The Grand Library of Polograd is the oldest, most prestigious, and most heavily restricted repository of historical and theological texts in the Divine Republic of Kresimiria. Located in the ancient, conservative eastern city of Polograd, the Library is one of the only major cultural institutions on the continent of Nastavak to survive the collapse of the Vosti Empire entirely intact.
Today, the Grand Library functions less as a public civic institution and more as a fortified ideological vault. It houses the oldest known surviving manuscripts of the Books of Kresimir, alongside vast collections of pre-Republican literature, imperial decrees, and censored political tracts. Because knowledge is considered a matter of state security in Kresimiria, access to the Library’s physical and digital archives is tightly controlled by the Council for Education and the Council for Internal Affairs (CIA), making it a frequent target of hacktivists and reformist scholars seeking unfiltered historical truth.
History and Architecture
The Grand Library was established in the 15th century during the height of the Vosti Empire. Polograd, situated on the fertile eastern plains, served as the administrative and cultural retreat for the Vosti aristocracy, far removed from the turbulent borderlands. The Library was originally constructed to house the sprawling legal codes and tax records of the Empire, as well as the theological debates of the Sanctian Church.
The building itself is a masterpiece of pre-Republican architecture. Built from heavy, dark eastern stone, it resembles a fortress more than a place of learning. It features deep subterranean vaults, originally designed to protect manuscripts from dampness and fire, which now serve to protect them from unauthorized eyes.
During the chaotic 1918–1921 Unification War, while other Vosti institutions in Sinj and Novi Otonik were burned or looted by revolutionary militias, the aristocratic leaders of Polograd successfully negotiated the city’s peaceful surrender to Filip Novak’s Centralist Faction. Consequently, the Grand Library and its irreplaceable contents survived the transition to the Republic completely unscathed.
Collections and The Sacred Texts
The Grand Library’s most significant holdings are theological. Deep within its climate-controlled, heavily guarded central vault lie the oldest physical manuscripts of the Books of Kresimir.
These include fragile, 8th-century vellum fragments of the Primum and near-complete 12th-century illuminated copies of the Book of Markos. For the Council for Divinity, these specific physical texts possess immense spiritual gravity; they are the ultimate, foundational proof of the state religion’s legitimacy.
Beyond the sacred texts, the Library houses the “Shadow Archive,” a vast collection of materials explicitly banned by the Media Licensing Authority (MLA). This includes:
- Pre-Republican literature detailing the cultural history of the Bosken minority before they were subjugated.
- Theological texts from the Pravoslavic Faith.
- Detailed historical accounts of the Great Purge of 1955 and the Iron Era atrocities, meticulously recorded but entirely hidden from the Kresimirian public.
- Original copies of outlawed political manifestos, such as The Cantonal Blueprint by Sebastien Novak and the radical terror texts of Jure Varga (founder of the Prophet’s Hands).
State Control and Censorship
In the modern Divine Republic, the Grand Library is administered jointly by the Federal Archive (a division of the Council for Education) and the CIA.
The Library is not open to the general public. Accessing the facility requires Level-4 Federal Clearance, typically granted only to state-sanctioned Diviners, high-ranking members of the Blue Dawn party, and vetted historical researchers from Sinj University. Even then, researchers are only permitted to view specific, heavily redacted materials relevant to their approved state projects.
The Digital Threat
Under Chairman Ari Stov and the 2015 Digital Vigilance Act, the Council for Education began a massive project to digitize the Library’s contents, transferring the ancient texts onto secure YakaSys servers in Kromine.
However, this digitization has made the Grand Library a primary target for the Digital Front, the underground hacktivist collective. Operating primarily out of Kaskiv via Vento-OS, these hackers constantly assault the Library’s digital firewalls. Their goal is to steal and mass-distribute the Kresimirian state’s hidden, unredacted history to the public, viewing the liberation of the Polograd archives as the ultimate act of anti-authoritarian rebellion.