1230 Earthquake

Earthquakes are never a good thing for a local organization, but the 1230 earthquake is remembered as one of the worst for the Alliance of Wandering Scholars. The Scholars hadn't wandered far at that point in their history and most of their artifacts got shipped back to the first archive rather than kept in small batches around the world. Glass bell jars were the best storage solution of the time-- the glass was a neutral enough material to keep the different magics from colliding and causing havoc, and the shelves and display cards were a nice aesthetic touch. You could walk down an aisle, looking at all the things kept there, and then find the records about those artifacts on a shelf at the end.
The earthquake in 1230 wasn't the worst one the area had ever experienced. Normal buildings stayed upright, for the most part, and in most places shattered pottery was the end of it. But when the shaking started, one glass bell jar fell off of a curled Fist of the Underworld, and then a little magic spiraled out and tipped over another glass. The destruction proceeded in waves outward. The fire of volcanoes tore at stone shelves, knocking trapped demons free and exploding out in steam where they hit magics of the sea. Every piece of parchment in the building, including the founding records of the organization, was torn and burned and waterlogged and dissolved, all at the same time. The support beams holding up the ceiling exploded outwards.
At least seventeen archivists died in the immediate aftermath, with over twenty more cursed or killed trying to pick through the rubble. After so many deaths, the entire area was roped off, sealed in a force field, and hidden as thoroughly from outsiders as possible. The dozen or so artifacts recovered were sealed in stone coffins, unlabeled, with the hopes that someone would one day figure out what they were. Every so often, someone would try to venture back into the first archive's remains, and usually die. Glass wasn't used within a hundred miles of artifact storage for centuries, and new rules guaranteed that records would never be stored near physical artifacts.

Type

Natural