"The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library." ~ Albert Einstein

An hour or so spent perusing relevant titles taught me a few things. First, that the Free City of Relkhold and Gearringgate returned no results at all, in terms of a keyword search for titles. Second, that gnomish architecture, ancient and otherwise, was apparently a subject of study almost exclusively for gnomes, judging from the languages used in relevant titles. I supposed larger sapients simply weren't able to access gnomish cities very well, so what little information they possessed on the topic likely derived from translated works.

There were a few likely works of gnomish literature covering ancient buildings, but I wasn't sure if their use of the term "ancient" indicated any structures as old as the cities in question, and I likely wouldn't know until I could actually read them. The few works that included date ranges in the titles didn't go back that far, but that wasn't exactly conclusive. I wondered if the gnomish city didn't predate at least a couple of broad patterns of civilizational collapse. That sent me scanning for a few other titles that might give me a broader overview of civilizations on the continent or globally. That generated the opposing issue, wherein the list of titles promising that kind of information went on for quite a while and got longer as I tried different search terms.

Giving up for the time being, and resolving to ask Hakdrilda for reading suggestions, I turned to searching for titles about dracolisks, and specifically lesser deep dracolisks. "Dracolisks" returned more results than I was really expecting, though I didn't find any works where lesser deep dracolisks were named in the title. The sense that I was getting though was that most of the works were more literary and less scientific; a few hundred years back, apparently, dracolisks had been the subject of a literary fad among court poets in a short-lived kobold kingdom, and some of the titles were quite lurid. More scholarly works tended to have more boring titles, half of which suggested that the actual existence of dracolisks was a subject of debate. I was sure that Mayphesselth had more information on dracolisks than most of these works, but I also had the sense that she didn't want to speak with me about them. There were at least a few titles that looked like they might be helpful.

In the end, I gave up and compiled a list of works to investigate once the institutional grade reader arrived. I figured two titles per topic would be a good starting point. I started with fungalmancy, since I'd at least begun reading up on that.

Trollish Fungalmancy, Fungalmancy in the UnderDark Those were straight off my short list of titles I'd already searched up.

For crystallographic magic and runic magic, I'd just gone with the most basic sounding titles I could find that sounded like they might be useful.

An Introduction to Crystal Magic, and Crystal Casting: Magic Arrays

Runic Magic: Skavruli's Guide, and Runic Magic: A Comparative Study

Skavruli, as I recalled, was the dwarven god of wisdom, and the comparative guide sounded like it might help with cross-cultural similarities in runic systems. Or that was the hope, at any rate.

As for today's new topics, I decided on works that sounded at least a bit scholarly.

Gnomish Architecture Across the Ages and Ancient Cities of the Gnomes

Lost Cities and Civilizations: A Survey and Histories of Relnis: Legends, Myths, and Divinations

Survivors' Accounts of Dracolisks in the UnderDark and Dragons and Dracolisks: Tales of the Great War

The ones about dracolisks sounded like they were more in the way of collected folklore and legend than formal studies, but that still was preferable to The Dracolisk and the Lusty Kobold...

Once I had my list, I decided I might as well transcribe a couple of short works of poetry that I'd read at various points – albeit wildly different ones. I gave them Rudyard Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads, and Louise Glück's The Wild Iris. The first reminded me of my youth, and the second a hazy glimmer of my later life. I had no idea what readers in this world would make of those choices; I suspected it was becoming something of a Rorschach test for me, and it was probably endlessly confusing to anyone else looking over my selections.

Tiring of my own introspection, I decided it was time to get back to working on my other projects. Really, I wanted to go back to the void dwarf settlement and explore the buildings there, but I wasn't entirely sure how that would go with the void creatures there. I assumed that I could still claim the structures whether they objected or not, but I wanted to consider the situation a bit more first.

Instead, I sent my focus back to the gnomish city in search of a library. Of course, it is easy to say one is looking for a library, but when most of the structures have been stripped of all portable goods and then thousands of years are allowed to pass, how does one recognize such a thing? And when one cannot even be certain that the civilization in question even had such publicly accessible records, then what?

I made a few basic assumptions and worked from there. First, I took it as a given that libraries existed. They had a writing system, after all, even if most of what I'd found was carved in stone or stamped in metal. They also had an organized city with a significant population, which I took to indicate they must have had formal record keeping capabilities. Those records had to be held somewhere – though I considered it likely they'd been largely on perishable media. If pressed, I'd guess they would have used a form of paper made from fungal fibers, since those would have been readily available. In any event, some of those records would have been in private archives – in government and mercantile offices, but less purely functional records could be in more accessible locations. I suspected that literacy hadn't been particularly rare, since purely text signage wouldn't have been very helpful otherwise.

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Really, I was hoping for some large central archive or public library, in which case it shouldn't be too far off the main square. There might not be a building of that sort, in which case, I'd probably be looking for smaller, personal collections – which would likely be in the hands of the richer and better educated. That was making more assumptions about their society than I was comfortable with, but nothing too outrageous. I recognized that whatever form a library might take in the Free City of Relkhold, it wasn't likely to provide me with any actual books. Between the orderly abandonment of the city and the presumed use of a perishable recording media, odds were not in my favor. I'd been inordinately lucky to find books in the Aubesan manor house and that was two orders of magnitude younger than this place.

I had no doubt that in this new world there were still quite a few living individuals who could provide firsthand testimonies of the Aubesan empire; 300 years was a long time, but well within the lifespan of numerous races. The gnomish civilization dated back some 50,000 years, though, and even for nominally immortal races that was a tremendously long time to avoid death in some unnatural fashion. On the other hand, of course, after the first few thousand years you were probably pretty hard to kill, so who knows?

