d10 Esoterica of the Menagerie world (GLoGtober #7)

Taking a prompt from the list on GLoGtober '22: Under New Management we discuss "Cycles of violence" from a promptlist by CatDragon

Taking our definition as "things understood by or meant for a select few; recondite matters or items." we get Esoterica of the Menagerie world.

Types of strange and restricted knowledge begin with those close to the sources of power.

Individual wizards in their towers have been following the ancient traditional ways of knowledge hoarding and apprenticeship. These are at one time both the most known and hardest to access pools of knowledge - what wizard knows what, which one would be willing to speak?

Next are the sages, both individually and collective, who are more open to talking but more limited in what any one of them can speak to. They can direct you to others who can help but you may need to travel a lot

The temples of Ioun would be what most common folk would think of as the place they were most likely to get an answer to their obscure question. In the greater cities, extensive basement and sub-basement sprawl house many diligent and specialist acolytes who tend the collected knowledge of obscure and ancient topics and can answer questions, usually after some waiting

Any number of cults, craft guilds and other associations may keep their own histories and secrets in either written or oral form, passed to initiates. The difficulty in knowing who might know what and getting them to reveal what they know makes this a rarely followed path.

Libraries of certain noble houses can be useful - some are little more than records of their lineage and the affirming histories of the house, just a room of sooks testifying to their legitimacy, but others contain the passing curiousities of members of the house and can be deep and extensive gatherings of lore on a topic

Personal memories of long lived races, stories passed on from a millenia old sire to a now millenia old adult can reach deeply into the past and be vivid witness to obscure deeds - provided you can find the ancient being and persuade them to talk

Oracles, seers and other visionaries can sometimes be persuaded to turn their third-sight to the distant past, but depending on the topic and the things being scryed upon they may refuse.

Once past these many sources of 'living' history - active collections or experts - one must consult the silent voices of the past in records and remnants. Some of these may be found in fragments in certain collections and most of these are known as places to seek answers but none are freely available and must be sought out at hazard.
1. Rubbings of the great carvings of the dwarves, on the drop doors on the under-roads. Acquired at great effort by venturing into the underroads, braving the long-haul underground and the beasts that dwell there.
2. The Tomes of the Masters of Mazgil Furnace. A dwarf translated set of qualith tomes. Most useful for their faithful recreation of the qualith borders to the pages, offering a rosetta-stone for qualith to dwarf. Together the whole collection covers all the strategic and operational practicalities of launching interplanar incursions
3. Clawstones - to the passing eye looking like caverns clawed out of the rock - many originally were - but over the long ages of their use, the wider entryways bear the scratched in testimony of many inhabitants. The tale of rise and fall of ancient groupings can be read in the shift in claw styles, the obliteration of old patterns and the gradually lowering of the marks upon the walls
4. Scentposts - some of the oldest remaining traces of life here, these magically retained scent markers can yield tales to appropriately sensitive animal-lings. Most often placed as wardings and warnings over entombed horrors.
5. Writings of Conchordia - great scrolls of the Titans, natural philosophy from a time when the laws of nature were being set. Invaluable to conjurers or others seeking to alter natural forms. Presumed to be locked in the libraries of the lost city.
6. The long chant of the Kings of the North. In its entirety speaks of the laws, knowledge and vanquished foes of the Kings in the North. Practically, this sung saga is a map to many barrows and hidden places across the frozen North and within the southern dominions they once conquered. The difficulty comes in being present when a skald sings the chant and getting away again with the knowledge
7. Sentinels - long slumbering ancients, at the threshold of life and death, contactible with those magics that can speak with the dead but more lucid having never passed beyond the veil. Never attempt to wake them or they will perish
8. The Compact of the Princes - the great treaty dividing up the south after the withdrawal of the Elves over the water, said to contain the most accurate maps in existence, detailing many now lost locations
9. Records of the Elven Imperial colonies. Legendary tomes that are alleged to explain why the elves came to this continent when it was a wilderness and left it populated with multitudes of animal-lings.
10. Hive Vaults - in certain places there remain a few abandoned hives of abeils, wasp-folk and others. Like a zoetrope, spinning reveals the knowledge carved upon the walls, but it is the viewer that must spin, in the manner of the hive dance. It is said that the revelations of the dance fade from the mind once one stops, it is said that some dance themselves to exhaustion and death trying to hold onto whatever it was they saw.