Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Cartographer’s Cache
These large flat cases contain maps of the realm, created at large scale and with high detail, down to and including the position of people, animals, and the undead. They must be used with the large tables in the Royal Archives next door and can’t be checked out due to privacy concerns.

Information Brokers
This office is filled with librarian wizards who trade in information, and are willing to assist students and patrons in finding items, doing research, or teaching classes. It is also stuffed to the gills with enchanted objects, including spellbooks, mundane books, enchanted scrolls, prophecy crystals, and more. Each of the librarians occupies a small cell with a personal spellbook.

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Bard’s Ballads (Music Stacks)
These shelves are bursting with sheet music for aspiring bards, as well as books bout famous performances of old. While most of it is mundane paper and cannot sing for itself, bards are free to take it to the nearby Bard’s Hall and record it to a crystal.

Charmed Children’s Books (Juvenile Collection)
These shelves are full of books for younger wizards, often with bright colors, enticing enchantments, and a decided lack of magical booby traps. Though available to anyone, they are primarily intended for wizards studying in the Early Childhood Enchantment program.

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Hundreds of thousands of enchanted scrolls are stored here, each containing a perfect image of a document too unique or too fragile to be kept in physical form. The scrolls include the complete run of the campus newspaper, the Daily Magician, as well as the city newspaper, the Manwë Eagle. However, unlike the spellbooks in the library, the scrolls must be read with special scroll-reading machines and cannot be checked out.

Scroll-Readers
This pair of steampunk machines are designed to read and display the contents of enchanted scrolls, which cannot be read without them. While they are free to use, and can copy the page of any scroll into a spellbook or send it to a printing press, they are limited in the speed at which they can proceed and the scrolls cannot be searched but must be read through.

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This area is filled with crystals holding popular bardic performances as well as nonfiction prophecies in addition to enchanted musical talismans containing songs. There is a hard limit of 10 crystals per patron and no limit for talismans. One shelf also contains an older format, magical tape. The crystals cover a wide spectrum of bards, from plays to shows to musicals, while the talismans are mostly classical and showtunes. Players are also available for modern wizards-on-the-go who prefer things to be in the cloud. One drawback is that without the proper call number, prophecies can only be retrieved by those about whom they are made and songs by those about whom they are sung.

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This bardic beauty is a fully featured recording studio consisting of two rooms designed to capture bardic performances and save them to crystals. The keys are held by the Wizard Workshop’s Head Wizard.

Image Recording Studio
This studio allows bards to record their performance to a crystal and features an enchanted backdrop that can take any form, based on the same technology used for wizard weather forecast maps.

Sound Recording Studio
This studio contains magic mics that bards can sing into, converting their performances to enchanted sheet music. It can also be used to edit crystals recorded next door.

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Printing Press
These self-contained magic printing presses—one for black and white, one for color—can create a copy of any magical document that is properly enchanted through a spellbook and in the proper format. They only accept Express gold and will not accept gold coins, paper gold certificates, precious gems, or beaver pelts. There is currently a student at the printing press attempting to print a spell, and a line of goblins behind them wondering what all the fuss is about.

Duplicator
A pair of duplicators stands astride one of the Goblin Commons columns. The newer one is fully automatic and allows copies to be made of any item, which can then be automatically sent to a compatible spellbook or redirected to the printing presses for immediate duplication. Making copies is free, but printing must be paid for at the press. The older one takes only gold coins and makes black and white paper copies. Goblins are currently at both stations, attempting to scan and copy themselves.

Vending Machines
A pair of vending machines stand against the east wall. One is filled with snacks, while the other contains magic potions. They both require exact change unless paying with Express gold added to a valid ID.

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The opening of a new egg hatch at St. Columbidae’s has recently reignited controversy around the practice. The hatch, which is also called an eggbox or hatchling wheel, allows gravid mothers to anonymously lay their egg into a soft warm nest. The egg can be reclaimed for up to 8 days, after which it is anonymously adopted.

Critics of the egg hatch claim that it encourages brood parasitism and promiscuity. “These young birds are having too much sex,” complained one member of the public, “and an egg is divinely ordained punishment for that promiscuous behavior. When you take away the punishment, there is no purpose–only pleasure.” Asked if young male birds should also suffer for promiscuousness, they replied “Of course not. Those boys are just sowing their wild oats. It’s not fair to make them support an egg at that young age.”

Egg hatch supporters insist that it will actually cut down on brood parasitism deaths, in which young cuckoos eject and murder their foster siblings or young cowbirds attempt to out-compete and starve them. By allowing them to lay into an egg hatch, supporters say, is a safe way for brood parasites to reproduce. “With an egg hatch,” said one supportive member of the public said, “no one has to die, and chickless families can safely adopt young cuckoos and cowbirds without the stigma of brood parasitism.”

Opponents remain unconvinced by these arguments. “Good is good, and everything He does is planned,” said one online commenter. “Promiscuous birds must suffer retribution, and the baby birds murdered by their foster siblings are going to a better place.”

At press time, the office of the governor was considering an executive order to preemptively ban egg hatches. “Not enough native birds are being born, and invasive birds are plotting to replace them,” he said in a statement. “Only by imposing the full, crippling, punishment of egg brooding on unwary mothers can we reverse this troubling trend and make sure that more of the right kinds of birds are born.”

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This large area is designated for study and group work at full volume, and is often popular with students. Unfortunately, this also makes it a favorite spot for groups of boisterous goblins, who are attracted by loud noises and the odor of food. The area is currently occupied by a large scurrying pack of goblins, who are impeding travel through the area and demanding snacks in exchange for safe passage. A printing press and a magical duplicator are also available here, and there are a pair of snack machines against the far wall, and there are a number of enchanted screens available to access information from the cloud.

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Illumination
The illumination loom can create magical tapestries to order, and is capable of printing on linen, wool, cotton, and vellum. Tapestries up to 42 inches wide may be created, with theoretically unlimited length, at the cost of 5 gold per linear foot. Currently, it is being used to illuminate a large tapestry on the life cycle and natural history of unicorns.

SpellBook Air Rental
Students, faculty, and staff may temporarily check out a SpellBook Air if their own personal spellbook has been lost or broken. While only capable of installing and running certain spells, it is nevertheless much more powerful than the Books of Dellius available in Arcane Classroom D. Every SpellBook Air has been given a powerful curse to prevent its theft; those who fail to return it by the allotted time will be barred from registering for the next semester, assessed a hefty fine, and turned into a newt. A valid ID and the permission of the Head Workshop Wizard are required for checkout.

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The entrance to the Wizard’s Workshop makerspace is protected by a glamour, an illusion that makes it appear as if there is no door or other entrance. The workshop is open to anyone who can make it inside, however, and all magical making inside is done at cost. It is a brightly lit and humid space filled with the humming of summoning rituals, enchantments, and conjuration.

Conjuration
Using one of the workshop’s 3D conjuration machines, it is possible to create a variety of small 3D objects, everything from keys to cantrips. All that is required is a valid ID, a set of blueprints and a small amount of money to cover the cost of materials. Currently, a complex fidget spinner from the Elemental Plane of Nervousness is being conjured.

Mending
Enchanted sewing machines are available for making or mending magical garments or runecloth. Currently, a student is using the machine to mend what appears to be a charred hole in their wizard robe.

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