The Index and the Gazettes are the forms in which the Archive exists inside the world of Ardis Vala: a library beneath the Halls of Thoth, named “a total archive of writing”, consulted through “the index”, and, before it, the gazettes that described the region and became the census of Ritornello’s dead.
| Type | Concept |
| Location | Library beneath the Halls of Thoth |
| Chronicle | AV |
| Spanish entry | El Índice y las Gacetas (Ardis Vala) |
The library
Beneath the Halls of Thoth, where Golden Age mirrors spread a light no longer the sun’s, lies a library. The ancient-blooded devil serving the Priscians — who came disguised as an affable diplomat and was revealed as a three-meter dragonborn — named it a total archive of writing, wearing a ring of truth. He said so to explain why his masters cannot enter: traps of light destroy anyone who consults it without permission, and his real charge is that no one else reads.
The index
The librarian of the Halls, a thinking artifact that mages left on a moon in case the world was destroyed, handed it over: “I give you the glossary; we call it the index.” The Seekers lived among the volumes for weeks, then months. The index answered everything, and too much:
- Searching Dark Lords returned Caladan — his illustrated volume, the purple architecture of Valakhan, and a black panther beneath the throne that the written text does not record — and with him Antiterra.
- Searching the egg returned their own guilt as an entry: artifact, provenance, date, those responsible.
- Searching a sword and a lost woman returned names with worn spellings.
Its price
In the Priscians’ forge, Nerub Null priced knowledge by age, books for objects, with one exception: any knowledge to do with the Akashic records or the Aten is worth five times what its age indicates. When the Seekers asked him for access to the one thing he cannot have, the negotiation ended in plunder: they were stripped bare and sent to the surface with five coins each. The archive is what an archmage cannot buy and what a false pope (Alejandro Sixto) keeps without sharing — except the Atlas of the Twelve Worlds, which not even he lets be opened, because reading it drives one mad and makes ambition grow without measure.
The gazettes
At the threshold of the gesta (campaign-cycle), small broadsheets described the region like an almanac: Ritornero, a safe border port, main civilized settlement, founded about three centuries ago, governed by the baron, fifteen hundred souls, many demihuman. When Ritornello was flayed, the gazettes became the only census of the dead. On rereading them it was said that they will later also be part of the Akashic records: in the Akashic Library, nothing is written for the archive, but everything ends in it.
Role
The Glossary and the Archive exist within the world they gloss: called the index, priced, guarded by traps of light, and returning the name of whoever consults them. The twelfth House holds that the voice that glosses the world is a character of the world and dies within it; in Ardis Vala this became furniture, with shelves, a doorkeeper and a tariff.
See also
- Akashic Library
- Akashic Records
- Chronicle of the Archive
- Library of Thoth
- Nerub Null
- Lotario — the soul-line that reads the records across the cycle