Dedicated to Carolyn Li-Madeo, and her Husband Brian Martin on the Occasion of their Union
by J. T. Minor
v.1.0
© 2018-2019
The city of Illa~Lali~Barios is a metropolis of roughly 5 million people. It serves as the economic and cultural, but not political, capital of its region of this world. History, here, goes back about 4,000 years. Cultural memory and physical presence stretch almost 10,000 years before the current era. Through that time until recently it had a relatively ethnically and culturally homogenous population. The region has a climate somewhat similar to Central America. The contemporary state of technical development is similar to 1960s America. A second wave of industrialization is in full swing, and most of the culture is in a "high modernist" period, including new abstractions in art and literature driven by technical innovation. Automobiles have been around for about 50 years, and roads and highways have fully replaced clay brick and dirt paths.
It is a pre-digital era, and there are no personal computers. A form of scroll-based typewriters and linotype-like presses are the current leading edge of mass text production. These print technologies are also relatively new, and most information is still in older, block printing and manuscript forms. Apart from written media, there are relatively little other mass media except radio, which has, in the last decades, come to dominate the mass culture and political discourse. The current political and economic situation is stable, and has been so for several generations. The city's position at the mouth of the river Ithballios on Lake Denwar has long made it an important trading point and crossroads. Its role as a central crossroads for several nearby regions, with varying cutlures and geographies, have made the city an important hub for information and cultural transmission. As the modern era accellerates the city's role as a repostity of knowledge, and its unique network of Scroll Banks have made it even more wealthy and powerful, attracting new people and further accelerating its transiton into a multi-cultural metropolis, at the lead of the world's knowledge economy.
The term "scroll" as used in the official registered title Scroll Bank, refers to a specific form of rolled linen paper. This linen originally served as a wearable fabic, but around 2,000 years ago, scribes in a far away nation discovered that they could turn linen rags into paper. This linen paper was cut into strips which were then rolled around two ivory sticks, attached to each end with a marrow paste. The give and softness of this paper type made it ideal for rolling and unrolling without damaging the paper. The durability also made it an appealing archival medium. Marks were applied originally with a greased charcoal, but soon inks made from plant extracts became common. These ink and linen scrolls quickly came replace the clay tablets which had served as the primary medium of writing since the dawn of history. The loamy alluvial shoreline in the region of Illa~Lali~Barios became the main source of flax for the entire continent. This lead, locally, to a lower cost for literacy and a high value on the material culture surrounding these scrolls.
Over time this local print and archival culture became more formalized, and scrolls began to be standardized into different varieties, each with specfic applications by convention. For example, "small day scrolls" were never longer than 6 foot (the hieght of a tall man). They were only to be used for business and practical uses, or musical scores, never for anything literary, or meant to last. The width of scrolls also became standarized at 7 inches across. About 1,000 years into the evolution of the medium, a maximum length was agreed to by the guild of paper makers, to put an end to an escalating rivalry between wealthy patrons to own the biggest continuous scroll. Scrolls were capped at roughly 100 meters. This was deemed enough space to hold any "reasonable and readable" collection of writings.
About 500 years ago inventors in another nation began to develop a system for printing, rather than hand writing, a scroll. It consisted of a roller that the operator, advanced one "page" at time with a pedal. The operater then filled in a grid with block letters. Once all the text is in place, the operator used a lever to lower the grid into a pan of ink under the tray, and then another lever to press it against the current scroll. This technology was embraced for some purposes, but not others. It also led to the development of chemical inks, derived from mineral pigments suspened in a viscous medium. Although this lowered the cost of publishing, it also had some serious shortcomings, and was culturally rejected for many purposes. It remained limited to mass production of government decrees, news and low culture fiction, such as romances and heroic epics, for about 100 years. At that time a new format became popular: the card. Cards were made of linen paper rectangles, stacked and glued together, then treated with starch. This made a linen cardboard that was ideally sized and suited for printing by machine. Additionally the type sets and inks continued to advance, making printing clearer and allowing more expressive page layout and typeography. These things came together in this new card format. Printed stacks of cards, sold with tied with string, or in a box, soon became a format that rivaled the traditional scroll in popularity.
About 100 years ago a device very similr to an analog typewriter was invented, and largely sold to businesses, students and hobbyists. This was soon followed by a linotype device for commercial printing. These, and their subsequent improved versions, had far more impact on the print production, and collections, of the city than the earlier block printing machines. In the last few decades almost no new scrolls are produced by caligraphy, and no cards are created or sold which are not the product of mass lithography or photocopier-like systems. However, the value and prestige placed on the older formats remains high. The highest and most sacred forms of print and written material culture still use hand written scrolls in the traditional forms. And most people regard the linen scroll as the perfected form of media, and the subsequent innovations as compromises for the sake of cost and scale.
