The Stygian Library

WHAT IS THE STYGIAN LIBRARY?

Books are condensed collections of knowledge, and knowledge is power. As any physicist will tell you, power is a function of energy, and energy and mass are interchangeable, and enough mass warps spacetime.
Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. The more power, the more it corrupts. Sufficient knowledge twists the world around it into strange shapes.
Put enough books in one place, and they distort the world. Space bends in on itself, forming a sort of wormhole, linking the library to other libraries likewise afflicted. The space between is a sort of pocket realm, budded off from reality, maintained by the sheer power of books.
Scholars have known about this—or at least had their suspicions—for centuries. They know that if you spend too much time in the libraries, you don’t come out, and that a dedicated enough archivist can find almost anything if they venture deep enough into the shelves.
This, then, is The Stygian Library.

HOW DO YOU GET THERE?

Only a few locations form a proper connection to the Library and thus can be used to access the place. The requirements are:

• It must be a collection of books or similar written works.

• A library, archive, or perhaps a particularly large bookshop.

• It must be large enough that you can’t see all of it from the entrance.

• Somebody must have died there

• You can kill somebody and an entrance will appear

Any such space will contain an entrance to the Stygian Library.
Any collection of books might contain an entrance if the information inside is interesting or potent enough. The entrance to the Library is a simple thing. Somewhere in the library, there will be an unmarked door. It is invariably locked. It is probably hidden, perhaps behind a shelf against the wall, beneath wallpaper, in rooms the public are barred from entering, or under a painting or sign.
Find it, unlock it, and on the other side the rows of shelves continue.

WHY GO THERE?

The Stygian Library is potentially infinite in its scope and complexity, touching—however tangentially—on every library built, that ever has been built, or that ever might be built.
Any knowledge can be had within its labyrinthine corridors, if you find the right book. Whatever information the players might need, the Library has it, if they only venture in.
Of course, the Library is not without its perils. The Library forms a network of sub-dimensional corridors and rooms, structured eerily like a traditional dungeon. And, of course, there are residents.
Strange creatures adapted to the academic environment. Often mad, often frighteningly intelligent, often hostile. An expedition into the Library is no trivial thing, and all manner of academics, archivists, and researchers have been lost in its depths.

Type

Dimensional plane