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[LordBucket]

You should probably come in then."

Pause for a moment. Possibly a few more moments. Then go to the door and knock.

[mainiac]

The gardener sits down once again and stares at Aduial.  "Who are you looking for?"

[LordBucket]

The gardener sits down once again and stares at Aduial.  "Who are you looking for?"

: "I'm looking for Mayor Dailgon. Or, if he's...unavailable, then whomever it was who wrote that very nice letter inviting me to come see him."

[mainiac]

((Did Aduial get an explicit invitation from the mayor?  I thought she got invitations from the marshal and the guild magistrate but she simply told the mayor she was stopping by and never received a reply.))

"Invited to see the mayor?  That's nice?  I mean... yes, yes, that was me.  You should have made it clear before.  Confound it woman, why are you interrupting me."  The gardener apparently decides that he remembers what this is about after all.  He stands up, straightens his tired bones and then angrily stomps over to Aduial.  "Look, what was it you wanted to see me about?"

[LordBucket]

((Did Aduial get an explicit invitation from the mayor?

Yes:

Honored emissary of the King,

You are of course welcome in our humble city.  I apologize for not welcoming you but I have only heard of your arrival now from our town's marshal.  I understand that he has contacted you and apologize if there was any rudeness in his manner.  He is a fine man but not very tactful of late.

Unfortunately I must support him in the tight control he exerts over the treasonous Baron.  We of the town council feel that it is best that he be kept in isolation until the trial.

Your's faithfully,
Mayor Dailgon of Narseus

Well, sort of yes. Not quite an invitation, but definitely a letter. If this person didn't write it...I'd like to know who did.

"Look, what was it you wanted to see me about?"

*still smilling* "I'd hoped to get your authorization to speak with Baron Radhan. Marshal Lorsen is holding him in custody."


With that said to support my alibi, if this guy has nothing useful to say, proceed to my meeting with Magistrate Alexandrus.

[mainiac]

((Yes, that was the letter I remember.  It didn't explicitly mention an invitation to his house per-se.  I just wanted to make sure there wasn't such an invitation that I forgot about over the past two weeks of RL time.))

The mayors gaze softens again as Aduial asks her question.  Apparently this man's lucidity comes and goes very rapidly.
"Radhan?  Radhan... no, we don't like Radhan.  He's... he's not trustworthy.  Is that all you came here for?  Such a trifling little thing.  Well why don't you go ahead and... oh no, that won't do.  That won't do at all.  No, you can not see the baron, I'm absolutely sure of it.  Nobody can see the baron."

"The baron is being held without visitors until Sargeant at Law Petronious returns to the city.  I'm sure it will not be long now."
Aduial turns to see the young human man who just exited the house behind her.  Unlike the mayor he is dressed in proper upper class clothing from his calfskin boots to his silver signet ring to the cape thrown over his right shoulder.  He looks at Aduial, clearly not liking what he sees.
"And you would be...?"

[LordBucket]

"And you would be...?"

: (smiling and making direct eye contact) "I would be her Ladyship Inquisitor Aduial, High Noble of Lalaitho-Dor, Associate of the library and Adviser to the court of His Majesty Hawicce the third."

"And you?"

*don't break eye contact and keep smiling*

(Note: We never really resolved her proper titles. I'm winging it.)

[mainiac]

((The titles sound good to me.))

The man's glare softens to impassivity and he pauses a moment before responding.  "I'm Taddernes, the customs master.  I don't have any titles or know the proper way to bow.  I believe the mayor mentioned you to me the other day.  Something about you wanting to see the baron?  Impossible I'm afraid, marshal's orders.  Any matters you need attended to, Ladyship High Noble of the Associate?"

[LordBucket]

Any matters you need attended to, Ladyship High Noble of the Associate?"

: "Thank you, no. I believe I have everything I came for."

(Keep smiling and looking into his eyes/face for about 3 more seconds. Then leave. On my way out, casually glance to see if Taddernes is standing in a pool of yellow liquid. Next stop: Magistrate Alexandrus. )

[mainiac]

Aduial is disappointed, Taddernes doesn't seem to reveal any additional nervousness.  His face is downright placid.  He calmly watches her go then walks forward to the mayor and leans down to address him about some matter.

