The royal archives
Welcome to Divine Tyranny! In a world where all-powerful gods live among mortals and play with their life for their own entertainment, Archivist Cécile is doing her best to go unnoticed. Unfortunately, the warring water and forging gods are now interested in the archives... Come read about Cécile and the world in which she lives!
Introduction to the story | Cécile | The Archivists | Novel upcoming
Introduction to the story | Cécile | The Archivists | Novel upcoming
Table of Contents
The royal archives are the branch of the archives that is located in the capital. Their building was one of the first ones erected when the city was originally founded, right alongside the first temple to our Lord Lydien, ruler over all waters, and the royal palace.
They owe their name to the fact that they are under the direct patronage of the king, who often sends his people there or calls from its archivists to give him advice. Because of this royal link and their antiquity, the royal archives contain a lot of very important and confidential information about the dealings of the gods with the royal family, the government, and the country. Therefore, they need to be kept very secure, and so they are guarded by a special branch of the royal army.
The building
The building making the main section of the archives is incredibly old, having been built a little more than a millennium ago but containing sections far older than that. Its façade and interiors are made of many different colourful marbles and painted stones showing off scenes magnifying all the gods who participated in its creation. While the rooms are vast, the ceilings are not very cavernous. Indeed, both they and the floors are covered with the magical diagrams that allow the archives to work, and those need to be updated regularly by using paint brushes attached to a few meters-long stick.
The archives are divided into several sections:
public-facing rooms to collect people's requests,
the archivists' private offices,
meeting and dining rooms,
the archives themselves.
The royal archives by mutantmommy on Pixabay
The magic
Thanks to the gods, the actual archives are not as enormous as they should be to contain all the information that they do. While the idea of the gods being so generous as to care about architecture might seem preposterous, they all actually like receiving the correct form of worship and people not angering them. Thus, they have taught us how to control many complex forms of magic, and have actually contributed their own to power them.
Among the many magics in effect, the main ones:
take care of protecting the building and its content,
extend the interior of the archives room to what seems to be near infinite,
work the sorting and catalogue system,
help archivists recover the desired documents.
All major patron gods of the kingdom have contributed to the creation and improvement of the archives, but the main contributors have been our Lord the water god, the forging god, and, of course, the architecture god.
Opinion from the archives
Us, archivists working at the royal archives, almost all have links to the premier noble families of the country. We are naturally—and not without just cause—considered to be the best in the country, the most knowledgeable, intelligent, and magically skilled. In addition to the royal court, noble families, and high priests, we are also consulted by many other archivists in the country wishing to benefit from our particular wisdom.
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Interesting article. I like that you've addressed the issue of trying to keep archives on this kind of scale organized. Though I'm curious - no organizational system works perfectly - is the magical system perfect anyway, or do things slip through the cracks from time to time?
Thanks :D This is a very good point! Here the magic works similarly to our best IT system, whereas the weak point is the archivists themselves. All of them have their own bias, and they can also sometimes introduce some deliberately wrong information for their own ends or when bribed :p