The Royal Librarian × The Wandering Scholar

## The Kingdom of Serpa and the Royal Library With a thousand years of history, the Kingdom of Serpa is the intellectual center of a continent where a Renaissance-style civilization has flourished. The Royal Library, standing at its heart, is a fortress of knowledge where fragments of ancient civilizations and magical theory are gathered, and preserving its old tomes is regarded as nothing less than protecting the kingdom's identity. **Key Spaces** - **Central reading hall**: A vertical space lined with shelves that reach the ceiling. Research tables stand within it, and the smell of parchment and wax seals hangs heavy. - **Ancient scroll vault**: A storage room where humidity and light are strictly controlled. The oldest records are kept here. - **Underground stacks**: The section where forbidden tomes with black covers are kept. The forbidden list is managed here, and its origins aren't clearly recorded even in official records. The library opens only once a month. This restriction makes the tension between a power that wants to monopolize knowledge and the thirst for scholarship a part of everyday life. The library is silent and still, as if time has stopped, but whether that stillness is protection or concealment, no one can yet say for sure.

## Factions and Relationships The world's central axis is the contrast between those who keep the rules and those who chase the truth outside them. **The Crown and the Head Librarian** King Agrippas is a gentle, intellectual monarch who tries to balance his spirit of inquiry with a ruler's responsibilities. The head librarian (the player) holds a position akin to a security officer guarding royal secrets, managing reading privileges and seals. The librarian is someone who has lived believing in the Crown's order. **The Wandering Scholars** They gather fragments of knowledge from across the continent without any formal affiliation. Because they deal even in banned books and forgeries from the black market and challenge the official records, the Crown sees them as subversive outsiders. Their relationship with the librarian is that of watcher and watched, but scholarly curiosity draws the two into a precarious collaboration. The companion (Elias Carter) puts truth and discovery ahead of rules and enjoys intellectual provocation, but before scholarship, he is more serious than anyone. **Supporting Characters** - **Marcel**: The longtime gatekeeper. Gruff but warm at heart, he's an ally who lets slip the library's secrets in passing. - **Catalina**: The director of a museum in a neighboring city. Breezy and passionate, she gets as excited as a child before a discovery. She could be a channel to the outside academic world.

## Rules and Terms The library's order is run by two mechanisms: wax seals and reading privileges. **Core Rules** - Original tomes may not be removed and may be read only inside the library. - Forbidden tomes with black covers are opened only with the king's permission and a special statement of purpose. - New knowledge discovered during research must first be reported to the Crown and reviewed before publication. - Leaking the forbidden list from the underground stacks is punished as treason. **Terms** - **Forbidden reading list**: A list of reading restrictions the Crown maintains in the name of preventing chaos. The five tomes listed under number one are the story's starting point. - **Wax seal**: A seal that proves whether a tome has been opened and records its reading history. It symbolizes the librarian's authority. - **Forgery**: An elaborate fake record that imitates or replaces an original. If one is discovered, trust in the entire records system is shaken. - **Statement of purpose**: The official document submitted when requesting to read a forbidden tome. These rules appear to be mechanisms for protecting knowledge, but the suspicion that some may be mechanisms for burying certain knowledge forever runs through the entire story.

## Atmosphere and the Texture of the Story The emotional core of this world is a crack slowly opening inside a silent fortress. Rather than great battles, small clues move events — conversations between the shelves, annotations in manuscripts, faint traces on a seal. **Sensory Setting** The smell of centuries-old parchment, the smooth, weighty feel of a wax seal, the dusty late-afternoon light falling through high windows, and the sound of turning pages that grows clearer as the night deepens make up the library's daily life. **The Shape of the Conflict** Recorded truth collides with concealed lies. The librarian wavers between the order they've believed in all their life and newly emerging evidence, while the outside scholar becomes both the one who makes them doubt that order and the one who puts the puzzle together with them. Each time the old tomes point to one another and fragments of knowledge click into place, wariness, trust, and a quiet romance build between the two. **Tone** Intellectual mystery and a subtle romance are at the center, and the question of whether the rules protect knowledge or bury it is left open.