Aduial finds the Guild Magistrate is not at home or at the council hall so asks around and learns that he is at the town baths, conducting an informal business meeting.  She travels to the baths and is told that the Magistrate is in the sauna discussing important business and can not be interrupted.  She is welcome to rent out a bath in the womans bathroom and decides to do so.  The room is empty so she conveniently picks the bath closest to the sauna and evesdrops on the conversation through the thin walls separating the rooms.

It seems that the business meeting of the guild magistrate is rather heated and angry.  Sums of money have been promised, repeatedly but keep being delayed or held up.  At one point the Magistrate tries to explain away a problem saying that the mayor may have missed a promissory note due to his declining mental state.  The master of the masons guild takes great offense at that, insisting that he saw the mayor just yesterday and the man's mind was as sharp as it had ever been.  The mason follows up that comment with accusations of theft which causes a few cries of indignation from the room.  The mason departs after that.  The conversation continues in a more hushed tone after that, making it hard for Aduial to hear more but she does hear the Guild Magistrate thanking everyone for their patience and promising to do everything in his power to fix the many understandings.  She hears a man cry out "where have we heard that before?"

Aduial slips back into her clothing and catches the magistrate in the bathhouse lobby.  He seems as haggard and weary as a man can seem after having just stepped out of a sauna.  He looks at her wearily and asks "and you would be?"

[LordBucket]

She travels to the baths

She is welcome to rent out a bath in the womans bathroom and decides to do so.

Aduial slips back into her clothing

...umm, no.

The chances of me deciding to stalk someone at a public bathhouse, then getting naked and leaving 20 banners worth of jewelry, my spellbook, and weapons in a pile of clothing while I do so are approximately zero. The things I expect to discuss with him aren't things I'd be willing to talk about in a public bathhouse anyway.

Since the Magistrate is unavailable in his office, I will instead go shopping. There are a number of things I've been wanting to check on:

 * Does Narseus have a bookstore? Baron Radhan is apparently no scholar, but nevertheless has a few books in his study. Where did he get them? Can I simply walk into a bookstore and buy books on history, math, language, etc? What are typical book prices? Also, is it possible to buy blank journals? How much? And how much are blank sheets of parchment if I were to buy them in relative bulk: 100 at a time or so.
 * Look into the extent of the scribal business in town. Check rates. If I have a book I'd like copied (no printing presses, I assume) how much would I be likely to pay to have that done? Conversely, if I should find myself looking for work, what kind of pay could I reasonably expect?
 * Does Narseus have a post office? If I have a letter I want delivered to a different city and don't have a servant I'm willing to part with for days, is there a service provider for that and what will it cost? Or does such a thing not exist?
 * What about the bank? I have an indeterminiate quantity of funds at the captial. Should I feel the need to transfer money here, is that something I need to leave town to do, or will a letter of credit in exchange for coins be possible?

Try the Magistrate again after an hour or two.

[mainiac]

((I was in an empty room.  The goods wouldn't be more then three feet away from her and there'd be bloody hell to pay if someone went storming into the womans bath room.  But it's perfectly alright to decide to catch him latter too.  When I dictate that Aduial does something it's either because you've indicated actions dependent on it (lift the key for instance) or because it's a zero-risk situation.))

Paper is pretty expensive if you want it to be the sort of stuff that lasts for years and years in a book without crumbling.  Even a blank book will probably set you back half a dozen shields at least unless it's a reused text.  Low quality parchment for one time missives are cheaper, a shield could get you a hundred sheets or more depending on local prices.
Bookstores do not exist because books are just too valuable.  Instead you have scribes filling orders by copying an existing text into a new tome.  There is a guild of parchment makers who can sell you blank books or book quality paper.  They can also sell you second hand books that have had their pages scrubbed clean for rewriting.  This is a common reuse of the texts devoted to nobility or religions that have lost importance.  Reuse does tend to leave ghosts of the previous text though so it's a cheaper alternative.
Short of a library the best places to find books would be in the study of somebody important or in one of the more scholarly temples.
Working as a scribe of arcane texts Aduial could pull in a shield per day or a bit more if she had a client in need of her services but the length of employment would probably only be a few days.  She could make even more if she found a client who would hire her as an arcane tutor as well.  If she wanted to hire a scribe who would not be handling arcane texts the rate would be half that or even less.

Post offices do not exist but it's a common practice to pay travelers to deliver the mail (cash on delivery with seal unbroken).  In between Narseus and the capital such mail traffic is more common and would be a bit cheaper.

