Studies on the World of Lunightia

Tourmaline Academy is an all-ages school for studying different Affinities, known and theoretical. It provides a pre-through-12th grade education to anyone who wishes to learn there, on-campus dorms for those who need them, and has three connected campuses for 1st-6th, 7th-12th, and college-aged learners. It is the only school in the City, but it makes up about a third of its real estate and population, as it also provides housing for teachers and allows for occasional tourist groups to visit when organized in advance. The Wyvern of Mt. Mist funds a great deal of the school’s budget anonymously, so they rarely have to worry about money- not that they would have many problems if he didn’t, as the academy is very well-known and receives plenty of modest year-round donations that generally are used for keeping everything free for students use (textbooks in good condition, free meals, etc) and running smoothly.

Catherine and Sparky are enrolled in the university here, Zachary is in the upper grades, Pepper attends the elementary school, Lizzie and Hearth are TAs, Jasmine and Jesse are 5th graders, Zaella is a 10th grader, Dart died on campus a long time ago and has a fountain dedicated to him (he is also a ghost who hangs around there and spooks people and refuses to go to class lmao) Griffin “Edward” Gryphon is head of mailing and transportation, Kat hangs around and pretends to be a Feral street cat when she’s not helping Cat with spellwork, Cinnamon owns the on-campus bakery, this is turning into a college au so let’s stop here for now.

Tourmaline academy was (accidentally) built directly on top of a ley line. The builders just thought it was an extremely rich magic hotspot (which do occur, although rarely) but now they can’t allow electronics on the grounds because sometimes there’s a random emp that fries everything in the vicinity. They’ve put up a shield so that it doesn’t leak out into the rest of the city with the side effect that now the shield fries any electronics that pass through it, although not irreparably, just bad enough that you have to take them to an expert and massively inconvenience yourself. The rest of the city is pretty advanced, technology-wise, but the academy is a popular r&r spot for locals because of its rustic charm.

They get by pretty well with magical workarounds to electronic problems, but are only able to do so because of having so much atmospheric magic freely at their disposal (which is because of the ley line). No social media? “Discussion boards” may become rather literal, with a linking-up of every public whiteboard/chalkboard/corkboard on the campus! No internet search? Go to the library and write down a topic or question and the 3 more relevant books available will fly or teleport to you, and a list of the rest will write itself down on the piece of paper you wrote your question on. Yes the library is semi-sentient. Yes this unnerves some people. Moving on

Email is replaced with Tmail (Teleporting Mail) with mailboxes on campus linked up to a mail office. This is why they still need mail delivery guys, because the number of mailboxes in that office (two for every house, one Incoming and one Outgoing) is just enormous. It’s in a back room of the library, who could probably handle it itself, but most people prefer that their mail doesn’t get so drenched in magic that you can’t leave campus with it, so that they can still keep it after graduation. You can also still send Snail Mail by writing “snail mail” on your envelope, so that it gets put in a box in the office that allows one of the mail delivery people to escape the nightmare of mailboxes and go out on the campus for once. Some people use this because it’s fun :)

Texting and phone calls are replaced by student IDs allowing empathetic and telepathic at-will bonds to be safely formed and broken between their owners, or, if telepathy is too old-fashioned for you, you can use it as a two-way scrying surface to chat with someone like a video call.

The scrying option can also be used for off-campus communications.

After Crystal and Company go stitch up the tear in the Void, they’re invited as annual panelists to speak at an after-hours event held on School grounds. Usually Crystal and Diesel go alone (mackenzie is not allowed back and Faith gets too much stage fright to say anything most of the time) but are sometimes accompanied by Narrator when nothing else needs their attention urgently. These nights are the most energetic and occasionally chaotic, since they show up without RSVPing so no one ever knows if they’ll be coming or not. (It only makes sense for a cosmic being like them to not know their schedule in advance, but still.)

