teaching shelving awareness

I’ll give you a valuable tip: when in my House of Knowledge, do not, under any circumstances, mess with my system! It could end badly for you. There are huge, big signs scattered around the library that tell the avid reader to always put memory stones and books back exactly where they found them. They even include the helpful aside that you should just leave the stones/books on a worktable if you’re not sure where to put it.
When I made these signs I was under the impression that every student coming to this HoK would read and understand these few simple words. What a naïve thing to think, honestly. I should have known that most imps are under the impression that signs are there merely for decoration purposes.
Since those naïve days I have evolved and developed a system that teaches students the whole putting back thing quite effectively.
In the beginning I developed a spell that would find any misplaced books or stones, so I – or one of my assistants – could put it back where it belonged. Apart from showing me how many incompetent imps there are, this didn’t help resolve the problem, though.
I decided that the first step to my goal was to find a way of identifying those misplacers. I developed a spell that would track the fingerprints of the last imp to touch a misplaced stone or book, linking the punishing spell to the imp in question. Ingenious little trick, even if I say so myself.
Now to the grand finale. I came up with just the perfect punishing spell. Inspired by human Greek mythology – Sisyphus to be exact – I send the offenders a nightmare in which they have to shelve memory stones over and over and over again. The whole time the imps are aware that they are dreaming and that their experience is courtesy of me.
Second time offenders are very, very rare.