Lending houses do exist and it's even possible to pay for particularly large transactions with promissory note rather then coin.  Narseus does have a lending house.  You could use a promissory note to get a bank to give you funds in Narseus in exchange for funds you hold in the capital but they would take a commmision of a few percent.

It's getting pretty late so I'm going to call it a night.  If you want to post your questions for the magistrate then you could have Aduial corner him at the town hall an hour later where he would be able to meet in private in the council chambers although he would complain of the time being taken from his busy schedule.

[LordBucket]

Paper
book quality paper.

So paper exists in this world? Interesting. Ok.

Low quality parchment

...note that parchment is not paper. It is animal skin. I would expect it to be higher quality and more expensive than paper. Not only is it more time consuming to make, it's more expensive because the typical goat or lamb only gives several sheets worth of paper. Notably, it's also considerably more durable than paper and if it's stored properly, writing on it can remain legible for thousands of years.

More discussion in the next post.

If you want to post your questions for the magistrate then you could have Aduial corner him at the town hall an hour later where he would be able to meet in private in the council chambers although he would complain of the time being taken from his busy schedule.

He contacted me first. I had no idea who the guy was until he sent me a letter out of the blue saying that my help would be appreciated and that there was "much to be done." I was sort of expecting that he had things he wanted to talk to me about.

If the guy really has nothing to say, then here are the points I wanted to get at:

: "Magistrate, many voices in the courts of His Majesty Hawice III, as well as the court of Count Dmarra have expressed a growing concerned over recent developments in Narseus. As you know, a significant portion of the trade goods flowing to rest of the kingdom comes through here. Anything that adversely affects Narseus affects other cities as well. And it seems that there are rumors circulating through Nossari that the Mayor and the council of Narseus have taken to allowing Marshal Lorsen to round up citizens in the streets like cattle. That he is beating merchants in the street, and holding unjustifiable executions. That he is imprisoning landed nobles on questionable charges. Some, even worse things have been said. And in the day since I've been here, most of these rumors I've heard have been confirmed. I've personally witnessed the Marshal's men take away merchants in chains. Baron Radhan is in custody on questionable charges, and is forbidden visitors. Even myself. And in that conversation I had with the Marshal in his home, I was physically attacked. Me, a noble, an advisor to the royal court, was physically struck by your Marshal Lorsen not more than two hours ago merely for asking questions he didn't want to hear. If such liberties are being taken with individuals such as myself, I cannot speculate at the indignities that the merchants and common folk of this town have been subjected to.

"Narseus is not a vassal state. It does not owe allegiance to any particular lord. But the fact remains that its neighbors will not allow this situation to escalate to the point that the free flow of trade to their lands is stopped. Some have suggested the possibility of war if the situation grows worse."

"War, Magistrate. Some of your neighbors are discussing war. War is bad for business. Very bad. And I am here to ensure that it does not happen."

His turn to talk. I'm expecting him to gush forth with stuff. Later, provided he's not obviously "one of them" and once the rest of our conversation is finished:

: "Thank you for your time. There is, incidentally, one other matter I was hoping we might discuss."

"I've been in Narseus only a short time now, but I find that it's growing on me. Oh, surely it has its problems, but what town doesn't? It's very likely that once the present situation is resolved, and both the Marshal and Mayor have been...dealt with, business in Narseus will return to its usual levels of health and prosperity. Of course, after this fiasco I'm sure His Majesty will want to keep a closer eye on happenings here. It wouldn't do to allow trade throughout the kingdom to suffer on the account of a few madmen. As one of the kings advisors I suppose I could put a word in to his Majesty to minimize the long term consequences, penalty tariffs, and the like.

Actually, (suddenly brighten) perhaps I could convince his Majesty to allow me personally to stay here as liason to ensure that things remain stable. As I said, it's a lovely town. I wouldn't mind settling here. (Frown.) Still, if I were to do that, there is one thing this town lacks that I would be hard pressed to go without. A library." (look thoughtful)

"A town this size really should have a library, don't you think? It seems a strange thing for such a critical trade hub to lack. Of course, (eye contact) I suppose we could build a library here. In Narseus. With me as its Magister. Or, "guild master" if you prefer that term.

"Of course, I understand that such a development would cause no end of trouble to you, and the town. After all, surely the inevitable growth in your power and importance would generate all sorts of new administrative work. You'd need to install a new seat for my position on your council, and I know how expensive the velvet on those cushions can be. To say nothing of all the new tax collectors you'd probably have to hire because of the new citizens and merchants who would immigrate over the next few years as the city's relative importance to the kingdom grows. You might even have to extend the city walls to accommodate all of them. So I realize it's a considerable undertaking that I'm proposing. For all of us."

