Once you have enough study marks for a particular race (character race),
you hear tell of legendary areas, artifacts or creatures. You consult
with the Folklorist librarian and he researches the subject you've
unearthed.

After a set amount of time, he contacts you with his findings which lead
to the person, place or thing.

I originally thought the player could do the research in downtime. ie you
logout to sleep and your character digs into the folklorist library to
track this down but.. this could present problems.

Not sure about how the numbers would work. .ie you need 100 study marks
to research, and only able research another topic after you gain another
100 marks or a cooldown. Ideally anything you discover would be crafted
by that particular race, potentially usable only by that race?