Codexium Infinitae
| Location | Cordis, The Patchwork |
|---|---|
| Type | Library, Pre-Civilization Archive |
| Notable Features | * 30 floors above ground
|
| Status | Mostly abandoned (above ground); subterranean levels restricted or mythic |
Contents
Overview
The Codexium Infinitae is one of the oldest and most feared libraries in the known world—a towering and burrowed archive that predates modern civilization, possibly even humanity itself. Located deep in Little Akkadia, it rises thirty stories into the air and burrows at least fifty floors below. Surface volumes number over 240 million, with rumors that the subterranean levels hold a mirror number of books humanity was never meant to read.
Nickname
The huge building is commonly known as "The Dex."
History
According to preserved murals in the atrium vaults, the Codexium was first constructed during the so-called Ouroboran Epoch—a forgotten era when gods walked the earth and language was still molten. Legends suggest the first books were bound in serpent-hide and written in blood older than mammalian life. Over the centuries, scholars, madmen, and monarchs have attempted to catalog its contents, but none have succeeded. Whole civilizations have lost themselves in the effort.
Facility Description
Above ground, the Codexium resembles a towering ziggurat crossed with an orrery—its polished obsidian walls shift in tone under different phases of the moon. Internal chambers are illuminated not by sunlight, but by bioluminescent manuscripts that glow with cognition-reactive ink. Doors open only for those carrying a true question.
The deeper levels—those below ground—are carved from impossibly smooth stone. The 13th through 17th sublevels are said to twist spatiotemporally, looping back on themselves. The 29th contains the so-called Shadow Ledger, a black catalog listing titles that can never be safely read.
At the 50th sublevel and beyond, things are stranger still. Records speak of vaults without doors, halls of whispers, and living indexes that change their order based on the researcher's intent. It is unknown how many floors lie below—some say the Codexium has no true bottom.
What Happens If You Read Too Much
Too much exposure to the wrong books can lead to a syndrome called Scriptorum Drift—a condition where the reader’s language centers disassociate from the rest of their mind. Victims begin to speak only in lost tongues, bleed ink from the eyes, or physically vanish into the margins of the library itself. Those who descend too deep often return illiterate, blind, or worse—fluent in something they cannot forget.
Staff
The Codexium is maintained—if that word applies—by the *Whispering Lamplighters*, a guild of mute librarians who communicate only through scent and sigil. They carry living lanterns that shrink in brightness when lies are spoken nearby.
The upper floors also contain a small population of so-called Thread-bound, former readers who lost themselves to the deeper stacks. These individuals are docile but permanently altered, their skin tattooed with living citations.
Floors of Note
Floor 5 – The Dust Court Legal codes written in bone-ink. Court transcripts where defendants wept blood. Sentences that outlived nations. The shelves hiss softly, as if still arguing. A popular haunt for necrolawyers and revenant contract solicitors.
Floor 9 – Lamplighters’ Vestibule Where Whispering Lamplighters reside. Here stand the Ask-Counters—latticed brass screens behind which Lamplighters sit, cloaked in wax-stiffened robes and scented with citron ash. Requests must be whispered into horn-shaped tubes. Speaking above a whisper results in immediate eviction… if you’re lucky.
Floor 13 – The Rotogarden Animated scrolls and whisper-plants that bloom with murmuring mouths. A living catalog of oral histories, often incorrect, sometimes malicious. Scholars enter with wax in their ears. Some forget to take it out. Some never return.
Floor 17 – Recorded Echoes Supposedly holds the complete master recordings of every Huey Lewis and the News session, plus the lost works of Albazu-Kul (pre-stone xylophonist of the Vanta Tribes), and cursed wax cylinders attributed to a blind Akkadian demon-choir. Playback requires ritual cleansing and two witnesses.
Floor 22 – The Ninth Shelf Contains only one shelf. It’s 840 meters long and made of salt-soaked obsidian. All books on it are titled Untitled. If you ask a Lamplighter about it, they say, “We don’t shelve there. Not since the thirteenth hour.”
Floor 30 – Kynosphere A spherical chamber containing floating cubes of psionic parchment. Warped realities, counter-histories, and predictive falsehoods. Entry requires mind-stabilizers or a devout belief in something impossible.
Floor 31 – Military Histories, AE 900–1000 Known as The Red Annals. Contains journals from the Thousand Knives Conflict, the Eel Rebellion, and the final Siege of the Hollow Saints. Blood-forged weapons are shelved alongside personal accounts. Some tomes grow heavier with each act of violence you recall while touching them.
Floor 36 – Vermin Archive A living record of plague beasts, talking fleas, dream-insects, and soul-boring mites. Staffed by silent monks who wear cages over their heads. They sometimes ask to see your teeth.
Floor 43 – Forbidden Cartography Maps of territories that never existed—or don’t exist yet. Folded universes. Unfinished continents. Scabbed-over cities. Some maps rewrite your memory of where you were born. Others show what’s beneath your floorboards.
Floor 50 – Nocturnem Lexicon Lit only by phosphor jellyfish in tall glass columns. Here dwell words that never survived any spoken language. Reading them aloud causes shuddering, aphasia, or involuntary summoning. Great for poets.
Floor 53 – Votive Vaults A reliquary of burned diaries, locked journals, and suicide notes donated by mourners. Pages drip wax, blood, or occasionally a fine white sand. Most texts are warm to the touch. Some breathe.
Floor 66 – The Lament Press Floor hums with the sound of printing presses powered by guilt, regret, and the occasional soul tithe. Everything printed here is a confession—some signed, most not. The paper smells like sulfur and rain.
Floor 72 – Whisper-Only Zone Those who speak aloud are absorbed by the shelves. It’s unclear whether they die or merely become indexed. Hosts handwritten manuscripts on the birth and death of language. Lamplighters only enter in pairs, and only during stormlight.
Floor 81 – The Murmuring Morgue Shelves built into sarcophagi. Books bound in skin. Some moan when opened. Others whimper. This floor contains the autobiographies of those who died knowing too much.
Floor 99 – Godtext Reserves Access requires a Lamplighter’s black seal. Holds fragments of precursory scripture—older than thought, older than species. Scrolls speak in chords. Readers must be sedated and blindfolded.
Floor B-6 – The Candleclot Hollow Subterranean archive rumored to contain the first ever lamplighter’s taper. Shelves light themselves when approached. Smells of wax and gunmetal. No floorplan exists. You enter alone. If you leave, you’re no longer you.
