SENOT

The city of Telateranos on Arkanen hosts more than a hundred elite magical universities and mystical academies, making it a unique concentration of institutions unlike anything else in The Pact Worlds. The students and faculty here are cosmopolitan, drawing from all of Near Space. Each school is small enough that students generally work with only a single professor, who mentors a handful of students over the course of their entire time at the school. Distinguished professors who have made significant contributions to their field are often revered as academic celebrities who broadcast well-watched lectures over the infosphere and appear in SENOT’s famous spell showcase, Shockwave. The competition to secure these professors as mentors is good-natured, but it was not always so collegial.
In the first decades after The Gap, the academies in Telateranos competed so fiercely that magical brawls broke out in the streets. The exasperated city council appointed a dirindi mediator, Annel Watts, to solve the problem. Annel proposed SENOT: a confederation that would allow schools to keep their independence while sharing resources on a scale never before seen. Schools that joined SENOT agreed to a unified credit system, schedule, and basic general requirements in return for government funding. Each college retained its own specialties, culture, quirks, and curriculum. Students would enroll in courses throughout the network, reserve laboratories, and have access to shared libraries and a host of other facilities. The ability to outsource general requirements and language classes made SENOT appealing to smaller specialty schools in the network, including Priggs, Muser, and the Institute for Extraordinary Minds. But even larger institutions in the city, such as the Polymath School and Telateranos Tech, soon joined the network for a chance to compete in the prestigious Shockwave event. All interschool competition now funnels into Shockwave, a biannual fundraiser broadcast throughout the Pact Worlds.
The schools of SENOT claim to offer everything a potential student could want: the intense study, personal attention, and cozy community of a small school alongside all the amenities offered by larger institutions. Facilities vary from small manor-style houses to ultra-modern labs nestled among tall pylons that absorb energy from the electrical storms that roll over the city. Linking all the schools is the lightning rail, a subterranean shuttle system that provides rapid transportation throughout Telateranos. The students here work hard and play hard, and SENOT has a reputation as the Pact Worlds party school. When everyone goes on recess for the Fullbreath Festival during Arkanen’s dive into Liavara, drunken parades, lewd dancing, magical fireworks, and illusions erupt to a background of actual thunder and lightning. Once their general requirements are completed, however, most SENOT students put such behavior behind them and concentrate on coursework. Each year, a few maverick students compete to become Watts Fellows, an elite scholarship track that allows a custom course of study assembled from schools all over the network.

Type

Educational, School/Academy