Brief Historical Analysis of
the Nova Aurora Grand Library

Written by the distinguished Elohim historian Elduin Virtoris

Without a doubt, many scholars consider The Grand Library to be the greatest repository of Human knowledge and perhaps the uttermost connection to Earth that remains on the Victoria System. With its hundreds of books, originating from the birthplace of Humanity, it gives us a window to the cultures and lives of our shared place of origin. Sadly, it is estimated that this is just an infinitesimally small percentage of the knowledge we once had, and it is a monumental tragedy that the virtual mountains of knowledge and wisdom were lost forever after our collective fall into violence and ignorance following The Event.

It is a matter of historical fact, and common study material for children in the more civilized parts of our world, that after The Event, the lack of advanced technological resources, and the bitter global civil war that ensued, precipitated an accelerated decline in our industrial and scholarly assets that we had at the time. The fabled Computers were decaying and falling to pieces, our scholars and scientists were casualties of war, or simply dying without passing on their expertise. We were on the brink of extinguishing the fire of knowledge and entering complete barbarism globally.

Fortunately, there was hope. There were individuals with the motivation and the moral fortitude necessary to save Humanity from the darkness of ignorance. Especially among my people, the Elohim, who with our superior intellect managed to safeguard some of the few high-tech wonders that remain today. But credit where credit is due, it was a humble baseline Human who started the project that became The Grand Library.

Zephan Shub was a computer technician. Unfortunately, a complete understanding of his profession is currently lost to most individuals in our society, but we can simply summarize it as him being one of the skilled individuals who worked with the fabled Computers of the past. The word "wizard" always crosses my mind when I think about it.

Shub was one of the few remaining computer technicians after The Event. Their numbers were not many, to begin with, and after the troubled times that followed The Event, their numbers were even fewer. He was 61 years old when he realized that it would be impossible to keep the remaining Computers working endlessly. Human knowledge and culture were at stake. So he devised the plan to create a repository of Human knowledge. He gathered the few scholars that remained, many Elohim among them, and they undertook the monumental task of transcribing books from the vast virtual libraries inside the otherworldly Computers. Then they created printing presses from scratch, taking over a year just to recreate and perfect the processes involved in the primitive printing press first created centuries ago on Earth.

They started their gathering of know-how from the ground up, beginning with the basics, what we could use to help people survive; hunting, agriculture, masonry, basic chemistry and its applications - those were some of the earliest books written and published on Elysium. But culture was to survive too. Great works of literature were published to enrich the lives of everyone; Shakespeare, Cervantes, Asimov, and Pratchett, among others. Music sheets with the melody and lyrics of the past were saved; Beethoven, Mozart, The Beatles, Queen, and Sir Reginald are some of them. But even though they transcribed hundreds of books, they only managed to complete a very small percentage of the vast amounts of information and learning available. Only five years after the start of this Herculean task, the last handful of the Computers that contained the vast repositories of knowledge ceased to function. Not by mechanical failure, but by the ignorant attack of marauders looking for riches. Only had they known that they destroyed true riches beyond what they could imagine.

But even if the work was never finished, and the knowledge gathered is nowhere near as much as what our ancestors possessed, the Great Library became one of the great treasures of the Colonial Alliance. And even though we lost the high-tech science of the past, it gave us the groundwork for following generations to continue gathering knowledge on their own by rediscovering it. New books, written by great men and women keep being added to the greatest repository of Human enlightenment on the planet Elysium.

Mr. Zephan Shub passed away peacefully, surrounded by family and friends at the age of 82 years old. Over 10,000 mourners came to his funeral. His statue can be seen today in the gardens of the Great Library. We, and future generations, owe him a great debt.