Thursday, 9 April 2009

Whitespire Academy


Continuing my effort to flesh out your campaign with new locations I though I'd create an academy for wizards - Whitespire. You can put the building in any city you wish, but there is only one in the world and it has to be in a large affluent city with a scholarly air.

Whitespire Academy is a beacon of magical education, its white corridors filled with robed students marching back and forth, leather bound books in hand, between classes.

The academy has been around for thousands of years when it was founded by master mage, Dellik Willowood, who set it up to teach youngsters who possessed kremm how to reach their magical potential.

Now Whitespire has grown into a monumental piece of architecture. The sun reflects its pure white surface, making it glow radiantly like a celestial object. It has 500 classrooms, a theater, a huge and famous library, an assembly hall and a beautiful courtyard lined with lush green trees and multi-coloured flowers.

As a prestigious school it only accepts those who show the most potential in becoming great magic-users. The entry exam is notoriously difficult, forcing low level wizards to focus all their kremm into pulling of spells to impress the examiners, of which there are three: Jaro, Como and Porro, three hard nosed brothers who take delight in failing people.

The current Dean is Leaf Frost, a gentle man who wears round shaded glasses and is easily recognizable. He carries the Willowood Staff, which was created by Dellik Willowood himself and contains incredibly powerful spells, including one that can bring back the dead. However, Leaf is usually found studying all sorts of arcana in his office or in the library, rather than out fighting with his staff, which he uses as a walking stick.

Tuition fees are 100,000 gold a term, of which there are two per year, but concessions can be made for those who show incredible talent but lack the funds to attend the academy. Students are either full or part-time. Full timers will spend five years at Whitespire, with summer breaks lasting a month, whereas those on part-time courses will attend every other month for ten years. Once they graduate they are known as Wizards of Whitespire, an honored title in the realm of magic.

Whitespire is linked with the Wizard's Guild and as a result is able to teach every spell in the spell book. Once the tuition fee is paid, the spells are free to learn, but first years only have access to low-level spells. As they progress each year, more spells will become open to them and by the end of their time they should know up to 10th level spells. This training definitely does not come easy, as the annual exams are notoriously difficult to pass, weeding out the weaker students. If a student fails one year, they receive a percentage of their tuition fee back, depending on what year they dropped out.

3 comments:

  1. i like what you are doing here - keep it going!

    branderwydd

    ReplyDelete
  2. 100 000! Wow! Do you handle those sums in your campaign! I suddenly feel stingy...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Makes me want to have my players have a kid that they're funding through the Wizards Guild.

    Damn you're good.

    ReplyDelete