leticia

Kay, folks, here's the deal.

I'll be running this as a pickup game on Sammy.

Session times may be any weekday between 12-6ish Pacific. (Most won't run that long, but they may start later or end earlier.) I'm hoping this will allow those interested who work 8-5 Eastern a chance to play, though because it nears my time to work, I can't make guarantees as to /equal/ play. Sorry.

I will be /preferring/ Tuesdays and Wednesdays for sessions, but if there happen to be enough PCs on other days (and I'm not too busy) I'll consider running scenes then and there. (Mondays I can only run things through to about 5 Pacific, 'cause I work earlier.) Weekend sessions will simply not be happening. Sorry. If I'm not in one of my scheduled games, I need that time for other things.

Characters should be heroic mortals, but they don't necessarily need to be entirely /human/ mortals. X-blooded are quite all right (no, not /dragon-blooded/.) Character creation is standard Heroic Mortal points, + Destiny 3 merit for free, + /one/ and only /one/ dot of the player's choice of Inheritance, Knowledge, or Experience. I may consider some basic thaumaturgy free, or not. Exact guidelines are still subject to alteration, but this should get people who want in started. You'll find the 1e PG very useful - merits and flaws are in play, plus details on various X-Blooded, though keep in mind what's appropriate for your character's /mortal/ nature. If you don't have the PG, talk with me and I'll see what I can do to help you pick things out.

Characters should be somewhere between 12-25 years old - I'll consider exceptions, and would prefer the later range. The conceit is that there is a well known school - thaumaturgy, theology, martial arts, among other things - on an isle in the West. Your character has received an all expense paid scholarship. For merit. The merit is not necessarily explained. (Your character may also be rich enough to pay for schooling, as opposed to being a scholarship student, if you want to come from an Important Background.)

I want characters who will be willing to get along with others so we can have dynamic groups which change as people are available, and should be heroic in inclination, because I have no desire to wind up running a game where half the PCs are trying to assassinate the other half. If I wanted that, I'd be running IN mixed. ^^

Eventual Exaltation or other power-level advancement is ...possible (probable, but I /plan/ for it to take a while). You should have what options are acceptable to you in mind when you build the character. (Zenith, No Moon Lunar, etc, /no abyssals, thanks/.) It's worth noting your usual GB can get promoted to full spirit status, ghost-blooded can become ghosts... (okay, so can everyone else, but). Keep in mind that no advancement will be possible until I'm able to get the 2e books for whatever you want to advance into. ;)

The school is on a small chain of islands in the West, somewhat south-east of the Wavecrest Archipelago. Most the islands are small, and hold only independent, if allied, city-states. Pearls are one of the big exports of the chain, as some unusual characteristic of the water or the oysters in the region produces a variety of colors of pearl. Even the shell linings can be harvested for thin sheets, which are then inlayed on the many crafted products to leave the shores. This is not the only industry, by far, but rather the one most worth space on ships leaving; fish, fruit, and other such mundane products can be found everywhere in the West, after all, but naturally blue, green, or purple nacre is rare - and decorative, and thus valuable.

These are the Mokoia Islands, and the school, Haki College of Arts and Sciences, is built on one half of the double island Haki. Haki is a long bar of earth with solid bedrock rising about ten feet above sealevel across the island; the beaches are steep, but sandy, and cellars are rarely flooded, despite the over-all low altitudes, as they're all built above that bedrock. Haki would be the largest island on the chain if it were not for the great perfectly circular lagoon which nearly bisects the island, leaving only room for a narrow roadway along the eastern side; the western side is open to the sea, though a reef helps guard it. (The honor of largest island instead goes to Tanekai, the nearest island, and home to the largest population and chief shipping center on the archipelago.) The town of Haika sprawls on the northern half of the island, and the southern half is nearly entirely dominated by the school and its grounds, though a few homes and businesses are scattered around. Most the homes in this area belong to the school and are provided for faculty use, or currently belong to faculty, and the businesses tend to cater to the largely wealthy students.

