#82 The Wax Classrooms

Age: 800 Years

Hidden or Lost?: Hidden

History: A great thinker once said that knowledge is a candle in the dark. And in the eerie, uncanny halls of the Wax Classrooms that’s more true than anyone could ever have imagined.

It all began with the Ochre Candle, that squat pillar of marbled wax discovered in a rotting wooden box among the archives of Aurach University. The odd candle had no history or provenance, just a cryptic note that read, “a flame forever hungers, forever enlightens.” Thinking it little more than a lovely old decoration, Hestia Glom, dean of the gnostic college, took to lighting the candle each evening as she wrote. Glom found that the strange flame cast impossible shadows, inspiring new theories and revolutionary avenues of exploration. The sense of discovery was addictive, and she began burning the candle at all hours, refusing to sleep, writing treaties after treaties on everything from rare diseases treatments to more effective aqueduct design. And all the while the candle continued to burn, hot wax dripping endlessly down the sides, but the flame never moving any lower.

Word of the gnostic dean’s revolutionary work spread quickly and jealous academics from across the globe began flocking to Auroch University, looking to find the secret to Glom’s success. But within the gnostic college all they found were room after room covered in a thin layer of warm wax, and a single, strange candle.

Still, the odd flame worked its gifts on these new scholars as well, inspiring great works of knowledge from each, until the scholar simply disappeared and the wax got thicker. The uncanny wax piled in corners covering brilliant volumes, and clogged doorways so that tunnels had to be melted through from room to room. Some scholars claimed that spirits could be seen dancing under the layers of soft accretion, and that tall figures made of wax had begun wandering the halls, speaking in excited nonsense. As the ground-breaking work flooded out of the gnostic college, now simply known as the Wax Classrooms, Auroch University gained a reputation as one of the foremost centers of arcane and esoteric knowledge in the known world, omitting the grim truth of the many learned men and women who had disappeared into the wax.

Eventually, as the candle’s wax began threatening to engulf the entire campus, the Wax Classrooms were shuttered and the building condemned. But most say that the candle still burns within, and the waxminds are still in there, unraveling the secrets of the universe.

1. Coatroom of Smoke

2. The Wax Feast

3. Candlestick Gallery

4. Hall of Hidden Epiphany

5. Obscured Offices

6. Wax Scholar’s Study

7. Room of the Ochre Candle

8. The Melting Library

9. Keystone of Inspiration

10. The Window of Flickers

11. Beacon of Knowledge

12. Laboratory of Accretion

13. The Stuck Globes

14. Frozen Belfry

15. The Phantom Council

16. Wax Skeleton of Hestia Glom

17. The Blackened Attic