This is fascinating stuff - both the history and the story. I like the setup of Slayer as semi-enslaved, kept in ignorance, doing bidding, restricted by language as much as all else. And the First Slayer as freeing, perhaps - we can't know what happened to your Slayer next, but it had less to do with Watchers and conventions, for sure.
I don't think the Watchers kept copies elsewhere. Even the destruction of the Council by the Bringers supposedly wrecked their knowledge base - compare that with Wolfram and Hart's three volume magic codices and sigh heavily. But it is of a piece with what we're shown: the Council is rigid around a single head office and doesn't share; W&H has branches that all access knowledge. (My fave place for them at this period is Athens - never as great as it thought it was and now thoroughly superannuated but still filled with intellectual snobbery. Rome would be much more practical, but I wouldn't put them there till the popes, probably. Such lovely bureaucracy and bookishness.)
As a side note on actual history, I doubt the Library was one single building. Even posh Roman homes often had more than one (Greek and Roman libraries, for example), and given the difficulties of storing scrolls and retrieving them, I'd reckon you need quite a lot of space. Would make more sense of both the practicalities of permanent storage solutions and the incredibly frequent burning down stories.
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Date: 2013-08-03 07:40 pm (UTC)I don't think the Watchers kept copies elsewhere. Even the destruction of the Council by the Bringers supposedly wrecked their knowledge base - compare that with Wolfram and Hart's three volume magic codices and sigh heavily. But it is of a piece with what we're shown: the Council is rigid around a single head office and doesn't share; W&H has branches that all access knowledge. (My fave place for them at this period is Athens - never as great as it thought it was and now thoroughly superannuated but still filled with intellectual snobbery. Rome would be much more practical, but I wouldn't put them there till the popes, probably. Such lovely bureaucracy and bookishness.)
As a side note on actual history, I doubt the Library was one single building. Even posh Roman homes often had more than one (Greek and Roman libraries, for example), and given the difficulties of storing scrolls and retrieving them, I'd reckon you need quite a lot of space. Would make more sense of both the practicalities of permanent storage solutions and the incredibly frequent burning down stories.