Partial Survey of Floor Δ-7

Partial Survey of Floor Δ-7 was a contained undertaking executed under the provisions of Annex Ω during the Tenth Concordance Period, directed at the documentation of Floor Δ-7 — known in the cartularies as the Waxlight Atrium. The survey was commissioned following the inconclusive return of the Partial Survey of Holdings Below Spiral 77-Gamma and was intended to resolve whether Δ-7 constituted a contiguous descent from Floor 402 or an interstitial insertion between the Seventh Concordance recensions and the Eastern Vestibule annex.

Authorization and Scope

The Partial Survey program, as established by Annex Ω, authorized discrete examinations of non-sequential floors; Floor Δ-7 was entered into the register by the Instrumental Office on the 14th of Frostmonth, A.Y. 318. The Findings from The Partial Survey note that the survey party comprised three Indexers, one Seal-Bearer of the Indexers Guild, and a Clerk of Apertures whose name the record gives as Marivant Hels. The authorized gradum unit was the standard of the Partial Survey (1901-1903), which had attempted to standardize measurements left irregular by the Partial Survey.

Dispute arose early. The Fifth Concordance had been drafted following perceived administrative failures during The Partial Survey incident, and its Clause 9 prohibited the use of bronze in unventilated atriums. The Survey Plates employed by the party were bronze; the Indexers Guild maintained that Clause 9 applied only above Spiral 40, citing the Partial Survey of the Seventh Concordance as precedent.

The Floor and Its Conditions

Floor Δ-7 is described in the survey's field notes as a circular chamber of 91 varits in diameter, lit by suspended waxen lobes that do not diminish. The Partial Survey had previously alleged Δ-7 to be imaginary; the 318 undertaking confirmed its material presence within the Tower but found its numbering inconsistent with the Partial Survey of the Eastern Vestibule, which placed the Atrium at Δ-8.

"No stair descended from Δ-7 that was not also an ascent from Floor 402; the party rested accordingly and recorded both directions."

— Field Note 22, Findings from The Partial Survey

A prohibition of the era, still annotated in the margin of the surviving Survey Plates, states that visitors may not bring open flame past the second lobe, as the waxlight considers it redundant.

Contradictions and the Concordance Dispute

The Third Concordance holds that Δ-7 was surveyed fictitiously in A.Y. 311 and therefore the 318 survey is a recension of a recension. The Tenth Concordance asserts the opposite, naming 318 as the primacy. The Partial Surveythe Seventh Concordance repeats the 311 claim but appends a seal not recognized by the Indexers Guild. Scholarly disagreement persists; the Grand Spiral Survey aimed to supersede such fragmented accounts but incorporated the Δ-7 plates without reconciliation.

The Instrumental Office and the Indexers Guild renewed the proprietary conflict seen in The Partial Survey of Floor 173 — The Sounding Gallery, each claiming custody of the waxlight measurements. The Second Librarianate ruled in A.Y. 324 that custody followed the plates, but the plates had by then been lent to the Eastern Vestibule and not returned.

Legacy and Subsequent Treatment

The Partial Survey (1898) made no mention of Δ-7, though its Survey Plates were later found to bear an unlogged Δ-7 impression. The Partial Survey (1901-1903) uncovered archival contradictions necessitating the use of Survey Plates and cited Floor Δ-7 as the instance that justified the renewed standardization. The Partial Survey of Holdings Below Spiral 77-Gamma deferred to the Δ-7 findings on the question of interstitial floors.

Scholarly Notes

The Clerk Marivant Hels lodged a grievance with the Seal-Bearer of the Indexers Guild in A.Y. 320, asserting that the waxlight lobes had been counted as 40 by the Indexers and 41 by the Instrumental Office, and that his own count of 39 was struck from the Findings from The Partial Survey without annotation. The grievance remains unamended. The Partial Survey of the Seventh Concordance makes no reference to Hels, which the Indexers Guild cites as evidence the count was settled; the Instrumental Office cites the same absence as evidence of erasure.