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In some library RP, the Triumvir control mechanism came up. How does it actually work? Is it a multifunctional modern library database? Does it search multiple fields (title, author, shelf number, keyword), actual text of the books, or what? Who made it, to common knowledge?

Heh. I did some stuff with this as a DM. I suppose I could elaborate a bit on what I think people would know about it. Though I might doublecheck for DM sanction first.

That would be cool.

A request to DMs:

Could some of you put your heads together and determine the relative sizes of the island's libraries, and their areas of specialty, as well as particularly weak areas? I mean, specific research will obviously need DM contact, but it would be nice to be able to say where you will find what information. This is something I would like to update in the Cordor library topic, and Dead indicated a similar desire for Tarkuul.

The screwed-up economy and free access to magic on the island is a problem, but I still think libraries couldn't feasibly afford everything they wanted and had to specialize. Neither would they have the space. The Triumvir fire was a blessing that made its "sure we have everything in five copies" godmode problem a little more manageable. Tarkuul's weakness is probably that it's very outdated, except for recent acquisitions. We all know what happened to Cordor.

I know that each of the three mentioend have PCs actively working to expand the collections, so no summary will be the final truth. But as the most substantial libraries in the module (I think?) they would all compete with eachother and have strengths and weaknesses in specific areas. I'd like to know what those areas are! For my part, I can say that Joon is finally attempting to improve on Cordor's collections on local history and political theory to make them the best collections on the island, and mostly neglecting planar, arcana and occultism material.

Would I be right in guessing that a well-stocked, non-legendary library in the Realms will have less than ten thousand titles? It's a tiny number compared to modern book ownership (I'm sure many of us have more than 10% of that at home even), but in a pre-printing age (which ours still mostly is) it's a lot. Magical copying makes the number substantially higher than real pre-modern libraries; a well-stocked monastic library would have less than a thousand books in the late middle ages, but still a lot lower than modern libraries.

So if I were to hazard a guess, Tarkuul and Triumvir would have some 10,000 titles, and the restocked Cordor library getting close to 7,000 but not there yet? With everything else between 100 and a few thousand?

Quote:

The Triumvir fire was a blessing that made its "sure we have everything in five copies" godmode problem a little more manageable.

I don't really understand this part of your reply, Iron. Was there even a problem before? And why?

I would like to know as well of these, considering my character has been actively working on expanding Winya Ravana's library collections. I would imagine Winya having larger library than Cordor and Kohlingen, but by my understanding Triumvir has been the largest known library collection.

Winya Ravanas collections were even looked into as the library was emptied for renovation and later filled again and each tome was written down to know the content of the library.

Magiros wrote:

I would like to know as well of these, considering my character has been actively working on expanding Winya Ravana's library collections. I would imagine Winya having larger library than Cordor and Kohlingen, but by my understanding Triumvir has been the largest known library collection.

Winya Ravanas collections were even looked into as the library was emptied for renovation and later filled again and each tome was written down to know the content of the library.

Given Winya 1) has not existed for more than 12 years, 2) is at most 10% of Cordor's population, probably closer to 5%, and 3) has no actual income or state economy to speak of, I highly doubt they have a larger library. They couldn't afford it. It's a village compared to Kohlingen or Cordor. And the library was in the base of a tree, it can't be very large, physically.

I think it needs to be stressed, in this matter as in general, that not every settlement on the island is as significant as player activity might suggest. The island itself has Cordor, Kohlingen and, with its recent expansion due to good lands for agriculture, Bendir Dale. I don't think the rest of the settlements combined would make up the population or annual revenues of any of those three.

But yeah, more information on that one would be welcome, too. I think Winya's advantage would be its small but high-quality selection of rare, valuable and ancient books that the immigrants would have brought with them from Evermeet, Evereska and wherever else they migrated from. It would be short on human books, or titles in Common, Illuskan, Chondathan and other typical languages. It's more of a specialist collection than a general library, unless of course your PC has made efforts to the contrary.

