V: Verbile & venefic archivists

venefic: poisonous; pertaining to poison or poisoning
verbile: morbid and purposeless repetition of certain words

The family of Handler-Zeehond was one of the famous to come out of the salt tax legislation, where a great many of them served as librarians in the the Great Library of Jubylon. The first of their number was Juan Handler-Zeehond, who became the first of many Chief Librarians with his surname. The tradition of the family to aspire for the position seems in part to have come from the fact that none else wanted the job. It was highly demanding in terms of working hours and not overwhelmingly well paid. But it seems that one side perk of the job was getting to spend time with people mixing poison.

Reportedly, it was a common practice amongst the librarians and archivists of the Great Library to repeat certain words over, over and over again to make it easier to remember. That way if someone asked you a question about a given subject, you always knew where to look for it. That meant that the librarians almost always repeated subject terms to themselves over and over again. This was one of the quirks/perks of the job and was seen as both endearing or annoying, seemingly depending on who you ask. One of these subjects was poison, where the Great Library gained a larger and larger selection of said books as the government seized these books on a regular basis and kept them under lock and key. Since these words could not be repeated on a regular basis, the librarians once discussed them while behind closed doors, usually after closing hours with a fair amount of wine involved. That meant that along the way, the archivists all became very proficient poisoners, at least in theory. Discussion the secret history of poison, it’s use and the other uses of poisonous substances became a staple subject for discussion in the basement in the Great Library every Friday afternoon.

At least one of them carried it out in practise, when he wrote a text using poisonous ink and it them away discussed amongst a selection of letters. He was only discovered because the victim (a Catholic priest that the murderer disagreed with on a theological issue) by sheer chance died in front of a police officer. The officer detained everyone nearby until the matter could be examined. The killer was quickly found and convicted to prison, in part to sentence him to life.