Earth-scholarship

Earth scholarship was the study of nature and geography in the Edgeworld. Its proponents were known as Earth Scholars.

Role in the Distant Past

The Earth Scholars were the original founders and governors of Sanctaphrax with the Sky Scholars being a relatively minor faction. The controversy between the two began when the increasingly buoyant Sanctaphrax Rock threatened to tear away from its moorings. The Sky Scholars insisted that the solution was to weigh the rock down by placing a chest of stormphrax in the Earth Scholars' Great Laboratory. The Earth-Scholars argued that such a method was crude and unnecessary, and that the key to saving Sanctaphrax would be in studying the properties of the great floating rock and discover its secrets. With the Earth Scholars in control of Sanctaphrax, the Sky Scholars were powerless to put their own plans into action.

Eventually, the Sky Scholars decided to take matters into their own hands. Enlisting a band of Flat-Head Goblins from the Deepwoods, the Sky Scholar Next-Most High Academe ousted the Earth Scholar Most High Academe, and weighted down the rock with stormphrax, converting the Great Laboratory in the Heartrock into the Treasury Chamber. The Sky Scholars established full control of Sanctaphrax, changing civic politics forever.

Soon after the Sky Scholars' rise to power, the Great Purges began in which every Earth Scholar was forcibly expelled from Sanctaphrax. This happened roughly 40 years before the beginning of the Quint Trilogy, around the time Linius Pallitax was born.

Role in the Quint trilogy

During Quint's time, the Earth Scholars were despised and looked down upon by the Sky Scholars, and their studies were not welcome in Sanctaphrax. Their wealth of knowledge remained within the Great Library, though this building became increasingly ignored and neglected over time, till only the High Librarian Bungus Septrill remained to keep it in order. Though the High Academe Linius Pallitax dreamed of reuniting Earth and Sky, those dreams did not come true until long after his death.

Role in the Rook trilogy

Many decades after the loss of Old Sanctaphrax, Earth Scholars and disillusioned Sky Scholars reunited to form the Librarians Academic, joined by their fear of and opposition to the radical breakaway Sky Scholar faction known as the Guardians of Night.