Magical Library

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A Magical Library is a mystical library that is explicitly magical or infused with magic. These libraries tend to be small and hidden in a remote area. They usually contain dangerous and forbidden spells, arcane Spell Books and priceless Ancient Artifacts and MacGuffins. They also may have supernatural books such as Tomes of Prophecy and Fate and Tome of Eldritch Lore. The libraries also might be home to monsters, creatures and Magic Librarians that are there to protect the library. The library might be quite old, and may even be as old as the universe itself.

Due these things being valuable and it would be disastrous if these items fall in the wrong hands. These libraries are usually hard and almost impossible to find without a special map and well guarded. The objects that allow the library's location to be found are sometimes scattered across the world. The heroes and villains alike might have to engage in a Gotta Catch Them All plot in order to have access to the library's valuable information.

If the magical library is easily accessible for most people it's usually part of a school. The protagonist's may regularly visit the school library to find out how to solve a problem or gain information about the current plot. Characters that are a bit more rebellious might simply steal from the library instead, setting up the main conflict.

These type of libraries tend to appear mostly in Fantasy, Urban Fantasy and works that have a Fantasy Kitchen Sink.

See also Great Big Library of Everything.

Examples of Magical Library include:

Anime and Manga

Comic Books

  • The Sandman: Lucien's library in The Dreaming has many books which were never written.

Film

  • The Librarian films are about a librarian of this type of library. Not only does it contain legendary and magical books, but also all the world's greatest and most dangerous treasures.
  • In the movie What Dreams May Come, there is a briefly-seen massive library with floor, only water. People just fly to get the books - also, it is a heaven.

Literature

  • The library of Unseen University in Discworld leads to other dimensions, thanks to the sheer weight of accumulated knowledge distorting the space-time continuum. This is known as L-Space: the library itself is pretty much a universe of its own with all the magical books, library creatures such as the thesaurus or the kickstool-crab, and lost tribes of research students inside.
    • There's also Death's library of biographies, with one for everyone in the world; those for the living are still in the process of writing themselves.
  • Occurs regularly as a location throughout George MacDonald's fiction, notably Phantastes, Lilith, and Alec Forbes. Even in his realistic novels, the books in the library are definitely magical.
  • Harry Potter: The school library is this, especially the restricted section. In the first book, when Harry was trying to find out who Nicholas Flamel was, he sneaks in, opens a book, and it starts screaming at him, attracting Filch.
  • In The Last Apprentice series, it's implied that all good spooks have a library with information on denizens of the dark and how to defeat them. We only specifically hear of John Gregory's and Bill Arkwright's, though.
  • The Library of the Clayr from the Old Kingdom. It's carved out of glacier and is the largest repository of magic books and monsters around. It's kept in order by Crazy Prepared Magic Libarians.
  • The Magic Treehouse, whose books can transport the reader to the event described.

Live-Action TV

  • The Sunnydale High Library from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as it's directly over the Hellmouth. And has a ton of weird magic books that Snyder totally doesn't get being there, naturally.
    • Later in the series, the Magic Box becomes this after Giles buys it.
  • In Angel the evil law firm Wolfram & Hart has a library of books but you don't have to search for the right book. They have some enchanted books [dead link] which you tell what book you want from the library and the text appears in the book.

Tabletop Games

Video Games

  • In Touhou, there's Voile, the Magical Library, maintained by Patchouli Knowledge, who spends her days locked up inside adding to the already-massive cache of knowledge and Spell Books. While 100 straight years of this this have given her anemia, asthma, and Vitamin A deficiency, you are more than likely to find anything you could ever want in there (Marisa sure does).
  • According to Elder Scrolls lore, the Daedra Prince of prophecy and fate, Hermaeus Mora, lives on a plane of Oblivion called Apocrypha, an infinite library full of Tomes of Eldritch Lore.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy V gives us the Library of the Ancients, where there are possessed books, a book split in two by the splitting of the worlds, and a book that burns other books... It also serves as an inspiration for many of the later examples listed here.
    • Final Fantasy VIII has a minor example in the Balamb Garden library, a mundane which has a single-use draw point for the Esuna spell.
    • Final Fantasy IX has another minor, mundane example in the Alexandria Castle library, where the optional boss Tantarian can be fought; some elements of its design are based on the possessed book enemies from Final Fantasy V.
    • Final Fantasy XIV: The Heavensward expansion has The Great Gubal Library, the last leveling dungeon in Heavensward and an explicit throwback to Final Fantasy V. Several "living tomes" are among the enemies fought here, including a boss named Byblos.
    • In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time, the library is run by Larkeicus - the lobby contains several enemies, and a portal can be found later that leads to various locations containing monsters from Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates. Larkecius later attacks the hero when they return to the library in search of information on the Crystal Core shards, and is later revealed to be the Big Bad.
    • In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers, the Royal Library is located in the capital city of Alfitaria, and contains a Miasma Stream inside.
  • The Library in Myst. Or rather, it used to be one: it held Atrus' journals, Linking Books, Descriptive Books, and the various Ages, which were worlds created by writing them into existence. However, his two greedy sons turned against him and burned most of the books, with only a small handful of journals and Books surviving to the time of the game.
  • The Grand Athenaeum in MapleStory. The player is able to view key incidents in the history of Maple World by assuming the role of one of the individuals that was involved in it

Web Original

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