Okay, something I need to say about all the stuff people are saying about library "accessibility." Maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like people are imagining this as something akin to a modern lending library, which would naturally have a substantial amount of traffic.
But, that's not really accurate to the time period. IIRC, Boney has stated that movable type has yet to be invented. That means that books are E X P E N S I V E. I think Boney's going with an at least somewhat lower value than this given the prices we were given for building our library, but at least in the 2e WFRP (consulting Old World Armoury here) even a glued, AKA lower-quality, printed book costs 75 gold. An old-fashioned illuminated book (AKA hand-written and illustrated), of the kind noted to be particularly popular with and favored by wizards, is quoted as costing 350 gold. In contrast, the
yearly (pre-tax) income of a peasant is given as 9-15 gold. A mercenary (such as one guarding a caravan) is given as having a yearly income of 20-50 gold. They're not letting people just casually walk out the door with items worth more than a year's earnings (or
multiple years earnings) for even a particularly well-paid commoner. The fact that Mathilde lets her Ducklings borrow her books freely is actually a sign of uncommon trust that I can (probably) guarantee meant a lot more to them than Mathilde's casual presentation of the offer made it appear. Incidentally, that was actually a pretty damn cool mentor flex on her part for exactly these reasons, and it deserves more acknowledgment for that IMO.
Moreover, literacy is
rare, at least among humans. The idea that this library is going to be seeing large amounts of day-to-day traffic from the humans and halflings of the Eastern Valley is simply not realistic. Only a comparatively small percentage of them are likely to even be able to read, much less interested in casually doing so recreationally. Seriously, think about it for a second. Mathilde's social circle is overwhelmingly comprised of wizards, nobles, artisans, merchants, and dwarves. This is not exactly a representative sample of the general human population (especially not the "dwarves" part
). I think the thread has developed a skewed perception of how common literacy is among the human population at this time based on the characters we see on screen - which isn't unreasonable, but is still wrong.
What we are building might be a theoretically public library, in the sense that nobody is barred from using it. But it will not be a public library in the sense that we have public libraries IRL. This is going to be a
reference library. That means that anybody going there is going to have a very good and specific reason for doing so, almost always research-related. Attracting idle foot traffic and casual readers is a complete non sequitur to the actual content and purpose of this library. If a person is interested in this library at all, the relative convenience of differing locations in Karak Eight Peaks will be of negligible relative importance. Remember, K8P is hundreds of miles from almost all centers of civilization in the Old World. If somebody's willing to travel to K8P to visit our library in the first place, they're not going to be put off by it being slightly further away within K8P itself.
Incidentally, to return to the "at least among humans" comment I made before. While dwarves do have vastly higher literacy rates, I'm fairly certain that, culturally speaking, dwarves would regard a library being more difficult to access as being a mark in its
favor.
Anyway, in summary, the Silver Tower is flipping awesome, has oodles of space for a library, has top-tier wizardly flex value ("oh, you have a wizard's tower? that's nice, I have a library built into a Golden Age dwarven tower as big as the
Burj Khalifa."), and is in a much more defensible location if the outer defenses of K8P are breached again compared to any uninhabited mountain. Seriously, if part of the reason we're building this library is because we want an archive that will stand the test of millennia, put it in one of the more defensible parts of the Karak, I'm begging you. And the "accessibility" concerns that have been raised are IMO off the mark due to *gestures meaningfully at all that previous text*.
To conclude, put library in Silver Tower please and thank you.