The college is famous across the Threshold for the varied and excellent education it provides. In the West and in some areas of the South, it is also well known for the attached finishing school for young women. A separate facility (well watched against young bucks looking for an adventure) attached to the school teaches etiquette and the skills of a hostess to young women of those classes wealthy enough to afford the prestige. In the patriarchal cultures of both West and South, to be able to boast of a daughter's accomplishment's at this finishing school raises her value in the marriage market. Few girls attend the finishing school from elsewhere in the Threshold, but the main college does not discriminate and any woman with the means to attend the main college is welcome. Though few girls from the West or South do, since parental support would be hard to obtain, many from East and North arrive, and receive the same treatment male students do from staff and students alike - Western natives among them respect women attending the school or teaching at it as they would foreign women - students from less tolerant places, like the Coral Archipelago, generally learn /quickly/ - but few such come, given that the headmaster is a woman.

The school - both college and finishing school - is expensive and known to have high standards, but it also has a reputation for offering scholarships - complete with passage to the island, as necessary - to the strangest assortment of individuals imaginable. The children of many of the Threshold's most prominent mortals attend this school, and many of their parents attended it in turn; it has been in existence, if not since the Great Contagion, from not long after.

As a general rule, the school does not teach Exalts. No one from the Realm or partaking of the Realm's culture in a tributary would send their child to some barbaric school out in the Threshold if they could afford the schools on the Blessed Isle, and likewise, almost all of Lookshy's populace prefers their own training through the military. The school has accepted the occasional Dragon-blooded pupil, and does not expel those who Exalt Dragon-blooded while attending, but also does not tend to invite or encourage their application.

The school's classes are eclectic and specialized - every discipline under Heaven is taught, from theology to thaumaturgy to crafting to music to martial disciplines. Many of the teachers are former alumni - usually around half of the special scholarship students remain or return to teach, often assumed to be the reason the school offers so many scholarships.

Among those mostly concerned with the occult at a mortal level - which excludes any and all enclaves of Dragon-blooded, who pay more attention to sorcery than thaumaturgy, the college is known to be simply the finest such education available in this age. A thaumaturge can get a position in almost any court in the Threshold if they can truly claim to have graduated from the college. Unfortunately, by the time a threshold thaumaturge has acquired the means to pay for his education, unless born well, he is usually past the age of acceptance. Few students are ever accepted if they are past 25.

The warriors, artists, and statesmen turned out by the college are less judged by their degrees (perhaps because their craft is less esoteric and more easily understood by those who would want to hire them) and more by their capability - which are usually to the school's credit as well - and thus they get a chance to prove themselves.

The school itself is officially and /determinedly/ neutral in any and all political conflicts. They don't care if you're true heir, usurper's get, child of the oppressor, or of the noble lord. If you can pay and can meet the basic entry requirements, you can attend. (Scholarship students can often do neither, but no one really understands the rhyme or reason behind those, only that it seems to work.)

The current headmaster is a lady called Mata Remai, and she would most likely be treated as a foreign dignitary in most any court she visited - if she ever left her island. She claims no rank aside from headmaster, and maintains correspondences with several alumni - though by far, not all. As far as anyone cares about her past, she is understood to be a former student herself, local, and probably the child of faculty (who had themselves been students at one point.) She is a significant influence on the island, however, and students who find themselves in trouble with the law can expect to be handed over to her less than pleased custody promptly - depending on the offense, civil authorities would probably be preferred by most. Drunken rowdiness, after all, would only involve sleeping it off in a cell if no one was harmed - and Headmaster Remai is not know for laxity.

The PCs will hopefully be this year's new arrivals on the scholarship program (it is highly unlikely any of them have been told /why/ they qualify, other than a generic answer of 'merit' -- you can't apply, and the headmaster makes all the final decisions without consulting anyone; past students have included nameless beggar street-rats, barbarian hunters from the far North, nomadic tribeswomen from the South, and even the odd beastman -- people who by any logic would never have come to the headmaster's attention) with the possible addition of a few who are children of Important Wealthy Threshold People who choose to send their children there. (Or if someone wants to spend the points on Influence and all, I suppose they could be Important themselves, but then you have to explain what they're doing THERE.) PCs may, if it fits their background better, also be attending the finishing school. This will by no means limit participation in the game, if things work as the GM intends. 'Free' options are also available to finishing school attendees, but needs talking to the GM about, because they'll work a little more subtly.