Location: Mistreach Vale, Crater Mountains
Faction: Nicaram Republic
Headmistress: Callidae Nevee
Faculty: 30
Staff: 20
Students: 800 (max)
Notable Graduates:
Mistreach Academy is known as the premiere mystical education facility in the Nicaram Republic and is comfortably in the running for best in the world, so long as the Sidhe realms remain closed to the mortal races.
Located in a wooden vale hidden in the mountains south of Eythallium, Mistreach was built roughly a thousand years before the Arcana War, and was the last great project undertaken by a coalition of all the various humanoid species. Notably, it was the last project the gnomes and roken had a hand in before their great migration across the Mondrice Ocean, and it was one of the few projects the sidhe have aided in.
The explicit instruction given to the architects was to create a school full of passages and secret chambers. The mages who formed the first faculty were also instructed to utilize their own magic to further shape the school. This instruction continued to be in force for nearly five hundred years until Headmaster Wanrhine put an end to it after an entire classroom vanished into a pocket dimension for four months, with a class in it. Headmaster Wanrhine was later noted to have said that “...despite the traumas that the students and teacher suffered while adrift in the so-called ‘Echoes of the Possible’, their experience has contributed much to our knowledge of dimensional magic. Specifically: that we are completely unprepared for what lies down that particular knowledge path. If the Sidhe were available, perhaps we could rely on their knowledge to act as a safety net. As it stands, we’ve been meddling for too long in a field of magic that we do not understand. Dimensional experimentation must become a closely monitored area of experimentation.”
This is not to say that the school has not continued to grow and change. Some changes are undertaken by the faculty, though only with the explicit permission of the current headmistress or headmaster. Some changes, however, seem to occur spontaneously. This has led to the popular theory amongst students that Mistreach itself has gained a degree of sentience over the millenia it has existed.
The question of Mistreach Academy's possible sentience was given renewed focus during the Arcana War when, completely unprompted by the headmaster or any professor, the myriad defenses of the school were suddenly activated. They remained up for two days before anyone noticed that an assassination team made up of Knights of Tomorrow had been attempting to breach the vale. This was discovered when professors Gleefort and Knurt discovered the bodies of the would-be assassins along with one who was alive, but tightly restrained.
Admission takes the form of two routine rituals disguised as tests: the Arcane Aptitude test, and the Coven Selection test. Both must be successfully accomplished before a student will be fully registered for the school.
Prospective students for Mistreach Academy are identified through a relatively simple test that every child takes within a week of their twelfth birthday. Typically, this test will be proctored by a local mage in good standing, potentially one of their teachers if they attend a primary school.
The test is very straight forward:
A carefully prepared and enchanted set of crystals are laid out on a table. Whomever is proctoring the test should also have five brass bowls each holding one of the elements. The prospective student is given only these instructions and only one at a time:
This test is designed to identify the innate magical potential of a student, along with their closest elemental link. It also serves as a possible indicator of a student's relative magical strength, though this is not taken as a hard and fast measure, as there are many factors that may be serving to boost or dampen a student's strength in that moment.
If there is an exceptional reaction, such as when Tanis Vandale caused the water-tuned crystal to grow so much it destroyed the testing room, or when Argylmir Crowdev caused the five crystals to fuse together, that reaction is reported, and those students are typically given an additional battery of tests at Mistreach to determine their potential.
It should be noted that a complete lack of a reaction during the test does not mean that a student is locked out of Mistreach Academy. Should a potential student request it, they may be given one of two additional tests as a substitute: completeing a simple ritual spell, or explaining the theory behind the same ritual. Headmaster Sandain, who helmed Mistreach through the Arcana War and for nearly twenty years before that, was admitted based on the theory test.
The second half of the registration process takes place two years later. Those who successfully passes the Arcane Aptitude test are invited to the Arcanium Hall in Eythallium for Coven Day. There, they are tasked with completing a second ritual to determine which of the five Covens they will be assigned to during their time at Mistreach.
Classes at Mistreach Academy cover the final five years of a student's education. Typically, children are educated at home or, if they live in a large enough town or city, they may have attended a primary school, typically run by Readers of the Blind Faith. Either way, students are expected to be able to read, write, perform basic math, and have at least a basic understanding of history.
While at Mistreach, students will all take the same classes for their first year:
In their second year, students will begin having more choices. All second year students will take the following classes:
Based on their attunement and performance in their first year, they will placed into different elemental and research classes:
They will also choose one track from each of the two elective categories:
In their third year, students will be given the opportunity to undertaken an apprenticeship. This is a highly competitive process, but so long as a student has successfully passed all of their previous core classes, they will be given an apprenticeship somewhere if they desire it. All third year students will attend classes in the fall, with their apprenticeships occuring in the spring and summer.
Required Fall classes:
Students who are given an apprenticeship will be given a series of assignments to complete across the span of their apprenticeship in each of their four classes. They are also expected to be instructed by the mage they are apprenticed to.
Students who are not given an apprenticeship will be given classes designed to shore up whatever subject they previously failed in or to further develop their skills should they elect to not take an apprenticeship.
