A Bible Of The Faithless
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A Bible of the Faithless - 1


In a remote sector of the library, long since emptied of books and patrons, lies a desolate realm of death. Massive trench systems, stacks of ammunition and crumbling siege towers stand witness to an ancient conflict. Skeletons of long dead soldiers droop over makeshift palisades, and the infinitely preserved bodies of docents and pages drift slowly across a scarlet ocean. This is the abode of Tserof, the fourth Chief Archivist, and "patron god" of the Ecclesia Infidelium. Dare to venture through this crimson swamp and you might find the Fallen Lord crouched upon his broken throne. The archivists that cast him away will reassure you that Tserof is no more, but their claims are empty and their words are laden with fear.

The Founding

There was a time, soon after the end of the Twin Third Chief Archivists' reign, when a mighty oaken ent, glorious and grand, was chosen to be the fourth Archivist of the Wanderer's Library. However, his endless greed for knowledge was his downfall, and he was reborn a resentful, embittered being, destroying the very books he once embraced with joy. His mind was wrenched from his body, and he was cast into the basement, an unknown world of shadows and darkness. But where did his mind go? Surely it must have gone somewhere, for nothing is ever truly purged from the Library. Sure enough, it had been moved. Moved to the most secure place an object of such danger could be sent. The lair of the Serpent.

The Serpent looked down at the fallen ent with disappointment in its weary eyes. It had expected so much from him. It had thought it had seen youth and insight in the ent's eyes, but it now realized it had been wrong. What had seemed like youth had, in reality, been childishness, and his so called insight, merely an illusion caused by the vastness of his knowledge.

"Tserof," it slithered down from the smooth golden tree it had been sitting on.

"Do you not feel remorse? Do all the souls you have slain and the books you have destroyed not mean anything to you?" It knew the answer, but it asked anyway, hoping it was wrong. Alas, the answer was the same as the one it had predicted.

The ent grimaced. "Remorse? Meaning? All of you may have time to lay back and think about your morals, because you're already content. Why do your beloved patrons get the objects of their desire; life, happiness, protection, when I can't have what I worked harder than them for? I've read every single book in the library, but where's my omnipotence?"

The Serpent sighed. "No one can know everything, Tserof. Not even me, not even you. And I think you know that already."

"Well then." Tserof smiled bitterly. "If I can't get what I want, then no one should get what they want!"

"That is not how the world works, Tserof." The Serpent rose up, a towering pillar of giant scales, glinting icily in the sunlight. "You hoarded information but you could not derive wisdom from it. And so, when your quest for omniscience failed, you took your rage out on the innocent. The Library does not forgive such sins lightly. It is time you accepted your punishment and served your sentence."

Tserof stepped forward, his eyes narrowed. "That's where you're wrong. What makes you the decider of fate, the enforcer of rules?" His twitching branches unfurled to reveal fetid colonies of horrific abominations that flew at the serpent with an unnerving synchrony.

The battle that followed dragged on for days, the ent's endless stream of monsters pitted against the Serpent's overwhelming destructive might. While the ent was most certainly incapable of defeating the Serpent, his abilities and immense knowledge were more than enough to escape it. After days of ferocious fighting, Tserof managed to break out of the Serpent's Lair.

Back in his gnarled body, Tserof roamed the Library, biding his time and patiently waiting for the day he would be able to overthrow the Serpent and carry out his vendetta against the world, until one day he met a peculiar woman by the name of Ira. She too yearned to overthrow the librarians and the Serpent, albeit for vastly different reasons. She argued the laws of the library were too inflexible, too harsh, outdated and unfair. What were they all doing, living under the rule of a monarch they didn't even know? Tserof laughed. Who did she think she was, waging a war against an entity as powerful as the Library itself? He was about to brush her and her naive ideology off when he felt the familiar tug of the Serpent, ever stronger, sternly calling him back to his eternal imprisonment. Time was running out. Pretending to agree with the her, Tserof joined the rebel in her fight against the library.

Ira soon gained many followers amongst the victims of the library, wronged by other patrons and wronged yet again by its "justice". Soon the ranks of the organization swelled as more and more acolytes flocked to what soon became to be known as the Ecclesia Infidelium, or Church of the Faithless. But this hard earned prosperity did not last long. The Serpent had recently bolstered the armed forces that protected the library, and the inauguration of the 5th Chief Archivist, a radical and militant leader, was not improving the situation.

It was not long before superhuman battalions of insectoid pages and humanoid docents were at the gates of the Ecclesia Infidelium looking for Tserof. The ent expected to meet his end then and there, but loyalty is a reckless thing, marching its believers under a guise it calls honor. The Church, fighting for who they believed was one of their own, started its first and last conventinal war against the formidable might of the Library. A long, bloody battle ensued, and despite the sacrifices of the brave, the Serpent's forces proved victorious. Ira fell in battle, evacuating the last of the non-combatants, and died in the arms of the ent. Throwing her limp body away, Tserof stood up and gazed down at the carnage unfolding before him.

After the battle, defeated and fractured, the church disappeared from the public eye. But aided by Tserof, they slowly came back together. The surviving Domini Dubitandi resumed their recruitment of new members from the shadows, slowly restoring the Ecclesia Infidelium to its former glory. And the ent, now fully understanding the true value of his idealistic benificiaries, continued to battle the Serpent on a psychic level, mitigating most of the library's direct attacks on the church, and putting the Eccliesia Infidelium and the librarians on more equal footing. Even now, fleeing from the murderous docents and the chittering pages, more and more ill fated patrons join the Legio Mendacii to fight for justice and freedom from the rule of the Serpent, unwittingly bringing Tserof's plan of revenge and destruction closer to fruition.

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