The Lost Library of Stonemoor

From the notebooks of Tilly Redmoon.

About 300 years ago, Caragh, the Mage of the Moor traveled from castle to castle and sold her services to many of the Banner Kings across Dunhill. She usually collected spells and lore in exchange for her time and talents, and she needed somewhere to keep all of that information. She bought the rights to the Stonemoor and built a stone tower at the center of a labyrinth cut into the peat bog.

Researchers came from far and wide to walk the labyrinth and consult with Caragh and browse the Library of Stonemoor. The bard Blayne Doss recorded in his Wanderwords II how he walked up four flights of stairs and through a glowing doorway to get to the library, and in Fabula De Colligendis Cognitionis (The Story of Knowledge Gathering) the philosopher Stilo Aelius mentioned a trap door in the basement of Caragh's Tower. None of the written accounts agree on where the library lay within the tower, leading me to believe that it still exists in a pocket dimension somewhere. Does the entrance still exist in the Stonemoor? All accounts agree that the knowledge stored in the library would take several lifetimes to fully read through.

Caragh died at the end of winter 288 years ago (of old age?), and her tower disappeared within a fortnight without a trace. Local foragers kept harvesting peat in the Stonemoor, and the labyrinth disappeared chunk by chunk as if it never existed. Treasure hunters have searched for the library by surveying sections of the Stonemoor at least 5 times over the centuries, most recently the Goliath explorer Gorm Stensune 23 years ago, but none have found any trace of the tower or the labyrinth. Some expeditions mentioned ghosts, wisps, or laborers who disappeared, but it's a foggy old peat bog.

Other Random Notes:

Caragh = Transmuter? Easier to create pocket dimension? Where did the tower go - the pocket dimension? What services did she provide for people? Are there court records of the Banner Kings detailing what she did 300 years ago? Did anyone ever return to the library? Not Blayne for sure. TO DO: Find Gorm and interview!

There are several partial sketches of the tower and labyrinth as imagined by Tilly Redmoon littering the margins and breaking up the text. Some fanciful sketches of the library and its bookshelves grace the pages as well. Tilly has an eye for pencil sketches.

Part of T.W.Wombat's Lore 24 project, detailing the world around Fellport.
For all city posts, see the Fellport Index. For posts about the wider world, see the Beneterra Index.