Valhalla Kunnüstabók

The Valhalla Kunnüstabók is a large library located on the lowest levels of the Office of Knowledge, inside the city **Sinbius Vulcanius**. The library is the largest in the universe, and is home to millions, if not billions of documents outlining multiple different leaders, planets, and factions across the history of the Vulcanian Empire. Its vast network of hallways, stretching dozens of miles in every direction, quickly becomes a labyrinth with nothing but scrolls on either side. Each scroll contains lost secrets older than the stars themselves, with many historians wandering its enthralling maze finding themselves insane by their eventual exit. Knowledge is the ultimate weapon, but in the Kunnüstabók, it works against you.

Despite this horrific truth, thousands of historians ventured into its depths every year during the height of the empire, and dozens more still. The majority pan through thousands of scrolls, staying down in the halls for weeks at a time, looking for new secrets or knowledge to be brought to the surface. The minority look for the key for the **Höndhel**, the greatest prize of them all, located at the deepest part of the Kunnüstabók. What is inside the vault is unknown, only that Druidian, a historian that discovered the information now kept in the vault, was killed.

## History

The foundations of the Kunnüstabók were created soon after the **Unification Wars**, with scrolls detailing the fighting and different tribal cultures being stored in a concrete bunker called the **Djústrengir**. During the **Industrialization Age**, the size of the library rapidly expanded with new documents with it constantly being under construction. Marble was imported from across Valhalla to continue with its development.

Large warehouses supported by massive columns were built on top of each other, with smaller offices built on the sides to support further horizontal expansion if needed. The library continued to develop at a rapid pace for hundreds of years, only stopping its growth near the tail end of C0. By the end of the Industrialization Age, the library was an edifice 100 levels tall and spanned nine square miles. Growth throughout the rest of the Kunnüstabók's history is relatively slow, with it having no scandals or threats of destruction, as the library is one of the most heavily guarded places in the empire. The library gained 350 more floors in the span of almost three million years, with many others being expanded outwards from the main edifice, engulfing the surrounding complex and blocking it from the sun.

After the Collapse of the Vulcanian Empire, the House of Mimir took it upon themselves to maintain order within the Office of Knowledge and keep the Kunnüstabók relatively clean. With most guardsmen and soldiers that once maintained the library gone to fight above gone, their efforts are in vain. The library now is in a sad state, with the walls cracking and some pillars crashing down. Some historians are currently taking it upon themselves to repair the library with the little craftsman knowledge they have. Many more cry out to the House of Mimir for change in their policies, or a total upheaval of the office.

## Architecture

Consisting of over 450 floors, the Valhalla Kunnüstabók is the largest library in the universe. The library was home to the largest collection of documents and was the headquarters for the Office of Knowledge. Thousands of officers work here in the library's vast complex of buildings and many more work inside the walls of the Kunnüstabók itself.

Billions of scrolls dating back millions of years fill its hallowed walls and keep historians trapped within. Its never-ending maze of corridors and rooms makes it a chore to travel through, with each floor being millions of square feet across and lit only by the lanterns above. To make things slightly easier for the library's travelers, the Office of Knowledge commissioned the **Valhalla Kunnüstabók Maintenance Office** to divide the levels into three main sections, with each containing a certain time frame of the empire's recorded history. The Upper levels, as the first 400 floors are named, cover the majority of the empire's modern history, with the last fifty floors housing the distant past and darkest secrets of Vulcan and his constituents, including the famed Höndhel.

### Upper Levels

The Upper Levels, sometimes referred to as the Modern Levels, are a colossal complex of hallways containing the vast majority of the Vulcanian Empire's writing. Billions of scrolls discussing tax codes, government decrees, biographies of viceroys, and many more dreadfully boring subjects line its walls. Candlelit tables fill the center of the level's corridors, giving historians the chance to read and create new documents to fill the already crammed library.

### The Höndhel

The Höndhel is a vault just above The Djústrengir in the Kunnüstabók. On the same floor as the Imperial Concealment, the vault is surrounded on all sides by ancient scrolls from the **Industrial Age**, and is the most visited area in the entire library. The only entrance into the vault is through a key hidden in somewhere in the library. Many have tried to pry open the doors, which only leads to broken fingers and spirits. The entire vault is surrounded in an unknown metal allow which has properties similar to Diamond, but does not have any conductive properties.

Inside lies documents that are theorized to be extremely important, some say so important it can change everything known about the current universe. Legend tells that Druidian, The Mad Historian, was the reason such documents were sealed away. The timing of his death in C2 lines up with the creation of the vault found from carbon dating.

### The Djústrengir

The Djústrengir is the lowest level of the library, and is placed just below the ground in a bunker built 3 million years ago. Reaching the bunker can take days, weeks if stops are taken. The bunker is open to the public, and is the second most visited part of the library behind the Höndhel. Inside its dusty corridors are over 300,000 old tomes, volumes, and tablets from the first years of the empire, or even before that.

Some texts give way to theories that the **Nema-Fars** were formerly an advanced civilization, but some cataclysmic event forced them to regress back into tribal warfare. Others, that Vulcan created the Nema-Fars. Historians, if not turned insane, are enthralled by the early discoveries of the empire, and flock to the chambers of the Djústrengir to quench their thirst for knowledge.

### Imperial Concealment

**The Imperial Code**, after it was written, was presented in front of **The Infinite Pantheon** and the leaders of the **Office Optar** to be enacted. Vulcan, after it was enacted, ordered the document stored in a case at the bottom of the Kunnüstabók with the other important documents, relatively out of reach from the rest of Valhalla. The document, stored in the Imperial Concealment, was guarded by multiple **Valkyries** during the height of the empire, but is now defended by large **Catatronic Librarians** which pile up the corpses of historians on either side of the concealment. Until somebody murders these guards and clears the library, the code will be impossible to access.