The origins of several of the scroll banks actually begin before linen and the scroll format were invented. These earliest precursors were social groups based on role in city life. Groups of shamans, farmers, midwives, builders, merchants and other professions formed a range of formal and semi-formal groups as the city grew. With the rise of print culture, these proto-guilds began to collect scrolls relevant to thier specialties in specialized club buildings, many behind fortifications and under guard. At the same time, collectors of fine scrolls in the city began to meet to compare collections and hold competitions related to collecting. These two types of groups began to share more similarities, and with the participation of the cities weathiest, these scroll clubs began to play an increasing econiomic and political role in the life of the city. Around the time of the innovations around printed cards, this informal collection of clubs, guilds and social meeting spaces gelled into a more conrete, shared social identity. A set of shared properties became codified into a linguistic, and eventually, legal, definition. These core traits are a building or set of buildings which house collections of written and printed materials, or rare items. The building also contained an auditorium or multipurpose room for gathering the members. They all used some form of collective governance. And all served a key role in the political, artistic, or economic functions of the city, with a clearly defined area of focus. Within this there was large variance, which only grew more wide as the city and print culture grew and evolved. Within a generation of card printing's introduction, the city's council of governing families formalized a list of 21 officially recognized Scroll Banks, granting (or recognizing) monopolies and mandates over key areas of city life to each bank. Around a dozen unrecognized banks closed, merged, or were acquired in the wake of this codification, leaving no unrecognized banks surviving into the modern age.
The banks' current social and political fuctions span a wide range. The core defintional facets of the group remain: all continue to hold significant collections of scrolls, cards or other valuable materials in organized repositories. All also continue to have a social space, though they have diversified to include theaters, gymnasiums, and even a full scale exposition center. The banks fall into a few sub-groups. Some retain other fetures of the early banks, being membership organizations or guilds. In a few cases the banks have become profit seeking corporations, while others are not-for-profit foundations. Some private banks offer a product, or more often, service for money, essentially acting more as a business than a social instintituion. Another group have specialized in collections with either objects or samples, more like museums or archives, rather than libraries of written materials. A few banks are religious institutions and/or centers of cultic practice. Finally a major sub-group perform official quasi-governmental funcitons. These banks hold the city records, print its money, regulate its commerce, memorialize its verterans, set its official calendar and even perform weddings, among other services.
Throughout their existence, the scroll banks have been a major force in forming and enforcing the hegemony of the ruling oligarchy of the city. Banks exist in, and often reinforce, the class concerns of their members. Banks' members generally come from a single class or profession, and therefore the banks themselves have a class within the bank system as a whole. Some banks have significant collective assets, making the entities themselves wealthy, while some have few assets beyond their core collection. Some run highly profitable capitalist enterprises, while some are communes with exclusively social benefit goals. This means the institutions have very little collecitve interest, and exert almost no collective influence on the city's politics. It has been over a century since the scroll banks made any unaninmous statement on a political issue. These institutions act as gatekeepers of class mobility as well, with monopolies in certain professions. Inherited memberships are illegal, but de facto, many family's fortunes for many generations have been tied to a particular bank. In cultural areas outside business, science and technology, such as art and religion, the scroll banks maintain even stronger control over the required knowledge and means of production to make a carrer in those areas.
These institutional roles in governmental and class systems of power also reinforce regressive gender and ethnicity norms. For example, in some cases the membership in, or even access to, a scroll bank is limited to a single gender from the common gender binary. By endorsing a monopoly on some knoledge by these single gender institutions, societal norms around gendered professions and simple gender binaries are made real in daily life and economics. It is not possible for a man to learn the process for dying cotton indigo, or a woman to work on city transit projects. Additonally, by limiting access to information, these institutions privilege the locally indigenous race, and perpetuate the region's xenophobia. In fact, most explicitly exclude members of other races, immigrants and foreigners.
Collectively the scroll banks are the largest landowners in the city, far surpassing the city government itself, if parks are excluded. Scroll banks are forbidden from owning land outside the city, or for purposes other than for their core missions. So the banks are generally not landlords, or owners of residential propoery. Even in these limits, their buildings and properties can be found in every district of the city, and one or more bank buildings anchor every neighborhood center. Their major role in the cultural and economic life of the city is matched by the prominence of their facilties in its built environment. Roads and transit were built around major banks. And, in areas like Old City and Weird Hill, they form the core of the neighborhood. Some also take prominent places in the city's major parks, again illustrating the depth of the relationship between these institutions and the city.