The fabled Library of Roam is spoken of only in hushed rumors, as though to raise one’s voice might forever close its doors.

But the Library of Roam has no doors, or at least no outer doors to bar entry. Nor, for that matter, can it be found on any map of the known world. The only known way to enter the Library of Roam is to be fortunate enough to find its stacks within another library. Turn a corner amongst the stacks, and one just might find that the light has shifted, and that they are now dwarfed by the surrounding shelves of books—tomes bound in everything from ancient reed, to leather, to flimsy glossy paper.

Despite the jumbled appearance of the Library of Roam’s collection, there is a method to its organization. Unfortunately for any regular visitor, that method is known only to the Librarian and those lucky enough (or so diabolically cursed) as to visit in their dreams.

Dreamers who wander in from other dreamt libraries may easily find what they seek. Indeed, it is said that they are the Librarian’s favorite patrons, and may converse freely with the Librarian when any other patron would be thrown out for speaking. But no accidental dreaming guest has yet managed to check out a book, and few have managed to retain the knowledge of what they read. They wake with a strong memory of their dream, and a powerful sense of having found all the answers they sought, only to feel it slip away slowly until the dream finally drifts from them like sand passing through clutched fingers. The lucky ones, the few who manage to record all that they can recall immediately upon waking, sometimes piece their discovery back together… but just as many never do, and are left with an aching sense of loss.

Dreamers who enter the Library of Roam of their own volition, and with intent, are the rarest of the rare. They may be frequent visitors, and some have even been seen leaving with books in their hands. They are also frequently strange in ways that make them uncomfortable to be around, with obsessions that leave them unfit for most human fellowship. There are exceptions to every rule, but the Library’s smart waking guests will avoid Dreamers anyway.

Waking guests who find the Library’s stacks amidst another library’s stacks are faced with a dilemma. There is no guarantee that they will ever find the Library again, for it does travel on strange paths between deep sets of stacks out of sight of the outside world. But when they seek a book in the Library of Roam, they must give a note to the Librarian and seek their assistance. For waking guests, all communication must be done in writing. And giving the Librarian a copy of one’s own words somehow allows the Librarian to find any other words one has ever written. For those whose writings are important to them, whose writings must forever remain private, this may be too much to ask.

But if a request is submitted without speaking, the Librarian will always find what one seeks. It is up to the recipient to learn the language of the text they receive, and come to understand what gift they now hold. Luckily, the due date and return policy is lenient: depositing the book in any library’s returns pile will suffice, and one may have a book for as long as one likes. The limit, however, is one book at a time.

Some spend their whole lives seeking the Library of Roam, traveling the world chasing rumors of its presence. Others claim to have charted it to the course of the heavens and the cycles of insects, and swear that they can find it at need. Few have the time or patience to master the arts needed to fully appreciate the gift that the Library of Roam represents, but finding it remains a fond fantasy for many, a dollop of mystery and romance in the world that lures the hopeful ever onward.

Cloudhome snags streamers of mist and fog on the plucking fingers of its ruins, a flat-tipped peninsula of stone stretching into the sky from the bone-white rock of Femur Butte. Cloudhome’s expanse hangs unsupported, only open air beneath it, and none know how it remains aloft. Those who live in its shadow say only that it must be the work of the ancients, some mystery known to those who came before that has since been lost. The locals who live below praise it for granting them with shade, and for catching the rainclouds which otherwise would escape their dry land for more hospitable climes. They also say that in times long past, Cloudhome was host to wonders that once changed the world. Now it is but a remnant, a fragment of what came before.

The paths up Femur Butte are arduous but well known, and the local goatherds have made a tradition of racing each other to the top. Only a few of them, however, dare to lead outsiders across the floating bridge of rock which arcs between the butte and Cloudhome. They say, and the visiting outsiders who return agree, that the air itself changes as one crosses the arc. It cools as one crosses the bridge, bringing a chill to the skin and frosting the breath of those still hot from their climb. Dew collects on the stones, dripping from the crumbling walls which yet stand on Cloudhome’s edge. Epiphytic fruiting vines cling to the stonework, their berries a bright and lustrous purple that bursts against the stones’ gray.

