Realms of the Arcane

Interlude

Wes began looking for something more to read. He had learned so much in this room, more than most of the monks knew, he was willing to wager. As his gaze traversed the room, his attention was caught by a thin, leather-bound tome, wedged behind a bookshelf. He hadn't noticed it before, but it seemed to be calling to him, begging him to pick it up and read.

His curiosity aroused, Wes carefully extracted the book from its unusual place and took it to the table. The book began with a history of when and why the library was built, and why here at Candlekeep.

The library was housed in a large stone edifice near the edge of the cliffs overlooking the Sea of Swords. The cliff-top position made the library easy to defend in its early days, when any kind of building was assumed to be a fortification. Indeed, parts of the library gave the appearance of a noble's castle.

Baldur's Gate lay a little over one hundred miles to the north, and there wasn't much of anything else close by. This was how the monks who ran the library preferred it. Study, meditation, and the copying of written works were not pursuits that leant themselves to the hustle and bustle of a busy city.

After a few pages of this dry history, Wes put the strange, slim tome aside and searched for another book. He discovered a tale from long before Candlekeep. In the ancient days of Netheril, there were floating cities, propelled by enormous magics, and defended by mages riding griffons…

Now, this looked interesting.