The Singing Spire
If there is one location within the city which manages to be louder than the constant construction of the Green Spire, it would be its purple neighbour. Even before you enter the library, you are the constant humming, chattering and above all singing of the Librarians outside the many entrances. Even out here, it is as if the Spire itself joins in the song; every now and then parts of the wall will pulse, and a great note will be added to the tune, much to the delight of the Librarians.
The song they sing is called the Song of the World. It is simultaneously comforting and disturbing, like finding something almost, but not quite, your mother cooking your favourite meal almost but not quite exactly how you remember it.
Inside the Spire itself, the noise almost becomes deafening. It virtually stops being a noise; your entire body hums with the Song of the World. You can take a book down from the shelves, fingers shaking rhythmically.
Anyone can enter the main area of the library, which covers virtually all fields and subjects. The Librarians might better be called Authors; most of the works are compiled by the purple clad acolytes of the Third. There are, of course, restricted areas, but the Librarians are perfectly happy to tell you how to enter these. Few do; whatever happens inside the restricted areas, the best case scenario is that you emerge and promptly join the Librarians themselves.
There’s also a gift shop. Some of the more enterprising Librarians have been attempting to use new music recording technology to put the Song onto cylinders for use in a gramophone. They have failed so far, but true to form they never give up, and you can still buy the warped metal remains of the prototypes if you so wish.
The Third
You do not see the Third. Somehow it is always hiding just out of sight, around the corner of that book case or just in the bit of the ceiling crevice that the light doesn’t reach. The Third is shy, but curious. Sometimes visitors to the library will be followed around by the clicking sound of many legs before the Third finally gets up the courage to greet them.
The Third also knows many things. If there is a problem you truly need solving, if there is piece of knowledge you need to find, you may well wish to ask the Third if it knows the information. And it will glad part with it…if you bring it a piece of information it wishes to obtain. This may range from movements of a gang in the city to the words of a new song to, if you have done something to anger the Third, telling it how many bricks are in the Fourth Spire.
The Librarians
The Librarians are…interesting, is the word that many would use. They are a common sight in the city; dashing around, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups. Even in the most dangerous areas there the Librarians will be, staring intently at the guttering at some rare moss or making notes about the brickwork. The Librarians are characterised as having no interest filter. They find everything fascinating, whether it is biology, architecture, the behaviour of people, or even just random everyday objects. Usually they flit from interest to interest, until suddenly they are seized by a sudden desire and spend perhaps years producing an incredibly in-depth thesis on the subject. This makes it very hard to actually get a straight answer out of them; either they will provide one sentence before being distracted by something else, or you will receive far more information than you ever wanted from them.
One might assume the Librarians would be a better fit for the Fifth, giving her corresponding love of knowledge and on the ground research, but the main issue is that they lack any kind of subtlety. Librarians constantly get in trouble with the law, the public and the criminal underworld alike because of their wandering and their concentration issues. The most famous incident was that of Lee Hardwick, a Librarian who was murdered while attempting to prove that the force of gravity decreased as one got further away from the Spiral Hill.
The citizens of the city put up with the Librarians simply because they do have a tendency to get stuff done. Possessing instance access to the knowledge of the Humming Library and the financial backing of the Second Spire and lacking the instinct that makes most people stop making things mean that collectively the Librarians, the Third chief among them, tend to be at the forefront of technological development. It helps that they have plenty of room to hide the failures.
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