Cognitive Plane

Known to its inhabitants as the Wanderer's Library, it is a seemingly endless plane of hexagonal galleries full of shelves and shelves of books. Each of these galleries are connected by corridors and expand in all directions containing all the books that could ever be written. Several races from across the cosmos have discovered the library only to be stranded within its maze, populating it with cults of book worshiping fanatics, otherworldly creatures, and rats.

The Library
Existing on a once empty plane of order the Wanderer’s Library didn’t exist until the first intelligent species began to write. From that moment on this seemingly endless plane would be filled with a massive library of interconnected hexagonal galleries. Their arrangement identical: twenty bookshelves, five to each side, that each line four of  the hexagon’s six sides. Each of these bookshelves contains thirty-two books, each identical in format; Each book contains four hundred and ten pages, forty lines; with each line having approximately eight letter written in black upon white pages.

The cosmos now having memory, stories, and new ideas populating every shelf in the Library with every book that could possibly be written. Though a large majority of them were random gibberish, the rare few had potential to contain the greatest knowledge, secrets, and stories ever told.

These endless halls of knowledge went untouched for hundreds of thousands of years until one day a portal known as a “way” opened up at the center of a hexagon connecting the library to the the dying world of the small and curious race, the Homunculi.

The homunculi had used all of their planets resources to build a vast network of interconnected communication and knowledge to their people, this generation of new information aligned their world with the many identical works contain in the library and a one-way portal was created between their greatest center of knowledge and a hexagon room in the library. With their homeworld dying several thousand of them made the journey to the library as the way portal collapsed. They found themselves in an endless labyrinth of books

At first they were timid to interfere with the books at all, with high ranking members declaring to only read their spines and to not open them or move them in any way. They soon found that each corridor that connect the different hexagonal galleries had small chambers that would serve for sleeping and facilities, however there was nothing that could provide food.

After a few days the homunculi grew restless and began to eat the rats they brought along with them as pets, a few of these creatures escaped going on to populate the infinite library in future centuries. Eventually when the rats were gone they turned on authority and began to read the books. The pages of the books with indecipherable, written in what seemed like gibberish to them, however the warmth and nourishing energy they felt when trying to read the pages soothed their hunger and soon they all began to feverishly scan through each volume in the hexagons they occupied.

They soon discovered that once a book had been looked through it no longer gave off an energy. Suddenly these books were not just potential knowledge but a resource they needed to survive. Several of them broke off into tribes following dispute on how to proceed with this new information and soon they lost track of each other as they traveled deeper and deeper into the unending library.

Overtime several other races from around the cosmos would reach a high enough level of knowledge and communication to align themselves with the library, many of these able to maintain their way to the library and creating great fortresses out of the galleries surrounding their way portal. Still, the library was vast and most of these civilizations built unaware of each other, endlessly searching for hidden knowledge while expanding their reach and power.

Despite the vastness of the library, eventually the pursuit of mortals and the passage of time would change the library. Empires controlling hundreds of thousands of hexagons would rise and fall, often destroying the way portals of their enemies and their own in the process, stranding more races to the library. Entire galleries were ripped, their books burned, and new foundations put in place, creating vast fortresses in a sea of books. Eventually wanderers would have to travel deep into the library to find hexagons untouched by the desperate souls who came before them.

The Keepers
It was in this state that the races of Boreal found their way to the library early in their Age of Mist with the creation of the Codex by the rat-like roden in their capital city of Dirigidale. Immediately realizing the potential of the library they quickly established a coalition of roden and other surface races of Boreal to create the Keepers, a devout monk-like order of historians who value truth and preservation of truth above all. These Keepers began to sweep through not only the galleries of the library but also through the ancient ruins and capital cities of their home world, intent of preserving their history from the endless clockwork cycles of terror that occurred on their world.

The Keepers at first operated very differently than the other wanderer races that had discovered the library. When they encountered the ancient and deranged homunculi  instead of harassing them, they befriended them and attempted to understand their endless babel. They made pacts with other groups in the library when they found them, and were more concerned with any knowledge these groups may of disturbed rather than securing that knowledge for themselves. Eventually the keepers had a vast facility of agents and archivists who began to catalog and protect the many wonders of the universe.

These Keepers and their preparations were instrumental in the creation of the Prismatic Way, following the collapse of Boreal during the rise of the Gargoliths during the Age of Balance. They used  newly discovered knowledge found deep within the library and were able to create an instrument that would allow them to manipulate their way portal to a specific period of time within the last astral cycle of Boreal. Able to travel anywhere within an over six-thousand year stretch of time on their home, they used the knowledge they have discovered in the library and their vast historical archives. The Keepers dedicate themselves to preventing this new timeline from suffering the same destruction as the last.