This is how Kat Ascends and accidentally breaks her illusion of Ferality- Narrator can raise any creature to self-awareness at will (and occasionally on accident) and tried to do so to Kat, but since Kat was already a self-aware creature the spell got confused and just Ascended her to godhood. This is how Kat and Narrator met and Kat didn’t tell anyone she was a god for nearly two years before casually performing a miracle in front of enough people that she could no longer deny it and, panicked, accidentally fled to the Light Void and had to be trained by the Narrator there for a week in both Void and Stable time (a rare occasion where they match up, and certainly not an accident on Narrator’s part) before returning under promise of returning every week for more training and with a sheaf of apology letters to everyone for keeping her godhood a secret and then vanishing on them all.

In her absence a bit of drama has broken out, Catherine’s studies and students’ studies are in shambles, forgotten in the search for Kat (not that any of them care, Kat is more important than their experiments that can always be redone and their schedules which can always be remade) and everyone else has taken sides. The principal has gotten involved. Kat never knew how much she meant to the people on this campus until now, with half the student body feeling betrayed that she never told anyone she wasn’t Feral (or a god, some people didn’t care about being duped on the Ferality front) with the other half arguing that this reaction was exactly why she hadn’t said anything. She had to go to the principal’s office but instead of getting her in trouble (not that they really could, since she wasn’t a student) they had her officially sign as Cat’s Familiar and Mentor, and then go publicly apologize and hand out her letters. The argument never really dies and eventually becomes another part of the school’s history, something that splits the student body forever (although the original hostility dies down pretty quickly) and is used in debate clubs for centuries after. Kat outlives Cat by a substantial margin but eventually chooses to Move On, essentially death for a deity like herself.

(write more on Second Stage Ascention later)

Tourmaline Academy is the most famous school on the continent, but most students from outside the City aren’t aware of its universal acceptance policy and assume that they would never be able to get in, so they don’t even try to. The staff are doing their best to change this (the more students the better! They actually have a lot of extra room, they have enough accommodations to hold the entire population of the city [since they don’t have to worry about making space for double-wide roads or any shops or restaurants they can dedicate a LOT more room to housing] so they could theoretically have three times the students they currently do) but it’s slow going. 

Don’t know what to do with a character? Just stick ‘em in a role at or relating to the Academy, easy! The City’s a diverse place, and making more characters into students is an easy way to populate the Campus and the City as well.

Dragon Canyon isn’t the place for Zaella, anyway. Another type of dragons make their homes there, and they aren’t keen on letting anyone know they’re alive. They swore Crystal and Co to secrecy, gave them an edited version of events to share with the world, and sent them on their merry way. Might have even used a memory spell or two. 

Those Fog spells aren’t just for show; the Wyvern of Mt. Mist uses the same ones. They have a memory altering effect on basically everyone except the caster and any exceptions set by the caster, who may also choose to include themself under the effect and exclude someone else.

This could be important later, as a sort of recurring tip-off that there are things hidden in the mist. Little pockets of unexplored lore (although not necessarily unknown to the author) that allow for theorycrafting by the audience. Little places of obvious mystery. It could be common knowledge that going into the mist for knowledge is pointless; you won’t retain it afterwards. Maybe some people are known as the fools who venture in anyway, and some of them never return, and some of them do, nothing gained for the risk.

But back to the school. The campus is walkable, and no cars or electric vehicles are allowed on site for the aforementioned reasons. This allows them to beautify the paths and areas between them with greenery and flowering trees without worrying about damaging any machinery. There are no paved walkways as of the time of writing, the school relying on students maintaining desire paths for optimal navigation. 

This enhances the natural beauty of the campus, as when a desire path is no longer in use, it will quickly fade away and be replaced with more plant growth, while the new best path will become more used and become a desire bath, unlike paved paths, which are much more permanent and do not fade, even if they get no use and are making the landscape uglier with their presence. 

The campus has several types of trees growing on it, some flowering, some not flowering. This allows for a greater diversity of appearance all year round.  It also has many types of flowering and non-flowering bushes. These are not optimal conditions for students with allergies, despite the school’s best efforts to choose hypoallergenic flora for decoration.