The University of the Arcane

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

— — Alaric Forsham*

The Complicated Business of Magic - Human Style

During the period of the human Northern Kingdom, the University of the Arcane, located at Magetown, was a powerful center of learning for humans and magic workers from across Arrhynsia. Humans, lacking a Magei System and thus unable to perform Sorcery, instead developed an entire new discipline of magic known as wizardry where magic is collected via "mechanical" means and embedded into physical items which store and expend that magic on demand. The University of the Arcane was established to consolidate and educate the practitioners of this new branch of magic working near the beginning of the First Wave.

From Economic Powerhouse

Wizardry rapidly became a major economic engine for the human kingdom, and the University of the Arcane, led by the Chancellor of the University and the University Council, was the center of that technology development, having been founded in Magetown where the most powerful and knowledgeable magic workers among the humans resided. Magetown was selected as the site of the Univerisity of the Arcane because four powerful magical leylines of earth, water, fire and air intersect at the city's location.
The major capability advances were in the creation of magical labor saving devices which were able to be used without any innate magic using ability at all - and further without any knowlege of how the device worked. This industry represented a major leap forward in the standard of living for common people, particularly females, removing tedious work and freeing them for economic opportunities outside the home. Items such as glowlights, clothes cleaning devices, message stones, magic ovens, food preservation chests, refuse removal systems, cleaning devices and self propelled wagons were all invented at the University. Almost as famous were the advances in the medical field including spellscrolls, healing elyxirs, prosthetic devices, and physical repair devices that sprung up around the human ability to embue magic into mechanical devices. The undeniable leadership of the University in advancing the good of humanity created an almost worshipful trust in the common man for those with University degrees and the Univerity as an organization.

To Wealthy Influencer

The University was undeniably a major economic engine for the Human Empire and its leaders formed close ties to the Kothos Dynasty. The height of power and influence of the University of the Arcane was just prior to The Cataclysm when Alaric Forsham was Chancellor. The University was reaping a huge income derived from businesses that paid for use of their patents in magic items gained from a extensive network of young, talented magic workers who were typically grossly underpaid relative to equivalent positions in industry and business.
For students, the advantage of being known as a graduate of the University denoted special status as a knowledgable individual and commanded higher pay in the marketplace. The University became flooded with applicants and accepted more students than they could reasonably educate to any rigorous standard. Critical thinking skills, one of the most difficult and time/attention consuming educational challenges, were rapidly left by the wayside. More students graduated with increasingly costly degrees that delivered a significantly lower value in the employment marketplace than their predecessors had acquired.
The University however, became autonomously exceedingly wealthy from generations of students who, having first paid for their own educations, proceeded to endow the University with generous gifts and grants, donated from the wealth these former students had acquired over a lifetime of work. Since the vast majority of these donors made these donations as part of their wills when they died, there was no accountability in the University to any outside authority at all, or even to the public, students, or current donors as these stakeholders represented a smaller and smaller proportion of the income of the University and thus less and less necessary to the operation of the University with its independent wealth.

To Political Juggernaut

By the time of the Cataclysm, fully half of the secondary school aged human population were attending or engaged in acquiring a certificate from a University of the Arcane sponsored educational process. Numbers for human mages exceeded ninety percent. These unprecedented numbers of attendees provided the University with almost unlimited influence on the next generation of human leaders - important as a unifying force since humans are so short-lived.
While many in the University had no ill intent, the purpose of an educational system is inherently the shaping of the minds and thinking of the young and of future leaders. This ability to influence fully half of the human population combined with the huge financial resources, political influence, and leadership in all things magic made the University an irresistably attractive target for manipulation and infiltration by those who wished to weaponize the educational system, further a particular power agenda and destabilize the society at large. This infiltration and manipulation was in full swing by rebels and opposition governments both human and non-human by the time of the Cataclysm.

Profiting From The Seedy Side of Univerity Life

The University of the Arcane had a questionable reputation among some humans, for while it was a pre-eminent center of arcane learning, it was also known as a community in which promiscuity and wild behavior was not only tolerated, but encouraged. Many professors were bards by trade and elixyrs that reduced the ability of an individual to exercise mature reasoning and judgement were commonly available. Some families even went so far as to encourage their young females to cross breed into elven and other native magic working species in order to introduce the genetically recessive Magei System the source of native magic working capabilities into their family trees. The University formalized and established a profit center exploiting this demand by opening the Arcane Brothel.
The University of the Arcane was lost in the Cataclysm, which was initiated on school grounds at the @Mage central campus, and is currently buried under a glacial ice field. Recently new archaelogical expeditions have been mounted to attempt to recover some lost magical artifacts and historical relics from the period and discover the direct cause of the most deadly event in Arrhynsian history, the Cataclysm.

* irl quote is from Nelson Mandela