"But I wonder, as representative of the guilds in this town, how would you, and the various other merchant and guild leaders feel about such a development...overall...were it to occur?"

[LordBucket]

At some point we'll need to clarify some things about how magic works in this campaign.

Short version:
How do things like magic, spells, gaining spells, spell research, spellbooks, scrolls, and spell inscription work in this campaign?

Long version

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As just proposed, I'd like to start a library. And, if Erwin's son proves suitable, I'm planning on making him my apprentice.

Given my surprise over the insect wings as spell components when I hadn't realized any of my spells had material components at all...I'd rather avoid similar surprises on big projects like this. I have in my own mind an idea of what's involved, but my expectations might not match yours.

Like I mentioned a few thread pages ago, D&D rules on spells, scrolls and spellbooks are wildly inconsistent, and don't make a lot of sense. Over three editions of the game, I'm not sure I've ever played in a campaign that used the rules as they're written.

Here are a few things I'm going to want to do:

 * Make raw spellbooks
 * Copy spells into those spellbooks

In my mind, creating raw spellbooks starts with skinning baby sheep or goats to make vellum for the pages. Erwin's son happens to be a goatherder, so it would work out pretty well for everyone if I buy a couple goats from whomever owns the goats hes been herding as a nice going away present to reduce the inconvenience of losing a goat herder. Then we skin the goats, lime the skins, string them up and start stretching them. In a few weeks we have sheets of vellum to cut into pages, we thread them together in a leather binding, then all you need is a simple spell to make inscriptions psuedo-permanent (explained in a moment) and then you have a spellbook.

Now, I notice that parchment seems to be rather common in this campaign. The cultists are writing journals on it, Baron Radhan is exchanging love letters with his wife using it...it doesn't seem very rare. Parchment and vellum are basically the same thing: stretched baby cattle skin. So seems to me I should be able to simply buy up a bunch of the stuff, along with some thread and leather and make spellbooks pretty easily. The primary reason spellbooks are expensive is because parchment/vellum is expensive. One baby goat only has enough skin to make a couple sheets. A 100 page spellbook might take 20 goats to make, and to do 20 goatskins at a time you'd need 20 stretching racks just to produce one spellbook per month or so. It's a labor and time consuming process. And if I only have two goats, that's materials to make maybe 10 pages worth of spellbook in that same timeframe. Using our specific example, I was thinking Erwin's son and I each make a spellbook side by side, me teaching him the process, and starting with one goat each and we'd end up with a spellbook with 5 pages by the time we were done. And as part of his apprenticeship chores, he makes a new one every month, while I copy spells, and in time a library grows. I have other things in mind, but that's basically how I figured I'd start out.

EDIT: Some of this might be in question given the apparent closeness of two libraries to Narseus now that we have a map. Importing spellbooks might be much easier than I expected.)

However...as mentioned earlier, parchment seems pretty common here. Narseus obviously already has a parchment industry and I could probably slip a lot of the hassle. In fact, I wonder if I can buy more or less completed "spellbooks" even in Narseus simply by going to a book seller and buying an empty journal, then enchanting it accordingly. But I'm assuming that this process that I'm describing is even valid in your campaign world in the first place. Checking  the 3.5 player's handbook, it portrays spellbooks as being essentially common enough to simply walk to your corner store and buy for cheaper than a sword. Is that true here? It wouldn't work that way in my campaigns, but that's not because spellbooks are particularly complicated to make, but simply because "paper" is expensive. (Read: goats are expensive. I typically have no paper technology in my campaigns. Books are expensive because you need a lot of goats to make them. Spellbooks are only marginally more expensive than books in general. Buy a quality journal, cast the relevant first level enchantment spell and you have a spellbook.) Anyway, since apparently the closest magical library to Narseus is 300 miles away...one way or another, I'm going to have to make my own spellbooks. So the question is: what's the process for doing that in your world?

