The Dignified and Artful School of Battle Magic

Set up many centuries ago to ensure the wizards fought in orderly, respectful, and collateral-damage-minimizing way, the School of Battle Magic has since evolved into a cross between an academy for prospective military officers and training for wannabe athletes. Over the course of their time at the faculty, students will learn a comprehensive suite of arcane, alchemical and physical tricks to make them move faster, fight longer, and hide like a shadow. With the great disaster, many of those tricks no longer work, but the student of the School of Battle Magic still retains a greater ability in the physical arts than his or her peers.

The Dueling Arts

As the oldest segment of the school, this battered but proud adamant-crystal gymnasium harkens back to a time many centuries ago when a philosophical disagreement between two mages nearly annihilated half of the city. The movers and shakers of the magical world quickly assembled to create a form of combat between mages that could satisfy the most exuberant sorcerers while still keeping property damage as low as possible. The Dueling Arts, then, focus on precision, negation and counter-spelling, making combat between mages as much a duel of wits as a duel of power. Though a term at this faculty may leave students bruised, sore, partially transformed into a slug or worse, all leave with the ability to think quickly, act decisively and crush foes utterly in tactical combat, an ability that has stayed with students even after the catastrophe.

Cross-Country and Urban Athletics

Once, all sportsmen were normal, mundane people. Imagine that! Somehow, the public thought use of magic in sports was cheating. That all changed when augury-boosted national broadcasts showed the public how thrilling the student’s competitions could be. As this caught on, demand for magical athletes soon outstripped production, and the university soon set up the faculty of Arcane Athleticism. Though early courses simply set students clambering over the intemperate architecture of the university with little more than some endurance-boosting cantrips and a feather-fall amulet, the obstacle courses got increasingly elaborate to satisfy the twin demands of an expectant public and daring students looking for the next thrill. Come forward a hundred years, and Arcane Athletics is just as likely to feature a 2-mile sprint over a lava field as it is a scavenger hunt through the warrens of the crystal ants deep underground.

For first-year students, however, the faculty starts off small, training them in endurance, route planning, and magical tricks to last longer and move faster. A tournament that runs every term pits the students against each other in more and more extreme races, until the final round sends them scrambling over the tallest towers of the University to reach the prize - the Sky-Cleaving Wings of Mistroclus the Magnificent, held at the top of the highest spire. The winner gets to keep this ancient artifact until the start of the next term, when the tournament begins again.

Covert Movement and Misdirection

The newest section of the faculty of Battle Magic, this course was recently established by the brilliant but elderly General Fortimas, veteran of the 17th, 19th and 20th civil wars of the Duchy of Grelia. Taking a newfound appreciation of guerilla warfare, underhanded tactics and manipulation from those wars, she has set about forging a curriculum to teach students the importance of subtlety.

Though viewed as cheating oiks by the master duelists, and skulking and slightly creepy by the athletics teams, this section gives students an appreciation for hiding, moving silently, infiltration and hiding intentions. A key part of the course, though entirely unofficial, is a midnight race past the many postvital human resources under the university and to an ancient chamber beneath, without triggering any alarms. Those that pass seem changed, and somewhat closer to the shadows than they were before. Those that fail wake up in the infirmary, with little idea of what happened.

uni/the_dignified_and_artful_school_of_battle_magic.txt · Last modified: 2011/04/07 16:06 by jamesi
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