I’ve thought a lot about where citizens of Azeroth would find certain forbidden books throughout the game world. Silvermoon exiled some of their own for practicing with shadow magic so it can be implied it would be hard to find books dealing in that within the city. Most public libraries would probably ban books about demons too, right?
My question is: what libraries would someone go to find books on forbidden topics? There’s Scholomance obviously for necromancy stuff but what other libraries seem to accept these darker magics?
Dalaran, for sure. Even if they don’t make it accessible, you can make a safe bet that the Kirin Tor would want to keep close tabs on forbidden magical knowledge.
Blue Dragonflight might have some too, as well as the Shen’dralar/Moon Guard.
Silvermoon, being the more modern center of racial magic on Azeroth, would probably have their own stores of it too.
Kara, too - but who knows what state that place is in now.
Specifically research done by Dar’khan, who is widely considered the most despised traitor of the Sin’dorei, who was also a servant of the lich king. The blood elves actually welcome the research of dark magics, but Dar’khan’s writings had political reasons for being outlawed. Silvermoon would have plenty of research into taboo or forbidden magic, as they applaud the pursuit of knowledge.
Necromancy may be a bit more scarce for a similar reason Dar’khan’s writings were given an exception, though I wager they just made such things a little harder for the average citizen to obtain.
Kara is one place where I’d expect all known knowledge of magic prior to the first war to exist, and maybe even more now since it’s kind of wibbly wobbly like that. ICly, it is woefully dangerous to even set foot in it, as it’s haunted, blighted by magic, cursed, and any other affliction you can put on a singular zone. There’s a reason storywise we’ve only ventured into it on 3 separate occasions. (BC, Legion prelaunch, Return To Karazhan dungeon)
Here’s one seldom thought of though; Outland. It’s not on Azeroth, of course, but Dark Magic was practiced freely for decades by many beings on the world. While not in a collective place like a library, I could see unique tomes of power being scattered across it, either dropped by fallen agents of the Burning Legion, or by Illidan’s forces when they held control of the planet’s remains.
I’d argue Shadowforge would have plenty of tomes on the subject. The Dark Iron were entrenched in dark magics for years, and as far as we’ve seen still employ them, just not in service of Ragnaros. This would probably be more viable for Alliance characters though.
Edit: Actually now that I think of it there’s probably several tomes still scattered around Blackrock Mountain from the Dark Horde.
In my mind there’s probably a few places for each school of magic that would most likely be forbidden to outsiders/anyone powerful/foolish enough to go looking.
Dalaran or Silvermoon would probably be the first places people would think of. Yeah they might not specialize in keeping any one particular school of magical knowledge locked away but you could probably find something if you look hard enough (and avoided all the damn security).
If one were looking for books/knowledge on Necromancy, Scholomance would definitely be a good starting place. Though I also think the bold might actually head out to Icecrown to seek Scourge-related magic on occasion, though that’d be more dangerous if you didn’t want to join the cult of the damned.
For fel magic, prior to Legion I would’ve said the Tomb of Sargeras or maybe even Outland? Though as of right now I’m not sure there would be a place where practitioners of fel magic could easily seek out books or tomes without getting interrogated by a bunch of Magisters/Kirin Tor. Though now that I think about it, Outland is still a relatively safe place from any prying eyes.
Arcane magic? Yeah perhaps the Blue Dragonflight would have forbidden knowledge but I doubt they’d just give it to mortals with dubious reasons for being there. I’d wager Azsuna is a safe place to try and get some arcane knowledge without fear although you could also extend that to [insert any ruined highborne city here].
But who knows, maybe there’s some place we’re all forgetting about.
I would guess that there’s a surprising amount in the Scarlet Monastery library. I mean, they sent one of their best mages to burn the place down to hide their shame, so who knows what they’ve got there.
When I play my illicit magic user, I operate on the premise that there’s so many war-torn places around Azeroth (in particular in Northern Eastern Kingdoms) that there’s abandoned houses and raided hideouts everywhere that a person can pillage and stay in, if they’re hardy enough to brave whatever’s hanging around.
That includes Scholomance, the remnants of Stratholme, and other Scourge/Cult questing areas and towns all over the place. Same with other old cultist hideaways, like Ragefire Chasm (I bet that one’s pretty cleaned out and secure at this point though, being right under Orgrimmar).
And while a lot of high-profile libraries probably have some of those illicit texts, I suspect the point of a lot of them being there is to keep people from reading them, or at least anyone who would read them with the intent to practice anything by reading them.
So, when I RP my illicit magic user, I imagine they spend a lot of time rifling through anywhere such criminals have congregated, particularly places that might have been overlooked or that might be too spooky for even the heroes to spend too much of their time in. And in so doing, they not only collect magic texts, but old correspondence (much of it garbage) and trying to decrypt it in order to figure out where other hideaways might be/might have been, for more leads.
Thank you Kemusho, I was wondering if anyone would talk about Eldre’thelas.
In Classic the Dire Maul is one of the places to go for forgotten lore quests, such as the Quel’serrar questline. Might be a little picked clean now, but then OP you didn’t ask why or when one might go to these locations…
There’s both yin & yang to chi* flow. Added to that is the long history of dealing with the Sha.** So I imagine that monastic libraries in Pandaria are roughly similar to the library in Kamar-Taj as shown in the Dr. Strange film.
The Lorewalkers & other scholars at the Seat of Knowledge definitely study the darker side of ancient knowledge. At least as a defensive measure. But … to know how to stop your opponent you need to understand them, right?
The Scroll Keeper’s Sanctum in Jade Serpent Temple is another obvious choice. The instanced version is about misuse of secret techniques. Things got so out of hand there that they had to call in adventurers to set things back in balance.
Tian’s “library” is small and not marked on the maps. OTOH, unlike the other martial arts centers Tian accepts anybody & everybody for training. So, you know, …
Then there’s the library at White Tiger Temple … very difficult to find, but the clues are there ingame.
Scattered across Pandaria are what I think of as “scroll grottos” - the one curated by Red Crane monks at the Peak of Serenity (Cave of the Crane) being the most well-known. There’s one seemingly under the control of Hozen. I doubt all of those guys would refrain from things we were not meant to know. After all, look at how they deal with the scrolls on the Wandering Isle.
Basically, if you want to research the dark side, the continent where the dominant race has at least 10,000 years recorded experience dealing with it should be on your list of places to visit.
*I use “chi” in a broad generic sense. Because of the long separation from other cultures, I imagine Pandaren mages wouldn’t use the same vocabulary to talk about magical forces.
** can’t get much darker/arcane than dealing with Old God blood that’s seeped into Azeroth itself.
At the First Pandaren Summit one of the speakers was a Void Priestess whose proposal was to research how to raise the Mists again & basically void-nuke the rest of the races. No one wanted to stand within 20 feet of her. But the more I thought about it …
One of my minor characters is a Priest who’s totally sha-possessed. Not only is he happy about it, he’s convinced it’s so good it’s worth sharing the opportunity with as many as possible. Musta been something he read …
And - although I haven’t run into one yet - I imagine there’s a hammer-mechanic out there with an unhealthy curiosity about Titan machineries and access to a partially & ineptly translated Mogu guide to modifications.