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Barbarian in the Playground
Join Date: Aug 2005
Gender: 
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Re: Under the School OOC thread
Useful background from the recruitment thread and IC thread:
Background:
Spoiler
In a remote mountain range, there is a valley carved by ancient ice. A river of clear cold water falls through a gap in the surrounding mountains, pauses to make a small lake in the valley, and then runs on happily. On the lake, there is an island of bare, grey rock. And from this island, the impossible rises.
Travelling towards the island, you first see what seems to be a normal keep; three towers with interconnecting walls surrounding a fourth and larger tower. And then your eyes notice the details and scale – these towers are far larger than any you’ve ever seen. They rise to the sky and dwarf the town that sits lower on the same island.
This is the home to Professor Callan’s School of Magic, and you have been selected to study here. Maybe you were tested by a stranger and bought from your parents for a paltry sum of money. Maybe you had heard of such a place and traveled through worlds to be here. Maybe you were found among an abandoned litter of your kobold kin. No matter: here you are. You are going to be a wizard!
* * *
Fast forward several years: you flunked out. Not among the first crop, those destined to become well-off farmers and laborers. Probably in the second crop - those whose talents appeared not in wizardry, but in some other area. Maybe in the third crop – those who became wizards but lacked the gift to become the professor’s own apprentices.
But the School takes care of those it’s taken in. You now have a job at the school itself. You live in a barracks in the huge north tower, the one housing the corps responsible for exploration of the surrounding world, and the recruitment of new students. It’s simply called Exploration, and you’ve just begun to settle in. And now the call comes out to you, and a group of other explorers. You have been assigned to explore, map, and make familiar the recently discovered caves beneath the school.
Good luck.
On religion:
Spoiler
The school recruits from multiple worlds, so the inhabitants' religious feelings are truly and well mixed. Pelor worshippers rub shoulders with the faithful of Mystra, Gruumsh and Ptah. The school administration makes sure everyone knows not to make waves, and peace is kept.
There is a temple in the southeast tower, and it has strange private altars that magically conform to the belief of the individual worshipper. It also has a large temple to a minor knowledge god called Antero Vipunen, and a small but dedicated priesthood. Most of the schools' resident wizards pay homage in this temple, but no one is forced to do so. If you've trained as a cleric in the school, he is most likely your deity.
The gods of this world are different. They always have a physical form - an indestructible object ranging from a book in a temple to a huge boulder held aloft by a forest. These deities are not really aligned traditionally, but provincially. This means that wars of religion spring up relatively often, whenever a god decides it needs more territory for worshippers. There is no established local god at the school itself (the kobold tribes of the valley are animist).
(OC: this transates to "any deity you want is fine", but the locals are nonstandard - no alignment limitations. Antero Vipunen is N and has the domains of Knowledge, Earth, Magic and Strength)
The Explorer’s Code
On the Conclave:
The professor:
Spoiler
Professor Callan is a wizard of indeterminate age and species. He's rarely seen twice in the same form: one day he is a giant snake, the next a halfling. His (her?) gender changes occasionally as well, but he is male most of the time. On the school grounds, he can be recognized by his hat; on old black top hat with a red band. Not that he's around very often. He's left the administration of the school and the surrounding valley to his apprentices, and spends most of his time sequestered away in his personal laboratory or away altogether.
Few people in the school speak to him, as he only teaches his own apprentice students, after they've graduated from the school itself. The regular teaching staff know him and can talk to him if the need arises. Very few do. The ones that regularly do are the high priestess at the temple, the castle seneschal, the top leaders of Exploration and the Guard, the professor's own apprentices, and Kupari, the copper dragon living high in the main tower.
Everyone has met the professor at least once. He does make sure to greet every student coming to the school, if only briefly. That meeting has left most people wondering what the Professor was after, since he always asks very strange questions.
On housing:
On Arcane Marks:
Spoiler
An Arcane mark, also called a Wizard’s Mark is essential for all magic. I becomes a part of every spell scribed into a spellbook and every magical text that a wizard writes. In the school, it’s used in many more tasks, including lab reservations, tests and as a form of ID. A Mark is not static, but grows with the wizard. It starts out simple, often as the wizard’s own initials or monogram or another symbol important to the wizard. Everybody chooses their own. As the wizard grows in power, it becomes more and more elaborate. Some very powerful wizard even have three-dimensional marks that rise out of the surface they’re written on. Some move. Nonwizards may also have marks, if they’ve studied the wizard ways for long enough. These don’t grow, but remain static unless the owner starts learning arcane magic.
(Ruleswise: if you have two or more ranks in Spellcraft, you have a Mark of your own.)
NPCs met:
__________________
My first character was a first edition thief.
Evidence that MS Paint is still a valid avataring tool:
Last edited by Sampi : 06-21-2012 at 05:02 AM.
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