History of Man -- Book 1: Westrun Part 12

Until the Paper War (sometimes called the War of the Scrolls) of 3622ey the Tren people of the former Ald Morin were among the best educated and most civilized humans in Westrun. When their libraries were pillaged as a condition of lifting a seige of Elves, much of their learning was lost. That learning was, in part, restored by the knowledge of the Meni from the Principalities. What the Meni did not bring in books, they brought in experiential knowledge and fresh memories. In due course, much of what the Tren had lost was restored to them. For a time, Westrun was on track to recover the arts, sciences and architecture of a former, more glorious age. 

During the Lost Centuries, under the conflicts of the Decadon, the idea that man would someday achieve what the Vyrum had, was temporarily put aside. The sons and daughters of Heimos had little concern for libraries and academies. That disregard for learning relegated all former knowledge to decaying tomes on dusty shelves. But as destructive as the Lost Centuries were to the dream of human advancement, the signature event of the 43rd century ended that dream altogether. 

The Scouring was a mega tsunami that accomplished a level of destruction that neither war, dearth nor disease could match. In a span of single afternoon, an entire generation of the brightest minds was lost to Westrun. Both of the two centers of Vyrum language and learning (Treft and Watersedge) were all but destroyed. While those cities were swiftly repopulated in true human fashion by those of Tren and Meni descent, it was with stock that had long ago vacated the cities for life among the Fahr and Nandi -- people for whom learning did not have the same value.

Thus began the Years of Darkness.

From the 44th until the 48th century, learning among man was wholly vested in two rival groups: the Priests of the Grand Temple and the Magisters of the Dweomersecte. Each was loathe to share knowledge and each had a vested interest in promoting their own esoteric rites above the cause of greater humanity.

Unknown to most anyone, the library in Peakshadow had been built on the recovered pictographic tablets of Lyosha and was placed in the charge of the gray-bearded Fingermen who took vows to keep their knowledge secret. For more than four hundred years the High Kings of Westrun were sitting on a repository of information that was assumed to be little more than a record of deeds, titles, and patents of nobility.