White Library

The White Library is a library in the capital of the Empire, Marble City.¹

The Order of Nus'ar

The Order of Nus’ar was hunted by the Empire long ago as harmful and heretical. Its scholars held that Arcaneus, the "dragon of time", was the only true god. Its members were killed or forced to flee because of their spreading ideas.²

When all the fugitives had at last been found, it was judged impractical to kill scholars so eager to record and classify historical moments, and an agreement was offered them instead. They would be allowed to live on condition that they engaged only in scholarly duties, spoke to no outsiders, and spent the rest of their lives without leaving the White Library.²

The Nus'ar scholars are now thought harmless. They have a little more freedom and may recruit young historians, but they still wear symbolic chains and may not leave the capital. They are counted the greatest historians of Teneris.²

In Raphael Efsanesi

In the campaign Raphael Efsanesi ("The Legend of Raphael"), the thief Raphael was set to steal the spectacles of a gnome in the White Library as one of three tests for the knight Derek Sunshield.³

The gnome librarian is never named. Picolo, who said he did not know him personally, passed on the story that the gnome had read every book in the library and knew them by heart, and that he had been there since the city was founded, whether because he was very old or because the post passed from father to son. An elf wizard reading among the chained shelves told Raphael that the head librarian reads all day and holds what the books contain with the help of magic, that his room is on the top floor, and that an appointment with him is very hard to obtain. Picolo warned that the library kept many secrets, and that a thief caught there risked execution.^{4 5 6 7}

Inside the library

Spying from a rooftop one night, Raphael saw readers bent over their books in the lit windows. The doors of the rooms where they worked were barred with crossed chains, and the windows of those rooms, unlike the others on the upper floor, were barred with iron. Raphael could not tell what this meant.^{8 9 10}

By day the library was open to visitors, with attendants and archivists to help them. A human attendant showed Raphael the shelves of elven history, reaching to the ceiling and holding books in the human tongue and in Elvish, and explained that the great river on the elven border had been made by the elves with magic after the catastrophes and the migration. Another reader, an elf of plain dress who was no wizard, had come from outside the city to research his family tree.^{11 12 13 14}

On the upper floor four rooms side by side had heavy padlocked doors like cells. When Raphael knocked one awake, the man inside asked whether it was time to eat; asked if he was a prisoner, he only said that he was new. At night the same four doors stood wide open, and a robed man stepped out, nodded to the guard and walked on, while the others read or wrote.^{15 16 17 18}

The gnome's spectacles

Raphael found the gnome at night in a larger room, writing with his back to the door. The gnome did not turn when the door creaked; he wore earplugs. Raphael hid in the small washroom beside the room and waited about four hours, until the gnome went to sleep and laid his earplugs and spectacles on the table. Raphael took the spectacles, waited under the bed until morning and left, and the gnome was unharmed.^{19 20 21 22 23}