Biblyon is a town founded for the preservation of knowledge for knowledge’s sake. It is filled not just with scholars, but with adventurous scholars. The kind that not only study natural philosophy but that head out into the wilderness and return with a dead mushroom walker or a jar full of oblivion fleas. Biblyon’s life blood is scholarship, its currency is knowledge.
One of the first things that travelers from the East will notice is that they are not asked to check their weapons at the gates, and that just about everyone carries at least a short sword. One of the first things that travelers from the West will notice is that even the women do so. Biblyon is too close to the wilderness to take any chances with its defense.
Many of the townsfolk trace their ancestry back to the knights of the Order of Illustration. Others are the offspring of, or even still are, farmers, merchants, and travelers from the West, East, and South. There is an infectious sense of camaraderie and competition in Biblyon. A faction of Costumers has a fraternal house in Biblyon, and still hold to Dodgson’s call for more openness among sorcerors.
Biblyon is forty miles north of Hightown.
The History of Biblyon
Biblyon was founded as a place of learning by the Order of Illustration. They built Illustrious Castle to store the wisdom of the pre-Cataclysm age. Biblyon is also known as the walled library, for the twelve-foot stone wall that spans the entrance to the town proper. When the Order still existed, the Order protected the town. Today, that’s the job of the Tutoris Libris.
The Library at Biblyon
Biblyon’s library is not as large as that of the College at Crosspoint, but the quality of its holdings are unmatched. It has the most originals and the oldest works in all the known world. It is the only real library in West Highland. Its collection of treatises on astronomy and political science excel even the College at Crosspoint. The Library has 1,953 books and thousands more manuscripts, including 132 books taken from the Castle after the fall of the Order. The number of books originally ran into the thousands, but many books were lost when the Hooded Mage overran Highland with his army of Goblins.
The main library in the castle was also trashed. The Order supposedly had thousands of books, some even from before the cataclysm. Only the above-mentioned 132 were salvaged from the Castle’s library.
Tutoris Libris
The defense of Biblyon is managed by the Tutoris Libris, an elite guard of warriors and sorcerors devoted to the protection, dissemination, and gathering of knowledge. It is their mission, for example, to seek out interesting people and convince them that their journal is best kept in Biblyon after their death.
The History of Illustrious Castle
Illustrious Castle was built seven centuries ago. It was the first bastion of civilization this side of the High Divide. It was built by the Knights of the Order of Illustration after Vince Kellius led the Order of Illustration across the mountains and into West Highland to found a remote place of learning and research. He wished to create a place of enduring knowledge to counter the dark years following the cataclysm. In the east, where there were more people, there was a backlash against knowledge, against writing, against science, so he took his books and his priests across the mountains where they could be safe, and where they could wait until mankind once again was ready for learning. In the meantime, they searched out all pre-Cataclysm knowledge they could find.
During the Goblin Wars a century ago, the castle was overrun and the best of the Order died defending both it and the town of Biblyon. The remnants of the Knights of the Order were able to re-take the castle after the Great War, but their numbers were small and they weren’t the visionaries. The Order fell into decay. It broke its ties with the town. The Order became paranoid about spies, and would capture and torture anyone found near the castle. People stayed away. After a few years the townsfolk began to notice that no one in the Order had come to town for trade in many months. A visit to the castle confirmed that no one was left alive. It has been abandoned since then, nearly a century.
From that time, the castle has been used only as a source for furniture, and wood in winter, or, more recently, as nothing but a tale to scare children with. It is now seen only by wide-ranging farmers and hunters, who often pass below it traveling between their farms, or between their farms and Biblyon.
Stories are told in Biblyon of how children occasionally dare each other into the castle, but return with stories of strange noises and phantoms, horrible swamp creatures, gigantic spiders, and things they can’t even begin to describe. The most persistent tales tell that the castle is haunted by the last leader of the Order, Tragos d’Illus.
Recent History
For the past several months travelers to Biblyon, hunters, and farmers, have been hit with a scattered string of Night Troll attacks. In this area, “Night Trolls” are goblins and hobgoblins, the former ruled by the latter. In this case, it has only been goblins. The attacks—or, more specifically, the rumor of them, as the attacks have been small in number—have slowed the trickle of travelers to only the most dedicated scholars.
Inspiration
This adventure was mostly a haunted house, but some inspiration came from Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s, A Canticle for Leibowitz and Stanislaw Lem’s Memoirs Found in a Bathtub. In Canticle, the Catholic Order of Leibowitz attempts to save the knowledge of mankind after a nuclear cataclysm. The inspiration from Memoirs is less direct, but it’s about a man who finds his way into a paranoid remnant of an old world. Both are brilliant novels.
