The Enigma Library
The city of Mizani is devoted to neutrality: all the nations, religions, and races have a place there. Such an arrangement is fragile, but it works thanks to Hekima the sphinx, the last being with a divine spark. There’s a law above others: the various factions must keep peace and contribute to Mizani and its citizens. One of the ways to appease the sphinx is to give the public some degree of access to their knowledge through academies, libraries, museums.
The most unique of those institutions is the Nonseljmi Ckusro, the Enigma Library.
The Enigma Library is in the True Order District, governed by the Matras, living constructs devoted to the Primordial Laws. The library is a collection of all the texts nobody was able to translate but are nonetheless considered to be of some importance.
Matras scholars are in search of the “Grand Diagram”: a complete and comprehensive explanation of how the Creation works, how it was warped by the Collapse, and how it will evolve. Evidence and clues to unlock this knowledge could be anywhere, even in what appears just like gibberish or scribbles.
The Enigma Library is run by artificial people with a cube head, the Curators (Kurji). The Curators collect, transcript, and catalog all the various unknown writings they find, sending them to the Translators (Fanva Minji), a series of interconnected magic-mechanical apparatus that will try to extract meaning from it.
The Curators buy writings samples from travelers and adventures, but the criterion they use to value a piece is opaque and nonnegotiable. A clay tablet dug out from the depth of earth could be worth a gold coin, while the transcript of a milkmaid’s dream could be worth twenty.
Like most Matras, the Curators have mechanical familiars that help them with their physical maintenance and in their work. The Pen Monkeys (Smanipenbi) are simian clockworks that act as secretaries and errand boys, retrieving tomes and handing off stationery. They are usually the ones going down to the dungeons of the Translators, where they pick up the potential decodings.
Curators and their Monkeys are necessary to the visitors since the indexes and placement of texts follow an intricate and esoteric method, orderly and crystal clear to the Matras but puzzling for the organic minds. Curators are very helpful since every visit could bring new and interesting information, and they will profuse apologies for the chaos of the collection (when it’s in fact remarkably tidy).
Some of the most interesting sources of unknown writings:
- the Fragments Bay (and most of the Confederacy) have monuments and artifacts stuck in the ground. The theories say these are pieces of other material worlds, maybe other planets or other times, maybe alternative history.
- The Dream landscapes are an almost unexplored territory in the central desert of Uxali. The few travelers that came back speak of cities and lands made of solid mirages, the impossible shards of the World of Dreams.
- The depth of the Tartarus Penisula, in the Holy Infernal Empire: the possibly endless tunnels and caverns that lead in the belly of the earth have clues of never seen before civilizations in the form of graffiti and mural paintings.
- Some animals show unnatural patterns in their fur or horns, thanks to the mutagenic energies of the Collapse. The Glyph Tigers, for example, have stripes that follow the rules of an unknown grammar.
- The books of Heretics. Many religions have dissident voices, false prophets, unorthodox seer. Some of them leave writings containing unphatomable words they hear in their visions.
