Roland (The Cactus and the Corpse)
Master Librarian Roland was a legendary one-eyed Bookkeeper of the Plume Coteries.
He was apprenticed for ten years to the "Last of the Mappers", but eventually came to suspect that his mentor was not who he claimed to be. He confronted him as a Stocktaking Party they spearheaded reached Floor 899,167,435,042, and the Mapper revealed himself as Auteur. After turning the situation around, Auteur tried to sacrifice Roland's firstborn child in a ritual to summon the Bookwyrm, which had been his goal all along, but Roland burned down the entire floor before he could do so, escaping with his life and that of his child.
258 years later, his much less reputable grandson Naimon had also made the rank of Master Librarian and inherited his crossbow, although his map ended up in the possession of unrelated Novice Callum. After coming into conflict with Callum and his friends Coloth and Maritsa, Naimon found the map on his person, and found the blank floor-plan of Floor 899,167,435,042; assuming that Roland had for some reason been forced to interrupt his exploration of the Floor before he could mark down its contents, he decided to travel there in hopes of covering himself with glory by finishing his ancestor's work. Instead, he ended up dying after falling down an elevator shaft all the way down to the Floor in question, where his blood allowed Auteur to regenerate himself. (PROSE: The Cactus and the Corpse [+]Loading...["The Cactus and the Corpse (short story)"])