But why was the triumvir fire a blessing? :0

What's not self-evident about the statement? Burning down some of the worst cheese of that place was convenient for future development. A new demiplane pops up, connected to Amia, and just happens to have every book you'd never need, making both the development of other Amian libraries and research anywhere else than in the Loremaster's Guild pointless.

It may not even house the largest collection anymore, since most of it burned down. In any case, it's more in line with the Prime Material libraries in the module now, which is just healthy for RP.

I have to agree with Iron. Prior to the fire, there simply was not much point of developing Winya's library when you can walk to a portal and to the Loremaster's Guild to find whatever you needed. I even loved the fact that during the plot of Yossarin's, the adventurers trying to put out the fire's used Ice Storm spells, which worked to some extent but as well caused more damage. Triumvir's existence kind of doesn't make it worth while traveling to other libraries to find information, it decreases RP that would be needed to get elsewhere, for example Winya Ravana's library, which is not common access to everyone (Mainly non-elfs.)

And what comes to Winya Ravana, the IC attempts have been to build it to be most extensive library in Amia, with heavy setbacks as the plot got delayed for a long time, however, there are work underway to make it happen. What comes to the size of the library of Winya Ravana, during the renovations it was expanded in size and to the economic perspective much of the contribution comes from players and community itself. Whereas I can agree Winya Ravana is not perhaps as large by population, I would say that elven culture has more appreciation to written word than Cordor or Kohlingen, and this is observation I've based only on IC events I've seen and thus whether it holds true is another thing. And as well I agree that Winya Ravana more than likely have tomes specialized in elven culture and elven history, thus the rarity of allowing non-elfs to enter it. Actually I like the idea of having smaller collection, quality over quantity.

Nonetheless, can't wait to hear from the DM team a clarification to the contents.

The dwarves have a fine library in Barak Runedar, filled with books on ale, metals, fighting giants and how to pick up women. I'm sure its very specialized like Winya but on dwarven lore and such.

Dwarves tend not to use written records as commonly as humans do and prefer spoken word instead to pass on knowledge so I can't imagine it to be large. When they do write they use materials such as stone and metal instead of paper so that it lasts with time. I'm not sure they would actively purchase books and such from around but create their own or recover lore from fallen strongholds, such as the Underkingdom on Brogendenstein during its fall.

Well, for Cordor, they have the bookstore, and they have the library. Considering raw size of the area, they'd be nice, but not spectacular, I'd think.

Especially because the now defunct provisional government of Cordor made efforts to remove any titles that made their administration look bad, and replaced a lot of them with titles that exaggerated the atrocities and terrors of noble and duchal rule, they essentially took a command economy stance to their library which certainly hurts their efforts of getting anything done.

With the current situation of Cordor pretty much having no functional government and, essentially, being a festering mass that's struggling to maintain stability while dealing with a humongous array of external and internal threats, it doesn't leave much room on the minds of people to keep the library well maintained, save some few dedicated NPCs and PCs.

Yup, I am working on that. Depends upon how much the DMs want to use what I had devised and how much details they want to be public knowledge.

As to the Son of Vodak's burning of the books in the library, I did not conceive of that little trick until about halfway through the plot itself. But I will be frank: I made the choice to have it do this through the brain-addled artists and actors and poets of the Triumvir for two reasons:

1) Because the Son of Vodak was not your typical monstrous creature that wanted to harm and hurt people. Vodak was a sentient slime with malicious intent. The "son of Vodak", a filmy piece of the original left behind in the pages of a book that a certain unfortunate kobold discovered one day, ultimately developed into its own entity. Unlike Vodak, it did not have a perfect sentience. Really, it was a savant. An idiot savant. High intellectual capacity, limited reasoning capability. Perhaps more interesting was a sense of emotional urge or passion that it developed, which promoted the "artist" it eventually became. Which leads one to wonder: was it like that to begin with, or did it develop that way through its method of procreation - infecting artists with itself, housing itself in their cranial cavities like a bacterial meningitis before violently releasing itself to come back together in a snotty collective? Did it bring with it into the collective some unrealized element of an artist? Did it learn a passion and appreciation and talent for art from its brief parasitic existence inside the artists? Or was there an existent "gene" in Vodak that became more developed in the Son of Vodak? Either way, I don't believe it ever intentionally tried to go outside of the Triumvir to hurt anybody. It just wanted a home, a theater, a place to work its art...but at the same time, there was an ingrained primal urge inside of it. A hatred for knowledge, for intelligence, for the process of learning, the things Ghaunadaur stole away and denied from most gelatinous entities back in primordial times. That hatred was also embellished by envy and fear; as an idiot savant, and a creature with no eyes or ears it could use to read or hear the spoken word, the Son of Vodak was jealous of those who could appreciate it, and was also afraid of what people could do to hurt it simply by knowing how to hurt it. There were a few other possible motivations, too: it survived within the pages of a book for a long time, so the pages of a book were its surrogate womb, and be destroying books in a great bonfire it was immolating its own mother and making an almost infantile declaration of personal sovereignty; and also, the possibility that the act of destroying knowledge alone was a means of accomplishing the same thing.

I knew that the massive book burning would strike a chord with the PCs (and maybe with the players, too). The act is a heinous one in any culture. And for the theme of the story, there is a curious dissonance between a creature that appears to have been entirely devoted to art on the one hand utterly eradicating knowledge in the most brutal way on the other, one so that even if PCs intuited that the Son of Vodak was a kind of misunderstood monster, it was a monster that nonetheless could not be allowed to exist, considering its perspective on humanity (as a breeding ground for itself) and all of its accomplishments (ashes). It was a shameless pitch to raise enough ire to get people to want to destroy it. When the PCs confronted it, all it did was begin to play an incredible piece of music for them with a variety of instruments it had found...and singing through a decapitated head that it manipulated by using tiny phlegmatic pseudopods to fibrillate the vocal cords while squeezing air past it from a giant air bubble trapped in the ooze.

2) For the very reason Iron brings up. The Loremaster's Library was an utter buzzkill from an IC perspective. Having a wealth of knowledge that complete with total access to every PC, regardless of level, threatened to crush most any DM event or plot (or PC-driven plot!) that involved research, as the Loremaster's Library presented an autosuccess on the checks, more or less. In addition, it utterly devalued the community library in Amia, in any given settlement. Why bother at all with the library in your hometown when you can go through a painting and learn everything about the multiverse and more.

But not so after having over half of its book storage depleted by an anti-intellectual ooze. And furthermore by having the Arcanum surreptitiously (or at times blatantly) borrow hoards of books from the library with zero intent of ever returning them. At all. Actively exploiting the fact that the library functioned on an honor system. Now you can have PCs who genuinely care about their local library and do things related to it. You can find relevant local information at those local libraries. And you can still visit the Loremaster's Library to find some of the esoteric stuff, and a DM no longer has to feel like they're screwing you by saying, "You don't find anything about that there." Plenty of players, after the fire and the Arcanum culling, got some similar messages from me...mostly because the books they were looking for were books the Arcanum had intentionally removed to keep people from figuring out what they were up to.

I don't mind revealing this stuff about the Son of Vodak plot because really it was just a short-lived thing and it is over and it was fun (though I still feel bad for the players who were interested in being part of the final assault but were not able to participate because I could only handle so many PCs at one time without crashing the server; I admit I really should have paid more attention to some of the PCs who were actively invested in the plot and favored them over those who kinda showed up just to be a part of something).

I didn't mind the Demiplane of Knowledge burning as much.. (No, I don't support the destruction of knowledge but understand part of the 'Why' it was done and am guilty of having leaned on it a fair chunk)

The only problem I have is when all efforts to attempt to gain information seem to always, without recourse be deliberately stymied *I know that wasn't the intention of what happened in the Triumvir's library, that was a mix of cause and effect and just the nature of having a good portion of your storage being immolated* , or otherwise just plain impossible.

Also, Yossarin I know in your plot that wasn't the case either (I'll admit your 'You can't always get what you want, but you might find what you need' approach appealed to me even if at times I still wanted to gnaw on rawhide considering I was vexed at not thinking of where best to continue with my work).