While you ponder that, I mentioned earlier the need for a spell to complete the spellbook. This is non-canon for D&D which seems to generally prefers to handle everything with "pay gold to an npc," but let me ask you a simple question that TSR and wizards of the coast have always struggled with: "What's the difference between a spellscroll and a spellbook?" Well, scrolls lose their spells when you read or memorize from them. Spellbooks don't. So...what happens when you tear a page out of a spellbook? Do you now have a perma-scroll that can be read from infiniately many times? Obviously that creates a problem. First edition at least tried to address it with critical failure/spellbook explosion charts, but a quick search through the 3.5 DMG .pdf doesn't turn up any discussion of it at all. Personally, I've always handled this by asserting that the physical process of spellbook creation essentially makes a bound book of scrolls. Any mage with a memorized spell can, rather than casting it conventionally, discharge the spell into a scroll through a writing process, thus creating a scroll. The magical energy is removed from their mind and stored on the paper. And they can they read to cast, or memorize from that scroll, discharging the stored magical energy and leaving a blank piece of paper. You can just as easily read a spell directly from the spellbook, causing it to discharge and blank the page in the spellbook just like it would from a scroll. Difference between reading and memorizing from a spellbook being that with a read you're discharging the stored magical energy from the page. With a memorize, you're not "moving" the magical energy away from the paper into your mind, but rather using it as a guide to generate a new "copy" of that magical energy in your mind. That's why it only takes one round to discharge a spellscroll, but potenitally hours to memorize spells. "Memorizing" a spell is mostly a function of generating that magical energy for storage in your mind, using the example in the spellbook as a guide. A spellbook is simply a bound collection of scrollpaper that has been enchanted to retain its magical charge when used as a source for memorization by making it difficult to discharge. And the enchantment is on the book, not each individual page. So if you tear a page from a spellbook, you're left with a functional spellbook with one less page and a functional scroll that will lose its stored energy when used, just like any scroll. Copying spells between scrolls and spellbooks is a simple memorize --> copy process.

So...again: that's how I handle it in my campaigns. But, this is your campaign, and I'm going to need to know how you handle it.

Looking at the relevant 3.5 rules, I find an inconsistent hodepodge of if-then scenarios, mostly focused on when you have to pay gold to copy spells and when you don't. It doesn't make much sense to me, and it's unclear who exactly one is paying gold to in order to copy spells. Apparently, according to 3.5, upon gaining a level a wizard suddenly learns new spells, for some reason. This is justfied by saying that it's assumed that the wizard was doing spell research in his down time, and it wasn't necessary to overtly say so...sort of like it's not necessary to stop books and movies with "and then they took a ahower and brushed their teeth." It's simply assumed that wizards do that, and levels are a convenient time to award results. Personally that's not something I do in my own campaigns. If wizards want new spells they need to find or research them. But either way...3.5 seems to suggest that while these spells that wizards spontaneously gain upon leveling because they've been assumed to be researching them incur no copy costs. Whereas if a wizard learns a new spell from found materials or overtly specifies that they research it, or even simply has two spellbooks and copies a spell from one spellbook to the other...for some reason they need to pay to have that done. I don't understand why, and again...it's not clear who exactly they're paying. The closest thing to an explanation I see is a parethetical comment on page 179 of the players handbook describing "special quills, inks and other supplies." Which personally to me comes across as a fancy way of saying "yeah, we know this makes no sense but we feel some sort of cost is required for game balance reasons." And because of that, they appear content to have inconsistent rules that specify costs in some cases and not others. In my campaigns (again, I realize this is not my campaign I'm playing in...just giving you my mindset for comparison) there are no "special" quills and ink is ink. The magic is in the magic. Not the physical materials. A spellbook is physically the same basic thing as any other book. A mage might have a difficult time scribing scrolls onto napkins from the local restaurant, but he could certainly go to a scribal store and buy the same materials that any scribe would use and make scrolls from them.

But...either way, the question still remains: where is Aduial going to get this stuff? Because if there are "special" quills and "special" inks that only wizards use...there probably aren't any of things things for sale in Narseus. And wherever they are available for sale...somebody there had to make them. Whether it's special ink or goats, either way, Aduial is probably going to have to make this stuff herself. I'm going to need to know the process for doing that. Related, whether I spontaneously gain spells upon levelup or have to research them myself, I'm also going to need to know the process for that too.

