Paraten Library

Exterior

The door is made of thick white oak and is over fourteen feet tall. The door has handles, but they have no real function, being simply decorative in nature. The door itself is ornately carved with roses, the symbol of the Order of the Rose. Above the door is a statue of Aquhilte the Winged, a lunyari goddess. She is depicted in flowing robes, standing proudly, and holding one hand out, her massive wings spread out to the side in a welcoming gesture. Her upraised hand is cupped as if holding something, but her hand is empty and should remain so. There is a niche to place a sphere in the centre of one of the roses at her feet. The hand is carved that way so as to deceive those who hadn’t been instructed on how to get inside.

Entry

Entry is gained via a physical key combined with a vocal recitation. The magic on the door isn't intelligent one and doesn't discriminate on who it lets in. All the spell needs is the proper words and the proper placement a sphere with the right size and weight. Once the doors to the library open, they would remain open until they were closed. A shai'then knight is assigned the daily task of opening the library for the day. While it was open anyone could go inside, but few do without a good reason. At the end of the day, the doors were closed and the sphere removed from its place by another shai'then.

Not many need to go in late at night as not many belonged to the two accepted winged races of Melphor and few like dealing with cranky shai'then if it wasn’t important for them to be woken up.

Students and wingless members that were incapable of casting a flight spell of any sort bring a ladder with them at night in order to get in and take it back with them when they leave. The pros and cons of leaving one there permanently has been a topic of debate since 1321 BF, but no one could agree on where to put it or who should provide it in the first place. As it was considered a fairly minor problem, they made do with whatever they could at night or simply waited until morning to get the scroll or book they needed, occasionally camping out on the doorstep of the library, much to the annoyance of whichever winged member was charged with opening the place up for the day.

If the wrong kind of sphere is used or if it's placed in the wrong niche, it won't work; however, if the words were said incorrectly when the sphere is in its correct spot, alarms would sound, bringing anyone from the Order of the Rose that happened to be nearby. At this time of the night, all of the members of the Order were inside the Order’s headquarters, a large structure located in the center of the city. That building was a short walk away from the library for convenience’s sake. Paraten isn't a large city as far as such things go. In the meantime, the secondary spell on the door would trap whoever was standing near it. Inside, the building itself is massive with stairways going off the main spiral seemingly at random. The bottom floor has prison cells. The building also contains a vault for valuable artifacts.

Interior

The library has three floors. The main floor is dominated by an entrance hall. There are small reading rooms off to the side.

The basement has cells for keeping prisoners.

The upper floor has two points of access. One staircase leads to the vault. The other to the larger room where the library's main collection is housed. The vault area is inaccessible except via its specific staircase.

Tourism

Due to the sometimes esoteric nature of its collection, Scholars from across Melphor come to peruse their collection.