Sure, not everything's going to be book knowledge and I'm having to learn both IC and OOC to expand my considerations and my character's for gathering information.

And hindsight is always 20/20.

IronAngel is pretty close with his estimation for Tarkuul. I can't give every little detail away because that would spoil some of the fun of people who have/will investigate ICly, but for the basics you're on the right track. Much of the information, though a vast wealth of knowledge, would be incredibly outdated. This is both a boon and a curse, as on the one hand there's information there that likely hasn't seen the light of day for centuries and might not be found anywhere else in Faerun (certainly not on Amia) but on the other hand anything newer than a thousand years or so is extremely limited, basically whatever players have put into the library themselves and made an effort on improving.

A quick note on "atmosphere" as well, the Tarkuul library would be the kind of place where (at least as it stands currently) scrolls are stacked haphazardly on shelves, manuscripts are tucked in between two larger books, hiding them from view, shelves are a bit too stuffed here and there, etc. While player efforts have again brought it to a better place than it was when the city first rose, it would still seem a bit disorganized perhaps and have a very aged, stuffy feel to it.

Also due to the nature of the Enclave most of the information found would be magical / historical in nature. You wouldn't find nearly as many books on topics such as civil engineering, basic linguistics, common agricultural practices, etc. because why would the Netherese bother with rudimentary linguistics when you could cast Tongues, or agriculture when those dirty peasants of Low Netheril did all the dirt farming for the Empire, etc.

This is a slight exaggeration but I think it gives you an idea.

IronAngel wrote:

Given Winya 1) has not existed for more than 12 years ...

Winya Ravana is the oldest settlement on Amia island. It took its library with it when it was removed from the Prime Material to hide it from Terzaroch. Its library would be very small, very specialized, and very, very old.

I can definitely say that I support any IC efforts to make these libraries more extensive in their areas. Gerald has personally found a number of books that he's had scribe and copied for Tarkuul and Nece'perya that probably don't even exist anywhere else in the prime.

On a sidenote, there needs to be more adult material in our libraries. Golem Manual: Porn, right in between Golem Manual: Mythril and Golem Manual: Rock.

And this should basically be the entire contents of the library in Barak Runedar. Tally ho!

That may very well turn Captor in to a Construct fetishist. He's asexual enough as it is, he doesn't need inanimate love to further it!

I do agree we need more joke books too.

Speak for yourselves. My PC has every volume of the tastefully done "PlayGnome" magazine.

I mean Gerald did raid a library on the layer of the Subbubi Queen in a Lilitu's layer... so there's probably a lot of new lower planar porn in Tarkuul's library.

bobofwestoregonusa wrote:

I can definitely say that I support any IC efforts to make these libraries more extensive in their areas. Gerald has personally found a number of books that he's had scribe and copied for Tarkuul and Nece'perya that probably don't even exist anywhere else in the prime.

Not just in their areas. I'm not going to stop at Tarkuul being specialized in something.

Dead wrote:

bobofwestoregonusa wrote:

I can definitely say that I support any IC efforts to make these libraries more extensive in their areas. Gerald has personally found a number of books that he's had scribe and copied for Tarkuul and Nece'perya that probably don't even exist anywhere else in the prime.

Not just in their areas. I'm not going to stop at Tarkuul being specialized in something.

But I think we need to establish that the bulk of the collections are specialized, and something you may not find elsewhere. Otherwise we run into the Triumvir problem again, which is an OOC design flaw we need to beware when we pursue our IC goals. There are a lot of things my PC good have done, over the years, that I've chosen not to do because they wouldn't be beneficial. Sure, you could argue for total IC freedom regardless of OOC consequence, but I like to think players with influence are responsible for the big picture.