In their fourth year, students will find that they have a much wider array of courses to chose from to fill out their eight course roster:
In their fifth and final year at Mistreach, students are expected to only take four classes, with the rest of their being devoted to their capstone project. Those four classes are chosen from the 4th year list above with the following additions, which may only be taken with approval:
The capstone project is a self-selected project that should involve all four of the core tracks (theory, elemental, practical, and research). Each student approaches a professor to serve as their project advisor and advocate. They will then follow these steps:
As with any top tier institue of learning, Mistreach maintains a highly regarded faculty supplemented by an exceptional staff.
Mistreach operates with a Headmaster or Mistress at the top of the school. Typically, this person will be a graduate of Mistreach and will have served as a professor at the school for at least a decade prior to gaining the position.
The Headmaster is part Dean, part CEO, and part Governmental Lobbyist all rolled into one. Typically, the Headmaster is no longer involved in the day-to-day teaching of students, though it has been noted, more times than not, that a new Headmaster will still attempt to teach classes. Rarely does this happen for more than two years before they stop trying to keep a foot in the professorial role.
A Headmaster can teach special classes to a small, typically quite advanced, group of students. Headmaster Sandain personally instructed Damian Maist, Corvan Whitestone, and Callidae Nevee in their last two years at Mistreach.
The current Headmistress is Callidae Nevee, who has served honorably in that role for 14 years and is well regarded by the students, faculty, and the wider community of arcane educators.
The Faculty of Mistreach Academy are expected to be master of their particular field of study, as well as researches within their field or an adjacent one. In real world terms, Mistreach could be considered a research institution, though peer reviewed publication is not particularly practiced.
As the people who established Mistreach Academy understand that wide-scale tracking is a poor process, they elected to group students into Covens by random chance. As no more than 160 students may be admitted each year, each Coven is given no more than 32 students per year.
In an attempt to further distance the Covens from any sort of deliberate association with any value or moral judgement, each Coven was named for one of the five mountains that surrounds the Mistreach Vale.
Named for the northern-most peak and the one that is visible from the Main Hall, Coven Altimea bears the colors midnight blue, royal blue, and burgundy red.
Altimea's dorms are a circular, four story construction built around an open garden courtyard with a Jove Spruce tree at its center. The tree was a gift from a gnomish graduate and is the largest known specimen of the species. It's so large, in fact, that twenty years after it was planted, the Altimea fifth years petitioned the Headmistress at the time to allow them to construct a study space for fifth years in its limbs that connects to the third floor of their dorm building. Altimea students will frequently construct wands from branches of this tree.
Notable alumni:
Named for the north-eastern peak and the one that hosts the silver mine that provides silver for the school, Coven Disnorea bears the colors deep blue, orange-red, and yellow-orange.
Disnorea's dorms are built into a natural cenote beneath the school. Natural light is channeled down into the dorms using specially designed mirrors and crystals. It's widely believed that the pond that serves as the primary feature of their central room is a bottomless one. A perfectly shaped, seven-sided obelisk of ruby appeared overnight in a brand new chamber just off of the central room. When a Disnorea student becomes a fifth year, their name appears on the obelisk and a piece of jewlery featuring a ruby, likely formed from the material removed from the obelisk, appears on their bed. No one knows why this happens. As a result, Disnorea fifth years carved a private study room into the back wall of the obelisk chamber. Only someone with a ruby can get in.
Notable alumni:
Named for the south-eastern peak and the one that the only road into the vale go through, Coven Estrea bears the colors green, orange, and purple.
Estrea's dorms are built over and into the Gormthonn Lake. Each room can see out into the lake with perfect clarity, but no one can see in. The main common room features a moon pool with a unique enchantment on it. Any Estrea student who enters the lake through the moon pool with be able to breath underwater for up to 30 minutes per year they've attended the school. The entire dorm is built over a trench that takes nearly an hour to swim all the way down to the bottom of. Early on, a group of fifth years constructed a secret study room at the bottom of the trench. It does not contain the same enchantment, which means only fifth years can safely use it.
Notable alumi:
Named for the south-western peak and the one that the Reachway River flows under as it exists the vale, Coven Jinatrea bears the colors teal, magenta, and gold.
Jinatrea's dorms are built at the top of the highest tower of the Academy and is only accessible through a magical lift. As a departing gift, one roken graduate created a crystaline formation that consistently produces perfectly clear and faceted crystals. Any Jinatrea student may take one per year. They tend to be harder to enchant or inscribe, but any working done on one tends to be equally stronger. Jinatrea fifth years have been using the space of a neighboring tower as a private study space. All you have to do to get in is make it from the fifth year balcony to the other tower.
Notable alumni:
Named for the north-western peak and the one that the astronomy tower was constructed on, Coven Mustrea bears the colors yellow, red, and navy blue.
Mustrea's dorms are built in an all-obsidian lava tube network in a magma pool that provides heat and materials for the school. Light comes from highly polished portions of the obsidian walls and ceilings that allow students to see the magma and the rare creatures that live in it. It is a rite of passage among second year Mustrea students to safely harvest some of the magma and magically shape it into a ritual knife. They are guided in the process by a fifth year. At the end of each year, the outgoing fifth years will each bring an incoming fifth year into the fifth year study and help them use a ritual circle made of flowing lava to enchant their ritual knife to allow it to become red hot on command.
Notable alumni:
Mistreach Academy, as with all good magick schools, has plenty of things to find and discover on its grounds. Besides the expansive forest, the lake, the river, and everything hidden in the Academy itself, there are also plenty of caves in the mountains that form the Vale.