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Nightfire's Academy
Nightfire's Academy is the oldest of Marrishland's magic schools and has a reputation for the scholarship and mystic skill of its students and graduates. With an enrollment of less than a thousand students, it is smaller than the academies of Domus, Flasten and Pidel. It lies just east of the Duxy of Flasten but owes no allegiance to any dux.
The academy's small student body is not the result of a shortage of applicants. Nightfire's Academy is expensive, since it pays its staff well in order to retain its professors, which include no less than a dozen eighth-degree wizards. Only a fraction of those who wish to attend this prestigious academy are wealthy enough to afford this high tuition. Of these, only a fraction are actually allowed to enroll, since Nightfire insists on keeping classes small, and these are selected based on their scholarly knowledge. Most introductory courses have fewer than twenty students, and several advanced courses have only three or four students.
Nightfire's Academy, while fully equipped to elevate its students to eighth-degree wizard, is unique among major academies in that it even accepts applications from apprentices whose backgrounds are entirely mundane. While only two or three of these mundane apprentices is accepted each year — and most of these wash out long before they receive their first taste of torutsen — the exorbitant tuition is waived for these students, since it would otherwise be impossible for a mundane to afford such an education.
The application process for a mundane is based on the method by which Unheilich chose Weard Darflaem to be the first Mar to receive the gift of magic. This involves a brutal series of tests of physical endurance, memory, and many other personal qualities — all performed without the subject ever being made aware that he is being tested as a potential apprentice.
These mundanes almost always hail from rural villages whose inhabitants owe their lives to Nightfire or one of his students. While the way in which Nightfire chooses these potential apprentices varies from village to village, these methods are always faithful to Bera's Unwritten Laws, Vangard's Rules of Governance, and the methods described in the history of Darflaem's Apprenticeship — the complete story of which is never shared with mundanes. These rural mundanes arrive at the academy believing themselves slaves to Nightfire, and all are deprived of their boots and kept imprisoned with other slaves until they either earn the chance to enroll as apprentices or until their eight year term of slavery has ended.
Since the children of wizards are expected to have a certain degree of exposure to magic — whatever Bera's Unwritten Law has to say in the matter — their enrollment as apprentices deviates from tradition significantly. Applicants are rigorously tested with a series of written tests on a large number of mundane topics and must compose an essay on their reasons for wanting to study magic at Nightfire's Academy. They are also subjected to a series of more concrete tests of self-discipline and problem-solving.
The year is divided into four terms, with a week of free time between terms. Students are expected to attend scheduled classes for several hours every other day each week and study independently on the other days. Classes last one term, but the passing or failing of a class has no direct impact on the student's overall rate of advancement. Instead, apprentices advance based on a series of written, verbal, and practical tests administered by senior faculty at the end of each term. Those who prove they have advanced in knowledge and skill to the next degree of apprenticeship are promoted appropriately. Even apprentices who do not believe themselves ready are tested to determine which areas they need to improve before they can be promoted.
In general, apprenticeship lasts four years, spending two terms at each degree of apprenticeship, but the advancement to the rank of wizard is neither hindered nor assured. Especially talented students might advance at the end of virtually every term, and it is not unknown for an apprentice to advance by two degrees or more in a single examination, though this seldom happens. Apprentices who do not advance for four consecutive terms, however, are not allowed to continue their education at Nightfire's Academy.
(Contributed by Nightfire Tradition)