I don't think many people really grasp the financial and logistical burden of maintaining and expanding a library. Our economony is inflated and in-module books are absurdly cheap. But that just wouldn't be the case; for the price of a hundred quality books, you could probably equip fifty mercenaries with lower-grade armor and weapons. Unless we assume epic players can afford to hire and outfit private armies with their giant-run income, there's only so much they can do to expand on the NPC/official financing of books through budgeting. And then there is the question of space: books are big, heavy objects that take a lot of shelf space. None of our in-game libraries have much extra space visible. If Tarkuul was to suddenly acquire an extensive collection on agriculture and carpentry, it would mean shelf space away from Netherese history or magical research. This is an acute problem in real libraries with kilometers of storage tunnels underground, so surely it's a concern for the small rooms that act as libraries in the module.

The kind of efforts you've made, in practice, are well within reasonable. Collecting PC-written books and posting links, etc. But those PC-written and in-module books only represent the tip of the iceberg. The majority of books are invisible, described mostly in generalizations of "there's a lot on the culture of death here, but you don't find anything useful on breeding cattle". Those gaps can and should be filled with PC-written books librarians can get a hold of, but that's small compared to the acquisitions that go on off-screen. We should assume it's a choice: as librarian you may be given the chance to acquire fifty new titles for the collection that month; how do you split those acquisitions? You can either specialize further (and thus limit the information on other topics) or you can expand (and thus lose some of the depth and edge you have on other libraries in your specialized field).

tl;dr: I think we should agree and acknowledge that there's only so much our PCs can do to expand a given library, and that we can't have everything. It's a choice between specialization and general expansion. I'm not saying we can't or shouldn't acquire interesting PC-written books on any subject, but they don't represent the majority of invisible books. We need DM- or self-imposed restrictions to avoid the Triumvir-problem of "too much information", even if our PCs would like to see that.

Agreed.

Come to think of it, I may have read too much into your statement, Dead. You may have well meant the PC-written books you've already compiled, or that Tarkuul library ought to expand some neglected areas of focus, too. I stand by my post but I don't mean it to come across as if I'm ragging on you.

If I want to discuss specifics of the Cordor library collection, as well as small module updates, who should I contact? Kobra, Glim (as a developer)? Does Yoss have some relevant notes I'm yet unaware of?

Still interested in the Triumvir device!

First step is the DMs of the area in question, yes. Then if module changes are required, they can come to the Devs with what needs doing.

I'm quite aware that the space may be a problem, but it is an IC problem that I will have to deal ICly. Still since Tarkuul is a City of Knowledge I see him as the Triumvir, and as long as I am not saying that there's every book ever written available in the city, and address the enriching of the library with DMs discretion I see no reason why I would not pick up every tome I deem worthy and put it in the library of Tarkuul.

At the moment I am working with the "NPC" books that are available IG, and the job system books.

EDIT: Also I kinda think that by going WYSIWYG Tarkuul can storage at least x2 books.

With all these libraries I have noticed a curious lack of references to Zhum

Glad I bumped into this thread. It seems the librarians are weighing in.

I heard about the attack on the Triumvir shortly after my return from a two year hiatus and while Madrik was appauled, I felt more indifferent and agree with what was said on its importance toward RP.

Madrik was Fallen and did what he could for the sake of the library and everything Oghma but was severely limited. Now that he is redeemed I'd like to take Mads involvement more seriously with the Loremaster's Guild- the fire has given openings to work with the other libraries, make ties and reach out to other Oghmans such as Joon of Cordor.

It's becoming clear that it's a good thing to quell the Triumvir's standing as a one-stop-shop library and give others specializations and what those specializations are per library, but what does this mean for the Loremaster's Guild? Would we have everything other libraries don't such as more maps, demographics, and elementary subjects? Would not want to see it become vice versa where the largest capacity in shelf space is rendered redundant.

Given the nature of the Loremaster's Guild and the dozen apprentices therein, if information is needed that is not on the island, we would at least know how to get it, or better yet, have a higher chance of acquiring requested knowledge for a reasonable fee or free (per Oghman dogma) depending on the price our third party sources charge. Needing opinions.

As for porn.. Yeah, no, you'd be referred to Barak Runedar or Tarkuul for the fetishes. Jokes.

