In some ways the Librarian may be the best passenger... his arrogance has less room to deal damage with the Doom of the Tyrant already present, and his capabilities are immense. Think how much deadlier Hunger would be with even a fraction of the Librarian's teleportation, invisibility, mental / soul attacks, summoning, etc! And he directly gives +INT! What a broken character, Age and Treachery indeed!
The Librarian would also be a source of interesting conflict, while offering more than enough utility to offset the practical concerns.
How anyone could read this and not immediately want it, I have no idea.
[X] The Ring of Power - Inheritor (3 picks, 2 Arete)
-[X] The Librarian
[X] Fierce Quickening
[X] True Maiming
Look, remember the Mage Lord build? It cost 3 picks and
14 Arete to get us a high-tier and versatile Soul Evocation and improved growth rate with that Soul Evocation. Inheritor: Librarian gets us the same for 3 picks and
2 Arete. It's effectively 12 free Arete, for the cost of some mental contamination that Rihaku states here will not have much effect at all. The 10% rank penalty can be offset by our new using our new ability to train rank.
The Mage Lord build also took five days to hit enough proficiency to be worthwhile. Inheritor:Librarian gets us to that level immediately. Oh, and will you look at this:
If the Middle represented so great an increase in sophistication over the Outer, then what did that bode for the Ring's guardian itself? For all that his rate of progression had been absurd, was he growing strong enough, fast enough, in the fields that mattered against so versatile and well-resourced a foe? This was no single monster, to be baited and easily hunted. It was an entire civilization bent to the purpose of keeping their Ring imprisoned and extracting its value thereby. Was his own power too linear, too physically focused, to overcome them?
Would you look at that. That, looks like a
hint to me. Our power right now is too focused on Raw physical stats and sword better. We'll need much more versatility if we want the best chances of victory in this Temple.
Remember how much everyone was freaking out over fighting Vanrier? How we were all panicking? Over what we were going to do? Imagine if we had access to teleportation. That's a guaranteed retreat if we can pull it off in time! Or what about invisibility? Vanrier didn't have a Gisena equivalent to do magic detection for him, and you can't hit what you can't see. Or what if we pulled out the Librarian's Mind and Soul attacks? Remember how Hunger got blasted down by that abhorrent word even through his Evening Sky? Vanrier had that fault line in his soul, if we had been able to directly attack that we would have been able to win much more easily.
Not to mention that Inheritor:Librarian gives us increased INT. You see that thing Hunger did this update, using his invulnerable ring to deflect the attack even though none of us thought of that? That's our protagonist being smarter then us. What if he could get even smarter?
Point is, the Magus was a super-powerful character. We only won against him thanks to Gisena's ult and our relative physical superiority. Now imagine what those same Magus powers could do, when the opposition doesn't have a Nullity ult and all that magical power is backed up by the massively greater physical stats of Hunger.
