Question of the day 8.

[u/Alternative-Layer876]

Today’s question centers around perhaps the most enigmatic character in HLD.. the Librarian. We know history was important to her, and she went to great lengths to preserve it and pass it on to someone worthy.
Now, from what we can gather, we know she existed after the immortal cell was created and after the great downfall because the information on the monoliths and in the library (after you find all the monoliths) tells us about the event. My question is this..
Did she live through the event, or did she exist in a time long after the event and have to hunt the information down. From the time I began playing the game, it always felt like she was a character who was chasing the information down (kinda like a Samwell Tarly type character). But it dawned on me the other day, she may have witnessed it firsthand, which for me changes the way I view the character.

The first way I viewed her was as person who desperately wanted to know what happened and dedicated their life to finding the information and passing it on. The second way I view her is as a person who lived through a mass extinction type event who had a limited amount of time to hide bread crumbs in safe places in hopes someone would find it and that it would help in some way.

How do you view the character and her motivation?

[u/icarus_927]

Fascinating. I've never once considered that the Archivist/Librarian was a researcher... I guess my assumption was that this was less than 5 years since the apocalyptic event.

I know everything's in ruins and covered in moss- reclaimed by nature, but plants move fast; I figured it wasn't just decay but actually damage & devastation.

I had this feeling that the crystalline war remnants in the west zone (by the "MIDNIGHT LOOMING" monolith)... wasn't part of some decade-long, or hundred-year war, either.

That's mind-blowing to reconsider, but I thought that the war started and ended with the choice to mobilize those Evangelion-like giants... and all fighting was for survival from that breaking point to its immediate end... maybe less than three days.

Our highschool's creative writing teacher talked about the option of leaving holes or gaps in descriptions, so people can interpret it in the way that's most meaningful or devastating to them.

So... After all that early criticism for HLD not being direct enough in its narrative, here I am being amazed at a subtle contextual interpretation I never realized I made... a decade later... because they didn't over-explain it to definitive constraints!

[u/Alternative-Layer876 → u/icarus_927]

Another thing that fascinates me and Id like to explore is the group of guys who went into the west to explore and do research.. the group that was hunted down by wolves. The metal guy down in the horde arena, behind the 12 key door in town is one of the members.
I’d love to know more about their mission.

[u/LocodraTheCrow]

Being it that the librarian would have information about the somewhat recent events I'd say they did not live in the time of the great fall or the war. The monoliths give information about the bird priest and we have a bird refugee in the centre town, alive and healthy, so I think she lived soon before the Magician.