> [!infobox|wikipedia] > # Circle of the Scroll > [![[Circle_of_the_Scroll_small.webp|cover hsmall]]](Circle_of_the_Scroll.webp) > ###### Faction Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Type | Faction | > Category | Governing Circle | > Allegiance | Independent | > Leader | [[Archivist Elrohir Gemflower]] | > Base | Mnemorium Canton, [[Sumara, The Shining City\|Sumara]] | > ###### Status > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Status | Active | The **Circle of the Scroll** is one of the seven governing Circles of [[Sumara, The Shining City]], the city's archivists and lore-keepers. From deep stone libraries beneath the Mnemorium Canton they tend the most extensive historical archives in the known world — centuries of records spanning the Material Plane, the [[Chaos Wars]], and the [[Silmara Family|Silmara]] lineage — making them the living memory of the elven people. ## Purpose & Goals The Circle of the Scroll preserves, organises, and guards the written record. Their libraries hold ages of elven history in scrolls, tomes, and chronicles — the fullest such record anywhere, though the deepest antiquity outruns even their archives, surviving only in fragments and half-remembered account where it survives at all. In a city that reveres its own past — the Bridge of Recollection carries two thousand years of it carved along its full length to the Citadel gate — the Scroll are the keepers of that record in its most complete form. What the rest of the world has forgotten, Sumara's archives often still hold. They are scholars and history-keepers, not a religious or divinatory order. Where their domain is sometimes summarised as touching on prophecy, in practice that means the *records of prophecies* and the deep historical record, not active scrying or omen-reading; their authority rests on what is written down, not on visions. Much of their knowledge is also closely held — histories of the [[Vale of Eternal Night]] and other dangerous matters are guarded, and rarely shown to those who come asking. ## Structure & Leadership The Circle is led by its Meridian, **[[Archivist Elrohir Gemflower]]** — ancient, dry, and absent-minded, far more at home among crumbling tomes than living people. He sits on the [[Sumara, The Shining City#The Confluence of the Seven|Confluence of the Seven]] as the Circle's voice, though the day-to-day running of the archives falls to others beneath him: the elderly archivist **Aaroun**, who keeps the reading desks, and librarians such as the faun **Silvana**, who guide visitors through the stacks. ## The Archives The Circle seats itself in the **Mnemorium Canton**, the upper northern face of the caldera, half carved into the cliff and half standing above it — deep stone halls kept in a perennial dim light to spare the old records. Its Nexus is the **[[Oraculum]]**, a tower of light-drinking indigo stone crowned by a slowly turning crystal lens that throws shifting glyphs across the sky. Below and within run the libraries proper: tier upon tier of shelved scrolls and tomes, some open to any citizen, others — maps and histories the Circle deems dangerous — kept restricted and shown to no one without cause. ## History The Circle of the Scroll is as old as Sumara itself, one of the seven ancient orders through which the elven people have always governed their works. Its archives are the reason the city, though sealed from the Material Plane for a century, still holds the oldest histories of the world — including accounts no longer remembered anywhere else, reaching back to the founding of the elven people and the sundering of the [[World Tree]]. ## [[The Bloody Nails|Campaign: The Bloody Nails]] #### [[Session 47 - Confluence of the Seven]] At the [[Sumara, The Shining City#The Confluence of the Seven|Confluence of the Seven]], the Circle's Meridian, Archivist Elrohir Gemflower, stood among [[Kaelen Vayne]]'s faction against recognising [[Ryo]]'s claim, and abstained when the council voted five-to-two to open the [[Vault of Memories]]. #### [[Session 51 - The Last Light]] On their last morning in the city the party climbed by griffin to the Circle's archives in the Mnemorium Canton, where the librarian Silvana and the archivist Aaroun guarded knowledge of the [[Vale of Eternal Night]] closely. Coaxed into a search that turned up nearly everything the stacks held, Aaroun at last drew back the curtain on the oldest history of all — [[Ryordan Silmara]] and the sundering of the [[World Tree]] — though he refused to let them copy the restricted map of the Vale.