The Compendium

The Legends of the origins of the Library are shrouded in antiquity. What is clear is that the magic of the Shelf of Life existed in the walls of reality, and the earliest authors wrote their stories - their reality - on the walls. Stories so fundamental that they could only be expressed as pictures. Where the walls of reality existed is beyond the knowledge of any living person and is referenced only most obscurely by the earliest forms of actual books - clay tablets - in the Library authored by Enmerkar. It is thought that the Absolutes may have imagined reality and so brought it into being, but how accurate these speculations are is beyond the ability of the librarians to determine.   Later, the power of the Shelf of Life clearly became manifest in what passed for crude libraries in learned centers of creatures who inhabited reality. One the poet-king Enmerkar was able to extract the reality forming essence of the Shelf of Life and craft it into abstract symbols - the first written language - an innovation that allowed the stories of the universes to be recorded, and allowed for the possibility that they could be shared amongst the different peoples in different times.   But the process of recording the stories was labor intensive, and the Shelf of Life itself did not exist until the great Librarian, the First Librarian, the poet Homer, found a way to extract the essence of the Shelf of Life from reality and crystalize it into the Shelf of Life upon which all our labor now rests. Homer appears frequently in one form or another in every story that has a place in the library, protecting, promoting, and defending the finest stories. Some believe that it is Homer who is the bridge that allows the essence of reality to infuse a story, though this is hotly debated.   That the scroll that is The Library of Ages was written by Homer is of no doubt. His signature resides prominently at the end along with his well wishes for the Librarians who follow him. The Library of Ages is the first story shelved on the Shelf of Life, and it will never be removed.