The Archive is capable of surveying worlds and realms and planes that populate the observable multiverse.

The method of surveying comes from the Planetarium Infinitum, just one of the many chambers within the Archive proper.

Within this spacious room are two important devices:

The first is the Telescope of Ithelos, a wondrous device wrought from copper, platinum, brass, and highly polished glass lenses, imbued with powerful planar magic.

This magical marvel can pierce through unknowable distances to observe solar systems, worlds, cities, and buildings.

It can observe rooms and chambers within those buildings, the people that inhabit those rooms and even the thoughts and feelings of their hearts and minds.

To use such a device requires an individual of considerable power and restraint.

And as such, in the long, nearly infinite history of the Archive, there have only been four such individuals who have ever operated the Telescope of Ithelos.

The first is Ithelos themselves, often considered to be one of the two founding partners of the Archive.

It was Ithelos who had the idea of coming up with the device to observe worlds from afar rather than requiring someone to travel to a known world and search for a means of traveling from that world to another connected one.

Through this invention, the Keepers were able to discover and catalog worlds at a substantially quicker pace, and their archives swelled correspondingly.

What became of Ithelos is not rightly known.

Although his disappearance millennia ago was cause for substantial concern at the time, theories and rumors about it have come and gone amongst the Keepers and those guests who have visited the Archive.

The most recent Observer, which is the title reserved for the one who uses the telescope of Ithelos, is Konndy.

Konndy is a relative newcomer to the use of the telescope having only held the title of Observer for a scant few centuries.

In that time however Konndy has kept up, or increased the typical pace of world discovery which many believed would be difficult if not impossible for an Observer so new.

When an Observer is scouring the stars for new worlds they are not alone.

Circling the Telescope of Ithelos are long, curved wooden tables.

These tables though seemingly mundane and unsung in any songs, have borne witness to the cataloging and categorization of an untold number of worlds.

Arrayed around these two semicircular tables sit six scribes, Keepers who have the very important job of recording the observations and discoveries of the Observer.

The Observer dictates what they witness at a nearly breakneck speed.

It is the job of the scribes to be ready to pen the information told to them when their name is called by the Observer.

After a session spent studying the skies, the notes written by the scribes are then collected by other Keepers, organized, catalogued and turned into documents to be filed away within the Archive.

Many of these documents are not considered World Books for they do not possess the power to transport an individual into that world.

These more “mundane” texts are no less valuable however,  as they complete the Archive’s collection of knowledge.

For a World Book itself to be created, special components must be gathered, many of which are housed in storage within the Archive.

When the Observer knows or believes that such a new discovery is to be found, the Head Scribe (currently a person named Rexalon) will fetch the components and will pen the World Book themselves.

Upon its completion the Observer will come down and sign the text, stamping it with their own personal seal. This seal imbues the magical connection between the world observed by the Telescope and the tome written by the Head Scribe and sealed by the Observer.

In this way, a clear paper trail exists, not only cataloging the world, but which of the Archives Observer’s and Head Scribe’s were a part of that individual world’s discovery and categorization.

In the next article, we’ll look at the other object in that great palatial room of the Planetarium Infinitum, the Orrey of Worlds.

See you then.

– Mike