Norwindian Archives

[Therin]

He limped through the main hall, leaning heavily upon the gnarled oak staff that was his everpresent crutch in recent years. Since the Portal Wars. This collection of shelves, these pedestals and the enchanted glass cases which rested on them...this was his place. His brainchild since the fall of Gon many years back, The Archives had become his home almost immediately upon their completion. It was all an old man needed, he had decided. A small room in a far corner, with a cot and a reading table. A shelf of personal literature on the wall next to the door. That was just a resting place. His home was amongst the shelves, and to a lesser extent in the small room where he dispensed the complexities of magical theory to the more advanced students of the new university.

His free hand drifted up to brush one of the cases which stood in the main foyer. A mask lay inside, seeming to shine with its own light. There was naught to see by but starlight at this time, slipping in through the glass portals in the roof, but that was all he needed. His feet knew the way. He stopped by another case. There was a scroll, laid flat across the pedestal. A raptorial emblem blazed across its head, noble and aggressive. These were remnants, all of them, of ages past. History on display. That was the tresure of this place; not its books, or its architectuire, but its artifacts. The greatest collection, indeed, the only collection in the known world, to date. Oh sure, across Mid-Ocean Miniopia had the Shelves, but...large and complex and magnificent as they were, it was all just paper. Nothing solid. Nothing lasting.

The Archive building was an impressive structure, even from the outside; from the solid arched doors, four times as tall as Lews Therin himself, to the single grinning gargoyle who poked his head out from the peak of the roof, just over the main doorway. The building faced directly east; the gemstones in the gargoyle's eyes were radiant in the mornings. The building itself was smoothed stone, a magical process which reduced the number of air leaks in the masonry, making the building warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.

But inside was where the real treasure lay, in the circular main foyer, where stood row upon row of artifacts, from a thimble-sized brass ring from the early post-fall era to a huge, inscribed ceremonial shield, found in the ruins of the old academy in Gon. Each one had a story, and he knew them all. He should; he was the Archivist.

This, he had decided, would be his legacy. But not right now. Right now, it was time for an old man to put his game leg and his tired hands to bed. He would deal with legacies in the morning.