Interesting Facts and Features of the World

[Anthr4xus]

So what are some common aspects of the world both around Gwimmermort and even further at large?

 

Questions about the World

While I don't have a problem with Gwimmermort being an international school, it has to physically exist somewhere.  Does anyone have a preference about where this would be?  My initial thought was that the school was in the far country-side somewhere.  Visually I was thinking somewhere like the English countryside or somewhere in rural New York or Delaware.  Mundanes would be magically shielded from perceiving the grounds.

 

Along those same lines, what should the preferred route to school be for students?  A train has a certain charm and quaintness, although I would be open to other suggestions.  I think, for story purposes, we should state that the school grounds are warded or otherwise protected from wizards being able to teleport or gate onto the grounds directly, so everyone needs some means to travel to there.

 

There is an assumption in the system and the setting that Mundanes and Mages generally keep separate.  I am assuming that we are moving forward with that concept.  To that end, especially as we have at least one student with Mundane parents, how do we see that separation being maintained?  Are there magical agencies, government or otherwise, that help cleanup magical incidents that occur in view of Mundane individuals? How common is memory manipulation directed toward Mundanes?  towards other Mages?  presumably the protection against these memory charms is an early lesson in Defensive Magics courses.

 

Questions about the Campus

In the overview two aspects of Campus are mentioned: the Living Maze and the Escherstairs.

 

I was picturing the Living Maze as a gargantuan multi-level hedge maze filled with various magical plants beyond the Mazehedge itself, while the Excherstairs would be shifting, moving, and non-euclidean stairways that connect various points across the campus. Are there more aspects of these two features that should be defined before we start?

 

Are there other ideas for other points of interest on campus or elsewhere?

[KingGoblin]

I think the train worked in Harry Potter because Britain is small enough that most magical people would be able to get to London pretty easily.  Not sure what would work for an international school, as a drop off point before they actually go to the school.

[matt_s]

Train is fine for transport, you get on a train in England and show up in rural New York after passing through a tunnel.

Some ideas for locales.

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Every Olde Magick School needs a hall of enchanted tapestries, ranging from purely mundane to subtly magical (shifting eyes, slowly moving colors), to outright arcane with pulsating waves of color and animated subjects weaving back and forth in dance.

 

A magical boiler system for providing heat and hot water in the winter months, stoked by magical fires and dancing eldritch flame (don't touch!)

 

A fishing pond, complete with outlandish fish, possibly contaminated/enhanced by all the magic energies on campus. One skips stones at some considerable peril.

 

A statue that is in a different passageway every day at sunrise.

 

 

 

 

 

[KingGoblin]

Hm.  Of course, it could be an international school, but you still have to ship your kid to New York, or whatever, to get there.  Or there could be subway stations with secret platforms in major cities all over the world, so if you would only need to go so far to get to one to send your kid.

 

Although...  If this is that international, are we assuming this is the only magical school in the world?  Or just the best?  Because why else would people be sending kids there from England, or whatever?

 

I'm probably overthinking.  I mean, really, it's more a matter of just playing cool magical school.  I doubt our kids would care about the nuances.

[Azure Kestrel]

Maybe, for fairness, the school changes location every year or trimester, and part of the plot could be exploring a feature of the new locale.  That also minimizes any particular area getting a reputation for "odd occurrences."

 

Maybe another way to get to the school is by making it to the center of a garden labyrinth (and the gardens themselves don't even have to be magical for it to work).  It spits you out in the Living Maze.  It's a pain but if you are being chased... Flying to the center is fine, but you have to transverse the maze - no zooming up and over to the center.

 

I'm on board with magical authorities, although there is a question of whether they can keep it up for much longer!

 

There is a student lounge with magical mirrors that can be tuned to view any television station outside the school.  

There is a theater room with golems who can temporarily take on the personas of characters from a script - allowing you to practice an entire play by yourself.  

There is a magical artifacts room that only faculty can access, but students sometimes find a way in and get into trouble. 

There is a very traditional fencing room that only a handful of students still use, but it is huge and has animated weaponry that you can spar with.

 

[KingGoblin]

I think a fun thing about the school could be that we are constantly learning new things about it, as they come up.  Like, in Harry Potter, they didn't have a Room of Requirement, a Chamber of Secrets, even a Hogsmeade until they came up in the books, these things just sort of had 'always' been there, once they were needed.  They didn't need to describe in advance that all the older kids got to go on outings, or that they had a longstanding rumor of a secret hidden room, or whatever.  Everyone just kind of went with it and was like, 'Oh, yeah, we've always had that.'

 

Like, when it becomes relevant, someone is just like, 'Hey, we could meet in the Fencing Room,' and everyone's like, 'Yeah, I guess, strange that we never spoke about it before.'

[Azure Kestrel]

Sounds great to me - I enjoy improvisational games 😃

[Anthr4xus]

I have no problem with rooms and places being created as needed/wanted by the story.  As we have upperclassmen from the outset, I was just looking for some things that might be fun for at least some people to know for sure are there.

 

I also really like the idea of the school moving around on a semi-regular basis.  It is probably also best to leave as much flexibility as possible for how people get to the school via bus, train, subway, passage through the Living Mage, etc.