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Pawnsmoor Hall
Pawnsmoor Hall is a region within the Great Library, designated as part of the Forbidden Chamber until the event of Pars Mythos Revolt. Comprises eight library corners, each comes with its collection of books, artifacts, and other forms of literature. It is one of the Great Library’s most coveted collections and had became the place where important events happened, including the infamous Mad Queen Incident and its reappearance 10 years later.
Architecture
Being one of the oldest sections in the Great Library, Pawnsmoor Hall keeps its old-style architecture; stone arches with elaborate carvings, ornate wooden bookshelves, and tattered tapestry with golden linings are prominent in the major section of the hall. Its age is also identifiable by looking at the blue marble tiles instead of the more recent grey and white marble pattern.
The hall originally had five stories tall and capable of housing over 144,000 manuscripts, as mentioned in its administrative record written by an unknown individual. Grand Archivists of the past had planned the hall to be the central part of the Great Library, but they backed out for some unknown reasons. Visitors can still find the hints of the plan by taking a scrutinizing the golden arches with etched brass marks within the hall.
Because of the time-space distortion around the hall, most of its structures were disintegrated into nothingness or shattered, leaving a portion of its former shape floating around in the vacuum. The only segment that’s still holding its own shape is the remaining of its main hall–most notably the first and second floor–and a giant door where the only access from and to the main section of Great Library is located.
History
In Library’s early era records, Pawnsmoor Hall was one of the original complexes that made the Great Library. One of the earliest Maker’s schematic journals was found within the hall along with approximately 30,000 scriptures written in ancient glyphs and languages. The original proprietor is unknown; the Archivists’ research on the hall’s foundation and its history is still ongoing.
In the event of Mad Queen Invasion, the invaders raided the Hall, destroying more than half of the collections. It also triggered a time-space distortion, causing the hall to fall apart slowly. In the event's wake, Grand Archivists marked the hall as “Forbidden Chamber” in order to keep it away from Library’s visitors.
After being off-limit for millennia, the hall became accessible again thanks to Pars Mythos initiatives who broke the Forbidden Chamber seals. In the following decades, the hall witnessed the infamous Pars Mythos Revolt, in which it became the initiatives' headquarter until “visitors from the forbidden realm” made their way into the hall and foiled Pars Mythos’ coup against the Grand Archivists.
In Empty Tome saga
Pars Mythos made use of the hall as their base of operation, thanks to its “off limit” status and its access–or the lack of it.
Leictor, leader of the initiative, used the hall’s collection for his experiments, from obscure transmutations to replication of living beings–a practice which, in that time, deemed as both unethical and blasphemous.
At the peak of Pars Mythos’s revolt, a group of wanderers made it to infiltrate the hall with the use of Serpent’s Tunnel provided by the Merchant’s Guild. This event led to information leaks which unveiled the initiative’s true motives, and ultimately, its dissolvement not long after Leictor was terminated.
A week after the aftermath of the event, Pawnsmoor Hall disappeared again due to time-space distortion anomaly.
In Archivist's Curse
Ten years after Pars Mythos Revolt, the hall resurfaced and became accesible once again along with an entity who called himself “Chessmaster”. The hall was linked to the disappearance of Great Library’s patrons over a decade, with the most recent one involved a certain riftwalker and one of the Library’s curators–the latter would be identified as Ruby, Scarlet Corner's curator.
At the time of their imprisonment, they discovered the Empty Tome which then they used to outmatch Chessmaster in his own twisted game of chess. They eventually broke free from Chessmaster's clutch and made an escape out of the hall.
The Empty Tome, one of most coveted Library's artifacts, was deemed lost once again in the aftermath of this event. Further investigation of Pawnsmoor Hall's reappearance as well as an attempt to neutralize the time-space anomaly surrounding it was issued by Grand Archivists afterwards.
