Seed Library

Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
— Greek Proverb

Seed Libraries are Pre-Lacuna archives of digital and physical media. They contain dense banks of literature, art, and encyclopedic knowledge stored within interactive SysTomes, mechanical Tomes with etched titanium foil page, nanite projectors, and a meta-crystal core that they can use for ambulatory spells to return to their home Library. The intent of the Libraries were to sow in colonies a vested interest, and to ensure that if that world is lost (as happened during Melancholic Lacuna) it has the knowledge it needs in order to rebuild and survive independently. As such, these libraries contain vast stores of information on farming techniques, politics, history, and the sciences. These libraries proved such a helpful and pivotal part of settling new worlds that all Banners, even those with whom the Archive had an uneasy or hostile relationship with, negotiated to have Libraries added to their settlements under the stipulation that they get to censor the data coming in. Althrough the Archive believes in free knowledge, they agreed to the stipulation—they would rather those worlds have the knowledge they need to survive. Many Seed Libraries on rediscovered worlds are in ruins, but there is evidence that they served their purpose very well in many cases

Architecture

Though many settlements embellished their Libraries with various facades, decorations, and flooring, they are at their foundation still Brutalist structures of imposing, monolithic meta-compressed Granite. Everything about them is meant to endure the ravages of time and weather, from their complex water-draining systems to their subterranean sealed vaults of meter-thick stone and reinforced titanium doors. Self-restoring generators and low-power electronics can keep the Libraries powered for a theoretical 600 years depending on the world and some other minor factors. As such, many of the Libraries are still operating on a power reserve mode.