Sky-scholarship

Sky-scholarship was the study of atmosphere and weather in the Edge.

Role in Early Sanctaphrax

Sanctaphrax was founded and initially governed by Earth-Scholars, and Sky-Scholarship was little more than a footnote in the early history of the great floating city. The schism between Sky-Scholarship and Earth-Studies began when the increasingly buoyant Sanctaphrax Rock threatened to tear away from its moorings and sail off into open sky. The Sky-Scholars insisted that the only way to save Sanctaphrax would be to weigh it down with a chest of stormphrax placed 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 the politics of the great floating city forever.

Soon after the Sky-Scholars' rise to power, the Earth-Scholars were cast out of Sanctaphrax completely in the Great Purges.

Role in the Quint and Twig trilogies

During the Quint and Twig trilogies, Sky-Scholars were the sole academics of Sanctaphrax. Highly contemptuous and distrusting of Earth-Studies, the Sky-Scholars ignored and shunned the knowledge accumulated by the scholars of old, and to openly profess Earth-Scholar sympathies was consisdered tantamount to sedition.

Linius Pallitax was devoted to reuniting Earth-Scholars and Sky-Scholars, believing that cooperation between the two disciplines was the way forward for Sanctaphrax. When he died, however, Hax Vostillix plunged Sanctaphrax back into its previous rivalries.

Though the Earth-Scholars were banished, the accumulation of their knowledge remained in the Great Library, though the Library was largely forgotten and ignored, and many of its Barkscrolls rotting away to dust. For many years the High Librarian, Bungus Septrill, was its sole occupant.

Role in the Rook trilogy

At the time of the Rook trilogy, those Sky-Scholars who were not Guardians of Night merged with the Earth-Scholars to become the Librarians Academic. The Librarians hid in the sewers to remain safe from the Guardians of Night, General Tytugg's goblin armies, and the Shrykes. After the destruction of Undertown, the Librarians relocated to the Free Glades.