pulled yet another dusty tome from where it was haphazardly crammed onto a shelf sagging beneath a mountain of ancient paper.
The grand library was absolutely true to it's name- it was a positively gigantic structure. Within the city of Arcadia, only the academy itself could come close to the library in terms of sheer magnitude- and that was the building where the arcane council ruled the entire city from. It boasted numerous large halls and lounges fully furnished for comfortable reading and study, with many of texts containing all of the most commonly sought after information carefully organized and dwelling within easy access for those who walked through the main entrance.
Beyond the periodically renovated main halls and newest additions to the building, however, the library descended into a veritable labyrinth of winding passages, rooms and endless stacks and shelves of books and papers. Within these walls, entire civilizations worth of information had been stockpiled in various states of disorganization. No matter how many hours the library staff worked and no matter how many new workers they brought in, there was simply too much to properly organize. Nor did anyone seem to agree upon a single method by which the library should be sorted. Some argued for things to be sorted by year, others by culture or civilization while still others insisted on sorting by topic. A large faction simply insisted on alphabetizing everything, yet then the problem of which alphabet to use divided that group further. All in all, too much to sort and no single way to sort it meant that, beyond the most commonly traversed parts of the library, everything else quickly devolved into a disorganized jumble. It meant that sometimes things fell through the cracks and hidden gems could be found by those who put serious time and effort into uncovering them.
Arcturus Ashmore was one such individual willing to invest that time and effort.
Come to think of it, the library went well beyond the superficial structure and almost certainly descended into the undercity. That made this a sort of dungeon in some respects. Having played his fair share of Dungeons and Dragons back home, Arc thoroughly enjoyed thinking of himself as an adventurer delving into the world's most interesting and monster-free dungeon.
Thinking of hobbies back in the old world brought a small smile to Arc's lips. Hearkening back to when he was still in a place where wifi was a thing made him think of some of his ways of procrastinating away hours upon hours when there were more important things to be done. In particular, any sort of wiki based on one of his many nerdy interests. Often, he would go in looking for something specific, say: 'how many civilians were on the death star when Luke blew it up?' or 'Baratheon family tree'. An hour later he would have thirty different tabs open and find himself reading about something entirely unrelated, with the original topic being completely forgotten. Now, he got that way with books down here in the library's stuffy underbelly. He would come down here with perhaps a somewhat vague sense of what he was looking for, lose track of time and realize hours later that he was exceptionally hungry and carrying a dozen or more tomes with him. He liked to assure himself that it wasn't just wasting time and that this was some sort of convoluted divination shit guiding him towards some ultimate final destiny or whatever.
With that thought in mind, he randomly reached out a hand and pulled yet another dusty tome from where it was haphazardly crammed onto a shelf sagging beneath a mountain of ancient paper.