"Throughout known history in Faerun, there have been numerous notes, scribblings, or scrawlings placed upon tomes, by bored or inspired scholars. Join Professor Thamuid Donhaich on an enlightening and fun exploration of a sampling of marginalia, and the various notes left behind within the famed libraries of Candlekeep." ~ A Description written by no one at all.
The cover of this leather-bound and discreet notebook is a sight to behold, a bright yellow sunburst upon a blue field, coupled with a pale white eye shining out from the sun at the center. Curiously labeled, and even more curiously hoarded and kept, it seems an utterly innocuous book.
~
Within the cover lay only a single dedication. No markings of a publisher exist in any copy known.
"To the Light Resplendent, may it illuminate countless others."
~
Upon the first page lay a fanciful doodle of a snail. It seemed to be threatened by a monk with an axe.
A spindly written text reads off to the side,
"Welcome to the exciting world of Marginalia! This is the accepted term for a variety of doodles and notes left in margins of texts when read, ranging from the humorous to the useful. A common theme amongst many monastic texts, the image of the snail is commonly seen as a reviled pest, as it eats many vegetables that monks might raise to feed themselves. This doodle, perhaps, shows the frustrations of a monk with this garden pest, the neverending war of order against the forces of entropy.
This entry was sourced from a specific text held within the Religious section of Candlekeep, a certain 'Psalm to the Light Most High', written in approximately 982 DR. The text itself is a rather plain liturgical rite associated to a small sect of Monks in the west of Damara, known as the ‘Lightbringers’. Although the author is anonymous, one can imagine him to be quite frustrated; many such images appear throughout the text in the margins."
~
Upon the second page, a ribald scene; a crudely scrawled man holding a trumpet to his rear, pointing to a glaring figure barely seen to the side.
“This specific work perhaps serves as an insult, or an inside joke amongst the community where it was written. A mockery, perhaps, of an established order; a revelation, heralded by trumpets, of the new. As one might be aware, jokes about flatulence are considered lowborn fare, and this shows the oft common ancestry of those who take up the scholarly arts.
This entry was sourced from a text placed within the Light Conduit Ssection of Candlekeep, known as the ‘Calsednay Precepts’. It is a series of commandments, judgements, given to a group of friars in the western edges of daylight. The author is anonymous; they exist now in fragments. Perhaps the trumpeting sound of the crass joke may be directed towards him!”
~
Something about this text sets the eyes ill at ease. Like staring too long at a fire.