At any rate, I began my search for public structures more or less where I'd left off, near the central plaza. Taking some chances, I ignored most of the less imposing buildings, most of which I assumed to be offices and shops from similarities to structures I'd already examined. In the first block back from the main plaza, there were still several large structures that clearly had some special function. Behind the cathedral were several other buildings I interpreted as likely smaller churches or other religious structures, based on the ornate iconography carved into their facades. While tempting to explore, I was on something of a mission, so I continued following the parallel streets behind and around the plaza.

The first large, specialized structure that I felt needed exploring was located behind the shopping arcade lining one side of the plaza. It had an imposing, if not terribly tall, staircase leading to a columned portico with several broad entryways. It seemed designed to host a significant number of people, but its exact function wasn't really clear until I'd absorbed the stairs, portico, and the lobby area and moved into the main space – which was clearly intended to provide seating in an amphitheater style carved out of the rock and facing a formal stage area, curving to parallel the hemicircular rows of seats. I wasn't sure if it was more of a theater or an opera house, but it seemed likely intended for public performances of some dramatic art. Little remained to shed light on its functionality, though there were some iconographic elements carved into the stone of the walls that suggested classic masks of comedy and tragedy, albeit bearded and wearing classic soft gnomish caps. It was quite interesting, and I could imagine using it as a model for a room in my third floor, but it wasn't the library I was looking for, so I moved on fairly directly.

Back behind the main governmental building, I found another substantial public structure. This one was even larger and more imposing, in a nearly brutalist aesthetic of gray stone, with small windows, and imposing, unmarked steel doors. On the main floor, it contained a polished marble lobby in black and white tiling. Behind the lobby area was a region that I assumed to be offices of some sort, flanking a couple of larger audience chambers. It wasn't until I peeked below the main floor and noticed the empty cells with their heavy iron bars that I'd formally assessed the building as a courthouse, presumably for the highest, if not the only, court in the land.

There weren't that many cells, only three or four, so that led me to a few possible interpretations. First, that these were simple temporary holding cells and longer-term inmates were held elsewhere. Second, the crime rate was quite low. Or third, other forms of punishment and rehabilitation were favored above incarceration. For all I knew, it could be some combination of all three. Still, a courthouse and cells had obvious dungeon potential, even if it was a bit on the nose.

Again, the building was stripped of pretty much any movable objects, and if anything organic had been left behind, it was long since decayed into dust.

I kept up the search, though it was coming up on mid-day, and I was going to need to go back to working with Hakdrilda soon enough. I decided I'd try one more substantial looking building, this time back on the other side of the cathedral and its subsidiary chapels.

The building in question looked promising with an impressive facade interrupted by flanking rows of columns marking out a courtyard with the remains of a fountain before what appeared to be the main entrance. Above the doorway a deeply incised inscription issued the claim that "Knowledge Leads to Insight; Insight to Innovation; and Innovation to Glory", which I supposed said something about their culture. From that, I assumed it was apt to be a school of some sort, though a library was another good option, and it was entirely possible that it served both functions. I was inexplicably pleased that the third phase in the sequence wasn't "profit".

In form, it was broadly rectangular, aside from the colonnade, and it seemed to have three stories, at least above the ground level here. Below ground levels were a possibility, but obviously not visible from the exterior. Inscriptions crawled along the roof line, but as nearly as I could tell, they were simply names. They could be authors, of course, but for all I knew they could be headmasters of the school, or noted philosophers, or simply patrons who donated to the construction of the building.

There wasn't much to be gained from waiting, and I at least wanted to extend my domain to the entrance of the building before returning to our experimental procedures. Pushing my domain through the colonnade and its long defunct fountain, I paused to examine the columns briefly. They had a classic fluted look and tapered toward the top in an architectural entasis I recalled from long ago art history classes, presumably for purposes of perspective. The columns had a standard ionic look, though the capitals were unlike anything I'd seen, carved in a nearly thorny-looking radial form from a dark, fine-grained basalt that provided deliberate contrast to the white marble columns.

The fountain, as the spouts and internal plumbing confirmed, centered on a roughly 2-meter statue of a sphinx holding a book in one paw, with wings raised behind her. To each side, flanking her and beneath her wings, were smaller statues of lamia, each bearing an amphora that served as spouts for the fountain. They stood on a small, rocky outcropping surrounded by a low pool – now empty, of course. I wasn't sure if it was some representation of a myth, or statues of actual historical figures, frankly, but it seemed oddly out of place in a gnomish city. Still, without any obvious referents, I could only note it as interesting and unexpected, though sphinxes' traditional links to knowledge was a hopeful sign.

As my domain reached the main entrance, I took a moment to inspect the heavy cast bronze doors which appeared to have stretched the hinges sufficiently over the years to rest against the granite flagstone and against each other. Otherwise, they were heavily patinated, but undamaged. Each door contained a 6-panel scene, apparently telling the story of some gnomish hero or legend involving the defeat of some elven oppressor and the theft of some book of knowledge. I couldn't make any solid assumptions, but my guess was some sort of trickster hero, which I suppose made sense for gnomes.

I extended my domain into the main lobby area, again finding a black and white checkerboard floor (though the white stone was a bit more heavily worn than the black) in a largely empty space under a vaulted ceiling with a large brass chandelier – though one fitted out for mana lights, rather than actual candles. Halls stretched off to both sides, and the main doors faced a central staircase that spiraled tightly to a second-floor landing that still opened onto this lobby.

This seemed a good stopping point, and sure enough, I'd only just returned my focus to my own library when I heard Hakdrilda calling for my attention.

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