I have created a masterwork library, The Armored Sanctuary, and filled it with 1,411 books, more than half of all books in the world. I then sealed in 10 chosen scholars given the gift of immortality and unlimited writing supplies.
https://i.redd.it/ng1qo6n4urn71.gif
https://imgur.com/a/yXMwlvF
The design is inspired by a potion flask, with a wide bottom, a long narrow stem, a flared top, and a cork. Each floor is a different colored stone in a checkerboard pattern with green glass. The bottom is a magma tube powering furnaces, the top is sealed with obsidian from the same lava tube. The layers and materials are:(Level, material, purpose)||Level 0, Obsidian, Lava reservoir||Level 1, Porcelain, full set of workshops storage||Level 2, Orthoclase, Temple and Tavern||Level 3, Microcline, Military training and Hospital||Level 4, Kaolinite, Bedrooms and offices||Level 5, Cobaltite, the library and reading area||Level 6, Colored Spiral, several stories of water storage||Level 7, Garnierite, Wells||Level 8, sand, Farming(for paper) and sand gathering||Level 9, Obsidian, cork that seals in the scholars.
The full history of the library's construction (on an underpowerd PC):
First, a site was chosen and the space for the library was carved out by an expedition force. The main consideration was presence of a near surface lava tube to power furnaces and sand for glass. Initial survey of the world and the collection of an initial stock of books was performed by an adventurer. After raiding several necromancer towers by hand, it was determined military might would be needed for a task of this magnitude, the fortress was reclaimed, and a military squad was formed, "the fiery knives". Collection of construction materials and the construction of the base was started as well.
The fortress's initial food source was turkey eggs, but dwarves failing to collect eggs on schedule resulted in several population explosions that resulted in low FPS. A vegan diet was established to preserve this most precious resource. Due to lax safety regulations and construction taking place over magma, several ghosts were incidentally created and put down with stone slabs. At the same time, unfettered access to the vast underground caverns resulted in the need to place several order for replacement cats with the trade caravans. The military training ground was moved to the cavern to remove expense inducing wild animals.
A dwarf was designated armorer and weapon smith and given large quantities of steel and told to make hundreds of sets of armor for a squad of just 10 dwarves. Any piece less than a masterwork was melted down and recycled. After several years this resulted in a legendary armor/weapon smith and a nearly unbeatable army who had been sparring while waiting. Unfortunately, they had to go into battle without gloves due to a bug in the military equipment list caused the game to quit to desktop if anyone tried to put on gauntlets. The army then spent the next several years collecting loose books from abandoned sites. There were hundreds of books in abandoned towers or monasteries free for the taking. Copy this down in your notes.
During the long book gathering, a few members of the fortress became enlightened and learned to raise the dead. At some point they panicked, raising some dead troglodytes rotting outside the base. Unfortunately, they raised them as intelligent undead. They resumed laying siege to the fortress for quite a while before the military returned form a raid and pounded them back into stationary mush. All except for one troglodyte who decided to just hang out near the forges walking back and forth not causing trouble. He was quite notable because he leaves a trail of ~ characters behind him as he walks which are his guts. His intestines were spilled in his first life and now that he's undead he doesn't need them but keeps them around anyway. Curiously, a regular at the tavern who visits from time to time has the same problem and the two are sometime mistaken for each other. He was made a pet of the base and sealed in with the scholars since his pacing had become part of the base's character.
After collecting all the loose books, the military was ready for proper collection methods. At this point they were an elite literary strike team, capable of sneaking into enemy and allied bases and sneaking out with all their reading material undetected. All were level 20 ambushers and most were level 20 fighters. And when they were found, the hoards of goblins and undead were powerless to stop their masterwork steel and fast cowardly escapes. Except for Likot, who joined late after getting depressed from "not practicing a martial art for too long". He had no particular skill to speak of, but he had a full set of armor and used the whole thing getting found by every civilized creature in the world on these stealth missions. During one mission where the squad fought properly, they seemed to have lifted a necromancer curse on the land. The base originally was in an evil/death biome and nothing grew native on the surface. All the trees/grasses were dead and brown, but after a violent mission, green grass grew. A few towers stopped defending after a while, and seem to have been abandoned. Perhaps one was the source of the dead grass.
After amassing the aforementioned 1,411 books, the construction of the library was completed. There is a central reading room around the stairs, and several solitary reading nooks in the corners. The central space also contains a slab with the secrets of life and death. Using (d)esignate-(b)ulk-(f)orbid all books in the library were forbidden, then in the enhanced stocks screen (dfhack) I searched for books containing title words from save/region9/raw/objects/text/secret_death.txt to find books that were probably about the secrets of life and death. I unforbid the books I found from this that were actually about the secrets of life and death, which was only about 10. Not a good percent, necromancers seem to prefer writing about how they didn't get into their dream school or how someone turned them down and then they lose their slab in a bush somewhere. I let everyone go idle, to encouraging reading. Most people went to pray or use the tavern, so I got rid of the activity zones. In short order the entire base, having nothing to do but read the secrets of life and death, became necromancers. They became unaging and immune to fatigue, sleepiness, hunger, and thirst. A tavern keeper was assigned to keep them properly drunk, thus avoiding bad thoughts from sobriety. I selected 10 dwarves who were either highly skilled (the armorer, for example), brave when gathering books (monom the destroyer), or memorable during construction (Lolor who lost his leg building the library either in a cave in or a giant bat attack, history is a little unclear).
Those 10 dwarves are still entombed today, either imprisoned forever so they can become a machine for producing art, or protected from the terror of the outside world and given unlimited intellectual freedom, depending on the reader's chosen interpretation.
![So, finally I've got time to progress with my cards (Start of the school year is always harsh) [OC]](https://a.thumbs.redditmedia.com/vmuUbM_Tv0BoEAi6LglY0U0ZEgRAkESQ9iWW4j7YO64.jpg "So, finally I've got time to progress with my cards (Start of the school year is always harsh) [OC]")
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