The Biblioplex

B1. Main Entrance

Enchanted marble steps lead up 5 feet to a small plaza at the Biblioplex’s entrance. The double door’s vertical handles are each carved in the likeness of a robed scholar. During the day, the doors stand open. At night, the doors are closed, locked, and sealed with an arcane lock spell. Only the Biblioplex’s reference librarians and certain faculty members know the arcane lock’s password.

B2. Biblioplex Lounge

Luxurious couches and sturdy tables furnish this spacious area. Students, employees, and staff members often use this lounge to relax between shifts in the student store (area B5), the Biblioplex café (area B6), or elsewhere in the library. Each table holds piles of magazines, newsletters, flyers, and nonmagical scrolls from around campus. A character who examines these materials finds recruitment flyers from Extracurriculars. They also find “Help Wanted” ads for the Jobs at the Biblioplex.

B3. Student Café Seating

This area typically holds numerous students, all of them studying, eating, chatting, or even sleeping. Many enjoy food and drinks from the café (area B6).

B4. Information Desk

Three faculty-appointed reference librarians work at each of these circular desks. All are expert scholars and powerful mages. They can provide helpful instructions for where to find any public location or collection in the Biblioplex.

B5. Student Store

This small shop is stocked with books, equipment, and gear useful as academic supplies. The store’s manager is Groff Lundquist, a friendly Strixhaven staff member known for his ability to fashionably mix and match items of university apparel. Students can buy hats, scarves, tunics, robes, gloves, and other apparel embroidered with the Strixhaven star or with the sigil of any of Strixhaven’s colleges. Costs range from 5 cp to 5 gp or more.
In addition to nonmagical gear and clothing, the store also contains magic items.

B6. Biblioplex Café

One wall of this area is covered with a mural made from a living tree’s roots, which move occasionally and make the entire place feel alive. The ceiling is covered in painted leaves, which change colors depending on the season thanks to a permanent illusion effect. The magic also prompts painted squirrels to run up and down the mural’s roots, and painted birds to chirp among the leaves.
Up to ten students are typically present here during the day. Ordinarily, three more students work here, the café’s manager is Aisla Fitzbottom. She is charmingly perky and has a mind like a steel trap when it comes to recognizing students. However, her organizational skills are somewhat lackadaisical.
The café always serves coffee and tea, which costs 1 cp per cup. The sandwich of the day varies.

B7. Lecture Hall

Each of these halls hosts interdisciplinary lectures for Strixhaven students. The seats magically grow or shrink to comfortably accommodate students of any size or body type. The halls’ acoustics are magically enhanced to amplify the professor’s lecture and minimize the disruption of side conversations. While a class is in session, each hall holds a professor and up to thirty students.

B8. Study Area

These open study areas feature simple wooden tables and chairs. During the day, up to thirty students can typically be found here.

B9. Book Garden

In these quiet areas, students sit on the grass and study among lush foliage. Sometime last year, three awakened shrubs wandered in here and settled in each garden, and the university has welcomed them to stay. Members of Witherbloom College typically tend this space, and three Witherbloom pledgemages can be found here most days.

B10. Main Stacks

Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves fill the center and the east end of the library’s first floor, with the denser east stacks under a magic effect that shifts them when students approach, creating space to stand single-file between them. These books are mostly introductory texts, and first-year students are often directed here by their instructors. In each of these areas, two cogwork archivists (see chapter 7) busily shelve returned or misfiled books.
Characters who browse these shelves unaided stumble on what they need with a successful DC 15 Wisdom (Perception) check. However, it’s always easier to ask a reference librarian (area B4).

B11. Hall of Oracles

This hallowed hall is filled with statues of the university’s past Oracles. At the center of the hall, a pulsing ball of magical energy—the Strixhaven Snarl—fills the area with bright light.

B12. Student and Alumni Art Gallery

This crisp-looking room features white walls and columns that stretch from floor to ceiling. Displayed on or within these are art pieces representative of various media. Students from Prismari College typically tend this space, and three Prismari pledgemages can be found here most days, either cleaning the gallery or studying the techniques used in the displayed pieces. A storage area at the back holds supplies and artwork waiting to go on display.

B13. Amphitheater

This impressive stage is used for lectures, for assemblies, and as a gathering place in case of emergencies. Magic steps lead up to the stage from the floor of the library. Members of the Playactors Drama Guild often use this stage to meet and rehearse when the Rose Stage on Silverquill’s campus is unavailable.

B14. Student Activities Center

This room is filled with tables and chairs and is available to any student organization registered with Strixhaven for use as a meeting place, rehearsal facility, or crafting site, or for other approved purposes.
This area is currently set up to promote Extracurriculars. The tables are covered with flyers from the Dead Languages Society, the Dragonchess Club, the Dragonsguard Historical Society, Future Entrepreneurs of Strixhaven, the Intramural Gymnastics Club, the Intramural Silkball Club, the Intramural Water-Dancing Club, the Mage Tower Cheer Squad, the Strixhaven Iron-Lifters Society, the Strixhaven Show Band Association, the Strixhaven Star, and Student-Mages of Faith.

B15. Student Council Hall

Filled with wooden tables and benches, this room has a flag displaying the Strixhaven star symbol hanging on its back wall. Here, a student council publicly debates Strixhaven policies that most affect the student body. The leaders of the school’s Extracurriculars come to the council to conduct matters of business, and the council usually meets on the first day of every month. Outside those meeting days, the room is used for other official university business or stands empty.

B16. Advanced Student Stacks

Rooms on the Biblioplex’s second floor can be accessed only with keys held by faculty members, or that the reference librarians in area B4 grant students on a case-by-case basis. Typically, students don’t receive keys to these stacks until they’re studying for their final thesis during their fourth year at Strixhaven. The arcane knowledge in the books here is not public—and is sometimes dangerous.
To prevent overly ambitious mages and Strixhaven’s enemies from teleporting into and accessing this area, two shield guardians patrol at all times. Both the guardians have sleep as their stored spell, and their control amulets are in the possession of two of the librarians on duty in the Biblioplex. Students with permission to work here are given passwords by which the Constructs recognize them as friends.

B17. Advanced Student Office

These private offices are for students working on their theses, accessed using the same keys that allow access to area B16.

B18. Advanced Student Lounge

This rest area is designed to help stressed-out senior students unwind. Large tables are set up for gaming and shelves are filled with recreational reading material. The area can be accessed only through the advanced student stacks (area B17).

B19. The Compendium

This area on the library’s third floor holds copies of most of the mundane, widely available written works in the world. The books are inscrutably cataloged, so it’s almost impossible to find anything without requesting information from a reference librarian (area B4). Characters who look for information without obtaining help discover what they’re looking for only with a successful DC 20 Wisdom (Perception) check.
At the center of this area stands a statue depicting a mighty, benevolent dragon. The magical statue reads aloud the contents of most books placed in front of it if a character makes that request verbally or mentally. (The magic of the statue can assess text such as verbal curses that present a danger if read aloud, and the statue ignores requests to read such text.)