Within the walls of Cloudhome visitors find a great sense of peace. Mist clings to every surface, clouds caught inside the ruins’ bounds. Those who have investigated the ruins describe a feeling of rest, of safety, and of a great desire to lay down and let their worries give way to sleep. Those who sleep in Cloudhome and return say they have had the most marvelous dreams, often coming back transformed and inspired by their experience… but few who sleep there have made it back down again. Something about the place pulls one ever deeper into the ruins, with a draw that is difficult to escape. The bodies of those who never wake do not rot, but are called Sleepers by other visitors, and are left undisturbed. They may yet rise from their slumbers, reason others, and more than one legend prophesies the day when all those so blessed by peace will stand again.

Yet the ruins of Cloudhome are not all quiet. In some parts, there are unceasing noises, low rumbles and grinding from inside walls or beneath floors. Elsewhere lights flicker like foxfire in the mists, glimmers that lead ever further into the vine-entombed ruins. There are stories of vast black glass panes, where points of blue and green light gleam and shift, and of statues which speak to all who approach them in tongues long lost. And the ground does not all feel stable beneath one’s feet; inquisitive antiquarians have vanished into suddenly-gaping clefts in the flagstones, and more than one stone block has fallen from the sky to the ground below. Broad stone doors may open or close with little warning and no one to shift them, walls have rattled together and opened new passageways where none before existed, and thus the ruins of Cloudhome have preserved themselves as an unmappable enigma.

Even so, people still come from near and far. Some come seeking peace. Others seek, and find, lost knowledge etched in its stones, or buried in the ruins among the traces of a time and people long past. Healers, alchemists, and herbalists concoct medicines made from the plants and fruit of Cloudhome, fetching a high price far afield amongst those in the know. Many wish to know how it is that such a place could exist, let alone soar among the clouds with only a narrow tether to the earth stretching out beside it. Some few come with the dream of changing the world, of changing themselves, seeking wisdom in the dreams found amidst the clouds. 

Eight pillars of rock, metal, and glass soar towards the sky from a wide open plain. Set in a circle, with strange arrangements of mid-air arcs and lines connecting each with others, these pillars stand thousands of feet tall. Their shade alone has shaped the world nearby. Each is wider than a copse of vast trees. Together, they dwarf most cities.

No life clings to their exteriors, except a strange lichen that grows on the Pillars and no where else. Their stone is mixed intricately with their glass and metal, not as an ore but as though someone somehow blended all three together from separate pieces. The variation on the surface lies ropy in places, smooth in others, all congealed together in sheets and bands that run from the pillars’ bases to their very tops.

The pillars are believed by many to hold keys to the secrets of the night sky. Their arrangement, and the twining layers of arches and straight lines between them, etch lines across the stars that possess deeper significance. No oracle disagrees with this. Many seers believe that the truest reading of one’s fate can only be found amongst the Pillars. More than that, the Pillars are known to alter the fates of those who have spent time amongst them, though little is known of how such changes occur or how severe they may be. 

Those whose futures have been prophesied, and who have visited the Pillars, find that their prophesies no longer hold power over them. Those whose fates have been spoken, whether by curse or by boon, may have those fates tilted or twisted by visiting the Pillars. So it is that the Pillars receive pilgrims desperate to alter their futures; those who consider themselves truly cursed seek an alternate path forward, and few who know their future holds good fortune are willing to travel anywhere near the vast monoliths.

The Pillars do not guarantee any good outcomes, however. Indeed, many who visit them suffer unlikely and woe-begotten ends. Some few even die at the Pillars themselves, skin blistered by the unyielding cold of the stars, or ears riven and bloody from the Pillars’ rising whine. The columns are not silent: at all times, each has its own hum. But their hums and harmonies come and go, shifting, ebbing, and flowing in volume and tone.

Somehow, these tones do not bother the animals which have come to live in the Pillars’ shade. The most notable of these are the deer which have been said to dwell among the stones. Even when pilgrims have fled, their ears ringing and beginning to seep red, there have been sightings of deer watching, unharmed, while birdsong echoes. Some pilgrims have claimed that a stag with antlers of stone and glass watches over the herds. Others speak of the foxes which roam the land in the Pillars’ shadows, with their unblinking eyes of verdigris.

None have yet ascended the Pillars, though some few have tried. It is thought that any who reached their tips might touch the heavens, or find that they had reached the bridge to the stars themselves—and perhaps even beyond.