This article will walk you through the student experience at the greatest institute of magical learning in the four kingdoms, from the admission process to graduation and further education.
Admissions
To attend
Ioth Academy, a potential student must possess either an inherent magical ability or talent, or demonstrate aptitude for learning practiced magic, such as wizardry.
It can be very difficult to be noticed in this day and age--while the academy scans the world for potential students via divination magic, their resources are not unlimited, and every time they leave the safety of the Golden Sphere they put themselves at risk. It's possible that there are countless potential students who will never attend the school. They may be so far away that they are not discovered, they may live in Infernal controlled cultures who squelch their gift or press their powers into service, or they may simply avoid notice. The Academy's eyes cannot be everywhere.
Your student was likely discovered by someone who already had connections to the Academy, or the academy's diviners sensed your power from afar and sent an emissary to meet you at the age of nine or ten (for humans). They asked you some questions, cast some spells, and put you through some simple, harmless tests to measure your aptitude and see what you know.
If you had parents, the academy would consult with them first. It is a great honor to be accepted to the school, and in a world suffering under the auspices of the Infernals and their minions, sending your child away to a school of magic is a way to give them an impossibly better life. However, attendance is continuous for the first seven years. Parents who say goodbye to their children understand that if they ever see them again, it will be as near-adults, and as mages.
If you didn't have parents, or your parents were abusive, it's possible that the emissary simply spirited you away by magic. How this happened is up to you.
To reach the academy, you almost certainly traveled directly there via Magic. Only the mages of the academy know the secret spells and passwords that allow magical transportation into the school. Perhaps you stepped into a glowing circle of runes and reappeared in the golden sphere, or perhaps the mage guided you through fantastic paths and supernatural vistas via the Otherworld.
One way or another, at a very young age, your gift was identified, and you made your way to the school.
First Year: Red Robes
On the day you're brought to the academy, you'll be brought to
The Causeway, a floating fortress of white marble that moves through the sphere as needed. Here, the Caretakers--brown robed adults responsible for protecting, nurturing, guarding and caring for students--will help you clean yourself and your equipment, check all your things for safety, take your measurements and give you your first set of robes--Ruby Red, the mark of first year students. They'll collect additional information about you, including your name, place of origin, and whatever the recruiter wrote down about the nature of your magic.
Then the Causeway floats to a vast amphitheater under the golden light of the sphere. This is the annual
Opening Ceremony, ushering in the new school year. You'll march in first, along with all your new classmates, and sit on the lowest seats of the amphitheater, closest to the stage. That's where all the teachers of Ioth Academy gather--you can tell they're the teachers because they wear white stoles over their robes with golden, glowing lettering. After you, older students file in one class at a time--orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and finally violet robes at the very top.
The Opening Ceremony involves a lot of fairly boring speeches, so this is the first time you have a chance to make friends as you sit excitedly surrounded by agemates.
Ioth, the legendary archmage and founder of the academy, gives the most important speech of all, but they tend to be a little weird and hard to follow.
After that, you'll be assigned to live in one of the four lodges for the next four years of your life! You could end up in:
Once assigned, you follow the caretakers to all the other students heading to your lodge, then the ceremony ends and you're ushered out first. You'll walk across floating staircases suspended thousands of feet in the air to the lodge you've been assigned--depending on where you're headed, it could be a long walk!
Life at School
Once settled in your lodge, the school year truly begins. You'll be assigned a bunk or room, given school supplies (including parchment, quills, ink, spell components, a magical focus, and anything your magic requires for practice and learning). Thanks to the bounty of magic, it's fairly easy to get anything you need. There's a caretaker assigned to each dormitory responsible for furnishing requests. Need more blankets? A stuffed animal? Noise to sleep at night? Specific food from your homeland? The academy will take care of it. Aside from truly expensive or outrageous requests, anything can be done to make sure you have what you need to be happy and healthy.
Every lodge has dormitories for sleeping, refectories for taking meals, classrooms, libraries, workshops, common rooms for relaxation, gardens for fresh air and learning botany, magically provided pure water, alchemical laboratories, some quarters for the caretakers, a few offices for teachers, and various assorted rooms.
There are no more than 100 students in your class at your lodge. That means each lodge houses between 300-400 students at a time. Every year a new batch of red robes arrives, and a new batch of green robes departs, but you'll be among your peers for a while, and will see many familiar faces and (hopefully) make friends.
In your first year you'll learn the basics of magic and spellcasting, along with vital skills like reading, writing, and arithmatic. See
Ioth Academy Curriculum for more details.
You'll also practice the first step of using magic: Tapping into your source of power. To help you understand how to shape magic with your mind, you'll be taught or practice a craft of some sort, anything from calligraphy to smithing to basket weaving. At the end of the year you're supposed to make something in your craft that demonstrates how you understand and feel about magic: your
capstone project.
Second Year: Orange Robes
At the beginning of your second year, you get a two week break, get fitted for your new yellow robes, and attend the Opening Ceremony once again, this time sitting above and behind a fresh batch of Red Robes. You'll be assigned new sleeping arrangements, moving to another dormitory with slightly more room and privacy, and tackle a new set of classes. Somatic Exercises, Principles of Arcana, Syntax of Magic, and more Reading Writing & Arithmetic.
This is also when you'll pick your first Elective course, from Herbalism, Magical History, Elemental Studies & Spiritualism. At the end of the year there'll be exams, and you'll have to give a report or final project demonstrating your mastery of your elective course.
The key magical challenge of year two is the second phase of casting:
Accumlating energy after tapping into your power source. You'll start practicing how to increase the amount of magical energy you can hold at once, leading to more and more powerful spells.
