"I am not from Shyish, either."

"Oh, where are you from?"

There is some frantic gesturing from Zana and Owain that that is an unproductive line of questioning, but it goes unheeded.

"A world very far from this one."

She smiles. "Well, I hope you've been enjoying Shu'gohl so far."

"My final opinion will necessarily depend on whether you let me in to the library."

"I'll see what I can do."

She strides off up the stairs of the library, and Owain and Zana follow.

And assuming no one stops her, so will she.

Some of the guards look like they are about to-- and then they see Nyoka, and immediately deflate.

"She tore strips off the captain last time someone tried to stop us," Zana whispers as an aside.

"Good for her."

"You should've seen it. It was impressive."

They enter the library. Despite it's size, it's cramped. Shelves cluster against each other, each laden with more books than should fit on them, and tables squeeze into the gaps between the shelves.

Impressive.

"Is there a categorization scheme?"

"Of course!" Nyoka says, and she lays out the general catergorisation scheme.

Good. She's looking for atlases, historical overviews, travelogues, magical introductions, bestiaries, things that can tell her what this world is about.

This library has those. The contents are mostly focused on the Realm of Beasts, which is where Shu'gohl is. (The Realm of Beasts: notable for being filled with large animals, many of which want to kill you. Except the worm. The Worm is Nice. Praise the Worm.)

There are 9 realms: Azyr (of the heavens, where Sigmar lives, who varies between 'figure of religious devotion' and 'figure of controversy), Shyish (of death, where Nagash is, similar reputation to Sigmar), Chamon (of metal), Hysh (of light), Ulgu (of dark), Ghyran (of life, where Alarielle lives, an aelvan and sylvaneth god), Aqshy (of fire), and Chaos (...of chaos. And filled with gods, apparently. These books don't want to describe these gods.) These realms are connected by Realmgates, which are an important strategic resource.

There are many more species, many of whom occur all across the realms. There are humans, aelves (who apparently come in many varieties), duardin (ditto), various forms of undead, daemons (from Chaos, descriptions also vague), beastmen (huge, savage man-beast things), skaven (traitorous, disgusting ratfolk that invaded Shu'gohl not so long ago), Stormcast (resurrected humans, work for Sigmar), sylvaneth (tree people), seraphon (reptilian, maybe from the stars?), and orks (large, green, like to destroy things.)

Magic is Chaotic energy split into one of eight 'winds', one for each of the non-Chaos realms. Certain people can sense these winds, and manipulate them to cast magic. The likelihood that someone can sense these winds and the ease with which they manipulate them varies from species to species. Aelves are particularly good.

What is a Realmgate exactly? Are they naturally occurring? Can they be made, replaced, diverted? Are spells cast spontaneously or are they rituals? How is magic taught? When is it determined if one has sensitivity to the winds? Is there a test?

She works through her questions patiently and methodically, exhausting one stack of books at a time before going to gather another round.

They are portals between Realms. They can occur naturally, but can also be made deliberately. They can be closed or diverted, but this difficult. (And there's often conflict about where a Realmgate should go, making this more complex.) They can also be destabilised (making them as likely to throw someone travelling through into Chaos as to their destination) and stabilised.

Spells can be either spontaneous or rituals. Rituals for long term affects, spontaneous for shorter. Studying magic often takes the form of an apprenticeship to a more experienced mage, or studying at a university, but varies culture by culture. How they work out whether someone is sensitive to the winds also varies quite a bit, but tends to involve subtle uses of magic and seeing whether the prospective mage noticed it.

Next, the gods. There seems to be a pantheon, how many of them are there? Do they work together or separately? How trustworthy are accounts of their existence? Do they intervene regularly in mortal affairs? Is there a location where they are known to reside? Do they cooperate? Do they choose champions? Are they associated with creation myths? Is there a unified priesthood?

There's a fair few gods, but most counts of them hover at around 14. Some of them work together: the gods of "Order" such as Sigmar (of humans, Praise Be His Name), Alarielle (of sylvaneth) and Grungni (smiths and duardin, and the one surviving duardin god) have a tentative alliance, as do the gods of Chaos such as Khorne (anger), Tzeentch (change and ambition), Nurgle (dispair and disease), The Great Horned Rat (betrayal) and Slaanesh (desire...who's apparently they've gone missing.) The gods of Chaos and Order predictably do not get along. There's a few harder to catergorise ones, like the aelven gods Tyrion, Teclis and Malerion who are nominally of 'order.' And Nagash, of death. He's very nominally of 'order'.

There's solid documentary evidence that Alarielle, Sigmar, Grungni, Teclis, Tyrion and Malerion  all exist. Multiple people have seen them, and the details are consistent enough for things to be fairly plausible. There's less evidence for the existence of the Chaos gods or Nagash , but the gods who definitely exist seem to think they do, and that's good enough for most people.

How interventionist they are seems to vary a bit god-by-god. The aelven gods apparently rescued all the aelves from being eaten by Slaanesh--that seems fairly interventionist, but after that they went quiet. A fair few dwarven accounts make it sounds like Grungni regularly talks to smiths, but that may be metaphor. Sigmar definitely intervenes. He spent a fair few centuries not, and leaving everywhere but his home in Azyr under the depradations of Chaos, but he's back being active. He has an army who has beaten back Chaos. This army is also apparently immortal, magical, made up of people who gave their lives to Sigmar, and made of lightning. Somehow. (Grungni also apparently has operatives. Some them also let a vampire into the library?)

Different gods live in different realms. Generally in fairly innaccessible locations. Accept Sigmar. He has a palace in the middle of Azyr. Any difficulty getting to him is more bureaucratic than physical.

The creation myths--are weird. Apparently there was a world that was--destroyed?--exploded? And Sigmar and co. used bits of it to rebuild this new world, with the help of Dracothion (a ...star drake. A father of star drakes. Whatever that is. The books aren't quite sure either.) Most of the current gods were either gods prior to the world being destroyed, or were mortals who became gods during the destruction.

Unified priesthood? Hahaha. Ha. The various cultures who worship Sigmar can't even agree on how to pronounce his name, let alone anything beyond the broad details of his worship. And that's not getting into all the other gods, with their rival religions. There's places where these rival religions kind of 'get along', in the sense that no one will stop you worshipping Nagash instead of Sigmar, and will merely judge you. Heavily.

Okay. Religious situation: complicated, plausibly relevant. Good combination. Nothing further about Dracothonion?

Dracothion is a) large, b) in the sky c) powerful and d) capable of crying starlight and summoning meteors.

...it is slightly unclear if Dracothion is an actual entity, or a metaphor to explain shooting stars and constellations.

All right. More about the Realms. They all have a theme, how is that expressed? Are they like elemental planes where everything is made up of the element?

Not quite. Their themes run through each Realm completely, but it's not like each Realm is only made of one element. It snows even in the Realm of Fire. Said snow falls on the peaks of active volcanoes, but it still snows. The Realm of Life has deserts. Deserts filled with cacti and hyperactive ecosystems, but deserts nonetheless.

Parts of a world, right.

Is there any scholarship on the origin of the various sapient species?

Most of the scholarship comes down to 'they came from the-world-that-was.'

And where they came from in the-world-that-was is 'the gods.'

That's helpful. But that's what comes of a world without immortals. History is lost.

Hm. There was a reference to mortals becoming gods. Was that just a story or does it seem like there's anything more to that?