But seriously, no smut

Yes, they are weighing in. I submitted my information to the DM Team for review and we're just waiting on them to take or dismiss or modify whatever I had done as necessary.

MadrikVale wrote:

As for porn.. Yeah, no, you'd be referred to Barak Runedar or Tarkuul for the fetishes. Jokes.

But seriously, no smut

Cordor Guard have a pile of Playgnome hidden in the barracks. :lol:

Saya would most likely throw a fit, act offended.. then would read the whole thing in secret and get jealous about the breast sizes probably matching hers.. or outmatching hers <.<

Mushidoz wrote:

Saya would most likely throw a fit, act offended.. then would read the whole thing in secret and get jealous about the breast sizes probably matching hers.. or outmatching hers <.<

Bring her to Tarkuul and will give her a boob graft.

Mushidoz wrote:

Saya would most likely throw a fit, act offended.. then would read the whole thing in secret and get jealous about the breast sizes probably matching hers.. or outmatching hers <.<

STAHP.

Dead wrote:

Bring her to Tarkuul and will give her a boob graft.

STAHP. STAHP.

Still interested!

Damnit, you.

666WaysToHell wrote:

Cordor Guard have a pile of Playgnome hidden in the barracks. :lol:

Xaviera has gone through that particular pile for her own collection. She also has a collection of several extensively illustrated books books detailing the antics of a certain busty blonde fey as well as signed woodcut pin-ups of herself in her younger days.

Yossarin wrote:

On a sidenote, there needs to be more adult material in our libraries. Golem Manual: Porn, right in between Golem Manual: Mythril and Golem Manual: Rock.

This sort of material would definitely be found in the Temple of Love and I would be happy to provide an updated description for the bookshelf in the Shrine of Sharess - something along the lines of the following:

Books, scrolls and tomes of erotic literature, recipes for aphrodisiacs, illuminated instruction manuals and treatises on all aspects of love and pleasure overflow these heavily-laden shelves. A small sign tacked thereto reads: "Please do not remove books from the Temple."

Something I've made for the library of Tarkuul but can be of use for all the libraries around Amia. Feel free to add/change the survey sections, though I'd appreciate if you'd let me know if I've forgotten something. The survey is meant to be sent by the PC librarians to the DM team in order to get a feedback on specific libraries that would your PC know well enough.

=============================
1. Nothing at all
2. Scarce information
3. General information
4. Enough for in depth research
5. Almost everything
=============================

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[ ] - General Arcana (Complete Mage, Tome & Blood, Magic of Faerun)
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[ ] - Religion (Faiths and Avatars)
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[ ] - Undead (Libris Mortis)
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[ ] - Inner Planes (Manual of Planes)

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[ ] - Outer Planes (Manual of Planes)

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[ ] - Transitive Planes (Manual of Planes)

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[ ] - History and Geography (FR campaign settingm, GHoR)

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[ ] - Abberations (Lords of Madness)

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[ ] - Races and Cultures (Races of Faerun)

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[ ] - The Underdark (The Underdark)

[ ] - Drow (Drow of the Underdark)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ ] - Dragons (Races of Dragons, Dragons of Faerun)
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[ ] - The Far Realm
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[ ] - Monsters (Monster Manual I, II, III)
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[ ] - Anatomy and Medicine
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That is nice. I'll think about additional categories, if there are any missing.

Another thing that occured to me the other day is that there are two types of libraries: specialist ones with a single or a few copies of whatever relevant they can get their hands on, and public libraries with a large number of copies of popular works. It's hard to represent in game, but even if a library has the exact rare tome you're looking for, someone might have already borrowed it. What I envision the Cordor library to be like, then, is a public library primarily aimed at the people's education and recreation. If you're looking for local history, some popular handbook of piety or the collected works of Llewyn Forest, you can probably always find several copies on the shelf - whereas more specialized libraries with a more diverse collection might only have one copy and it could be loaned out at the moment.

There's no way to represent this in game, of course, but it's something to consider. A DM might roll dice to determine whether the necessary book is on the shelf at a particular moment, though, and adjust the chances according to the library and tome in question.

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