Third Year: Yellow Robes
Another opening ceremony, another set of new robes, another change in sleeping arrangements. This is the year when things start to get more complicated. The schoolwork piles up, the classes get more intense, the concepts you're asked to understand are bigger and more difficult. You'll take Spell Theory, Taxonomy of Magic, Discipline, and Logic & Rhetoric.
Your elective choices are Alchemy, Runic Alphabets, Planar Metageometry and Supernatural Philosophy, and there will be another presentation, report or project to prove your understanding at the year's end. Better start planning that early!
It's time to focus on Shaping your accumulated magical energy into a Spell Matrix, and that's why the work really intensifies. It's not enough to gather power, you have to know how to use it.
Third year students have a bit of a reputation, and you may notice the caretakers keeping a closer eye on you. Most sentient species are in the early phases or grips of puberty by now, and managing your own emotions may be the greatest challenge yet.
Fourth Year: Green Robes
This is it--your last year in the Lodges. The students sitting behind you at the Opening Ceremony now dwell in the ring, a vast structure further up the Spire that's far more complicated and interconnected than the lodges. But perhaps more importantly, this is the year with the biggest social event of your young lives so far--the Green Gala!
It's also when you'll start sparring with fellow students in Arcane Self Defense. Other mandatory courses include Traditions of Magic, Spell Formulae, and Metaphysical Education.
The electives this year include Advanced Elemental Studies, the ever-popular Artifice, Draconic Studies, and Etiology. This is the hardest end of year project to date, so you might want to hit the books and ask your fellow classmates for help.
But the Gala! It's hosted by a different lodge each year, and it's a massive dance for all the fourth year students. Find a date, plan an outfit (green, of course), and if you want to receive the Verdant Crown at the end of the night, prepare an epic performance that will impress teachers and peers alike. Just keep in mind, they host the gala on a school night on purpose. Get to bed before the caretakers catch you past curfew!
At the end of this year, if you're not thriving or succeeding, you may have the opportunity to end your education. The Academy tries to furnish every student with the customized resources and attention they need to at least make it through. For those who would do better if they dropped out, there are other opportunities. You can become a caretaker and get trained to use what magic you've mastered around the academy, or if you have a home to return to, you could head there. But for the vast majority of students, it's time to move on to the next phase of your education.
Fifth Year: Blue Robes
It's time to move up in the world. The Ring has countless Chapterhouses, small complexes with their own facilities, all connected to each other and to the larger halls of learning. You'll be sharing quarters with one other student, so be sure to request a roommate in advance, and if you're lucky you can get put in the same Chapterhouse as your friends.
Everything's different in the ring. You used to be in a class of 80-100 students around your age; now you're walking around large campuses with over a thousand other students! It's also your first introduction to intramural competition. Summoner's Chess, Dueling Circuits, and other activities let each chapterhouse test themselves against the others.
Aside from adjusting to a whole new social and community environment, the classwork really picks up. Year Four was just a taste of what is to come. Everyone takes Spell Matrices, Arcane Theories & Proofs, Numerology & World Studies. As for electives, you can learn a lot about what someone values based on whether they take Otherworld Studies, Underworld Studies, Overworld Studies, or History & Tactics of Battle & Warfare. This class includes a much vaunted field trip, which is a massive draw for every student.
Sixth Year: Indigo Robes
Once you reach your sixth year, it's time to really think about your future. What will you do with your magic? Are you planning to stay at the academy and continue your studies, or return to your homeland to bring your new power to your people? Choices you make in your sixth year, wearing deep indigo robes, will impact the rest of your life.
In addition, your magic classes take a practical turn. Binding & Wards and Arcane Self Defense II will protect you from the many dangers of the outside world--and of the more powerful spells you're learning. Spellcraft takes you into the inner workings of what makes a spell function. And Second Circle Theory prepares you for a whole class of spells you'll soon begin to explore.
The electives of your last two years allow you to focus deeply on different schools of magic. In your sixth year, you'll choose between Abjuration, Divination, Enchantment and Illusion.
At the end of this year, you'll complete your master of the First Circle of Spells. In all but name, you're basically a mage. There's only one obstacle left.
Seventh Year: Violet Robes
This is it! The last year of your training. After this, nobody will be able to deny you the title of Mage. It's time to prove what magic means to you in the most difficult year of classes, where you'll be challenged to create, to lead, to no longer simply absorb and practice, but to add something to the legacy of the magical arts.
Wearing Violet Robes, you and the members of your chapterhouse will tackle complex and self-directed classes like Cosmological Metaphysics, Esoterra, Focus & Focii, and Independent Study. This is a topic of your discretion, under the guidance of a Master, and it's more than just a chance to chase your passions. Play your cards right, and this could be how you secure an apprenticeship from a Master and continue your studies next year in the Towers.
With so much riding on Independent Study, the Electives in the seventh year almost pale in comparison. Conjuration, Evocation, Necromancy and Transmutation are only taught seriously in this year. You'll need to turn in a final project, but your independent study is really where you'll make your mark.
The Seventh Year exams will push you to your limit, challenging you on everything you've learned during your entire education and culminating in the Dúshláin--the Mage's Trial. Rumor has it that
Ioth created a demiplane hidden in the heart of the spire, and filled it with wards, glyphs, creatures and spells to test and challenge would-be mages. Those who overcome the Dúshláin will commence from the academy and earn the title of Mage.
The commencement ceremony is not public and does not include those who have not undergone the Dúshláin.
Continued Studies
(To be continued...)
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