Description
Inside, almost every surface from the floor to the high ceiling is jammed with stacks of books, the ceilings throughout the first floor of the Biblioplex are 50 feet high. The second- and third-floor ceilings are 30 feet high. The interior of the Biblioplex is vast, with long hallways, archive chambers tall enough to have their own weather, and even pools and moat-passages crossable only by boat.
First Floor
Main Entrance
Enchanted marble steps lead up 5 feet to a small plaza at the Biblioplex’s entrance. The double door’s vertical handles are each carved in the likeness of a robed scholar. During the day, the doors stand open. At night, the doors are closed, locked, and sealed with an arcane lock spell. A successful DC 25 Dexterity check using thieves’ tools opens the lock (DC 35 while the arcane lock is in effect). Only the Biblioplex’s reference librarians and certain faculty members know the arcane lock’s password.
Biblioplex Lounge
Luxurious couches and sturdy tables furnish this spacious area. Visitors, employees, and staff members often use this lounge to relax. Each table holds piles of magazines, newsletters, flyers, and nonmagical scrolls.
Information Desk
Three librarians work at each of these circular desks. All are expert scholars and powerful mages. They can provide helpful instructions for where to find any public location or collection in the Biblioplex.
Book Store
This small shop is stocked with books, equipment, and gear useful as academic supplies.
Biblioplex Café
One wall of this area is covered with a mural made from a living tree’s roots, which move occasionally and make the entire place feel alive. The ceiling is covered in painted leaves, which change colors depending on the season thanks to a permanent
Illusion effect. The
Magic also prompts painted squirrels to run up and down the mural’s roots, and painted birds to chirp among the leaves.
Up to ten customers are typically present here during the day. The café’s manager, Aisla Fitzbottom, a
Gnome, is working alone. She is charmingly perky and has a mind like a steel trap when it comes to customers students. However, her organizational skills are somewhat lackadaisical.
The café always serves coffee and tea, which costs 1 cp per cup. the seating in front of the cafe offer places to sit for a drink or to read.
Study Area
These open study areas feature simple wooden tables and chairs. During the day, up to thirty visitors can typically be found here.
Book Garden
In these quiet areas, visitors sit on the grass and study among lush foliage. three awakened shrubs wandered in here and settled in each garden, and the library has welcomed them to stay.
Main Stacks
Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves fill the center and the east end of the library’s first floor, with the denser east stacks under a magic effect that shifts them when visitors approach, creating space to stand single-file between them.
Characters who browse these shelves unaided stumble on what they need with a successful DC 15 Wisdom (Perception) check. However, it’s always easier to ask a reference librarian at the informations desks.
Hall of Invention
This hallowed hall is filled with statues of the
Lightfoot Kingdom greatest inventors and scholar. At the center of the hall, a pulsing ball of magical energy fills the area with bright light.
Art Gallery
This crisp-looking room features white walls and columns that stretch from floor to ceiling. Displayed on or within these are art pieces representative of various media. A storage area at the back holds supplies and artwork waiting to go on display.
Amphitheater
This impressive stage is used for lectures, for assemblies, and as a gathering place in case of emergencies. Steps lead up to the stage from the floor of the library.
Activities Center
This room is filled with tables and chairs and is available to any visitors who reserve it for use as a meeting place, rehearsal facility, or crafting site, or for other approved purposes.
Second Floor
Advanced Stacks
Rooms on the Biblioplex’s second floor can be accessed only with keys held by the reference librarians and grant visitors access on a case-by-case basis. The arcane knowledge in the books here is not public—and is sometimes dangerous.
To prevent overly ambitious mages from teleporting into and accessing this area, two shield guardians patrol at all times. Both the guardians have sleep as their stored spell, and their control amulets are in the possession of two of the librarians on duty in the Biblioplex. Visitors with permission to work here are given passwords by which the Constructs recognize them as friends.
Third Floor
The Compendium
This area on the library’s third floor holds copies of most of the mundane, widely available written works in the world. The books are inscrutably cataloged, so it’s almost impossible to find anything without requesting information from a reference librarian. Characters who look for information without obtaining help discover what they’re looking for only with a successful DC 20 Wisdom (Perception) check.
At the center of this area stands a statue depicting a mighty, benevolent
Dragon. The magical statue reads aloud the contents of most books placed in front of it if a character makes that request verbally or mentally. (The magic of the statue can assess text such as verbal
Curses that present a danger if read aloud, and the statue ignores requests to read such text.)
Map
The center of Knowledge in
Atrechene is the Biblioplex, the city’s main library. At the heart of the library is an orb of
Weave that glows like a miniature sun in the grand Hall of Oracles.
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