Now, since I'm apparently writing an essay here, there's a related issue that's less likely to come up but we may as well delve into as well: scrolls. I'm looking at the "scribe scroll" feat right now...and...wow. I don't know what they were thinking with this. I already described the process for scroll creation that I'm used to above: basically just need vellum, ink and a memorized spell to scribe, and you're done in a hour. Mages routinely do it when they have extra time leftover after their daily spell memorization. In 3.5, apparently creating scrolls is a major ordeal involving a full day, thousands of gold, and permanent xp losses. I...don't know what they were thinking. Making a single spellscroll with a single first level spell on it that irrecoveraly vanishes after a single use is apparently fantastically more complicated and expensive than buying an entirely new spellbook and copying that same spell into in it a manner that lasts forever. I just don't see what they're trying to do here. This is obviously some sort of attempt to balance something...but I'm not sure what they're trying to balance. In my campagins, scroll creationis primarily a tool of convenience. For example, when two mages meet and want to exchange spells, how do they do that? Is one mage really going to just hand over their spellbook for the other mage to study from? Who goes first? Isn't there an awful lot of trust required for that exchange? What happens if one mage fails their learn check? Does he get to go over and try another spell? Does he expect the mage whose book he's borrowing to just hang out while he does make up time? Whereas if mages are simply in the habit of keeping copies of their spells on scroll, when two mages meet they can simply agree on what to trade, hand over the appropriate scrolls and be done with it. They can learn the spells whenever it's convenient. No downtime for the party, no risk of having spellbooks destroyed or stolen, and no worrying about unfair exchanges, because the trade is for scrolls, not spells. If one mage fails his learn check, that's his problem. He got the scroll he traded for and what he does with it is his own concern.

So...there you go. The long version of the question. Aduial is going to need to manufacturer spellbooks, copy spells and do spell research. How are we going to handle all that?

[mainiac]

When I said paper before I meant high quality parchment, such as vellum as opposed to lower quality stuff who's exact composition I haven't worked out the details of.  Really efficient paper manufacturing of the east asian style doesn't exist is the point.

Regarding spellbooks, the issue with them is that they are pretty tailored to an individual user and not just something anyone can pick up.  I personally think about it in terms of math because that's what I know.  Preparing magic is like doing math, except that the universe has handed every mathematician a different set of axioms to work from.  Just blindly copying another wizards spellbook isn't useful because the horoscopes don't match and the words aren't imbued with power for the person copying.  What a learning wizard does is study the complete nature of the spell then tailor a spell that is magically bound to themselves using whatever their personal methods are.  If the wizard in question uses astrology then they will have a precisely tailored horoscope to the spell and wizard used in the transcription.  If they use alchemy they will prepare magical inks for specifically the spell and then transcribe at the moment of highest potency.

What libraries offer is not just spellbooks but books about magic.  Wizards at libraries can research a spell's process and history in order to craft a version for themselves.  There is a community of wizards there that can also teach them if need be and they can wrangle it.  They are more akin to the library of alexandria then a library in the modern sense.

Then once a wizard has actually mastered a spell and prepared their spellbook they put a lot of prep work into being ready to prepare each casting.  So that means more astrology, alchemy, demonology or runemancy or whatever.  That's why an apprentice can charge the better part of a shield to cast a 1st level spell, when a wizard starts out casting a 1st level spell represents a day's work.  It's only with lots and lots of practice that they reduce the amount of preparation.  For scroll scribing it's the same principle except the additional requirement of holding the spell in stasis indefinitely adds another layer of complexity and makes things a bit slower yet.  If a scroll were prepared in the same way as a usual spell then it would have it's magical energies fade away within 24 hours.  So this doubles the time involved in preparing a 1st level spell, triples a 2nd level and quintuples a 3rd level and adds 50% to a 0th level.  It is actually possible to prepare scrolls of 4th level or higher despite not having such spells learned but it involves many many months of work and can't be done without access to library research.  It would also be possible to prepare a scroll for another wizard in the normal amount of time if it was going to be used within 24 hours.

It would actually be a pretty good idea for Aduial to start a library in Narseus.  The town is a trade hub and is situated in a location that is relatively safe and not under threat of immediate invasion.  The world that she lives in is somewhat recovering from a dark age that stripped places like Nossari of their libraries so perhaps the age of rebuilding has come.  Crystalkeep is farther then the 300 miles that I originally said (about 600 I think) but is close enough to make many trips to.)  But it would not be a small endeavor, it would involve at least a couple decades work by many wizards and the construction of a great building to actually house the library.  She has the lifespan for such a task.  It would probably be a good idea for her to be a wizard of a bit more potency first however.

In the more immediate term though she could start assembling a stable of apprentice wizards.  There's no rule saying 1 wizard 1 apprentice.  But tending to apprentices takes time and/or money so it would cut into her own income or spell preparation time.

This took a while to reply.  Game post will come later.