The Chamber of Codes is the intellectual nerve center of the Department of Mysteries: part archive, part think tank, part decoding cathedral. It is a sanctuary for the arcane, the lost, the encrypted. Within these walls, knowledge itself becomes sacred, and its guardians—those who can speak in tongues long dead or pull truths from the mouths of riddles—are among the most revered Unspeakables of all. The air smells of ink, aged leather, candle wax, and occasionally, something metallic and slightly burnt—a side effect of decoding ancient wards or testing the translation fidelity of magical scripts. Tall, wooden stacks reach nearly to the arched ceiling, each shelf lovingly and obsessively catalogued with such things as: tomes and grimoires with bindings so old they crackle at a touch; scrolls and tablets inscribed in languages no longer spoken; photographs (some that blink, others that burn); physical artifacts imbued with curses, secrets, or lingering voices; a warded bell jar that holds a shattered, still-ticking Time-Turner; and, quietly tucked among the obscure and profound…a familiar book of fairy tales

Though all Unspeakables may access this chamber to support their research, only those assigned here truly understand its pulse. Their task is not only to preserve what is known, but to unravel what is unknown—to decipher languages born of gods or monsters, to reconstruct broken magical syntax, to decode the blueprints of spells that may have only been cast once in history. The room is acoustically designed—its gently curved ceiling and echo-dampening walls crafted to enhance focus and clarity. In the heart of the space sit rows of cubicle-style wooden desks, each one subtly enchanted to preserve the privacy of its occupant’s work. Here, Unspeakables hunched over whirring decoding devices, murmuring out loud in half-forgotten dialects, transcribe the thoughts of vanished civilizations with ink that glows or fades depending on accuracy. Tools of the trade scatter the room: recording crystals to capture utterances in languages that refuse transcription; rotating cipher rings and alphabet converters mounted on stone pivots; a large metallic machine, its cogs forever ticking—part Lorenz cipher, part mystery itself—resting solemnly on one lone desk, always active, always turning; endless parchment, enchanted quills, and pens that correct their own grammar… if they agree with you.

At the far end of the chamber is a recessed circular space—a perfect stone bowl—with a rotating roulette of symbols spinning ever so slowly in the floor. The symbols are not of any one language, but many: alphabets lost, borrowed, or perhaps never truly deciphered. Some resemble what was etched into the Phaistos Disc. Others… resist translation entirely, but radiate with the weight of knowledge too old or too potent to ignore. These ancient glyphs are not idle decoration. They are keys, puzzles, fragments of a magical history that may predate wandlore or perhaps even Wizardkind itself. The most talented decoders sit here in quiet shifts, waiting for a spark of meaning to emerge.

This is not just a library―it is a living puzzle box, and its answers change with every Unspeakable who dares to ask the right question.