Stargard is a high, cold mountain, shooting up against the ghost-
white of the northern skies. Only the greater predators live there, and
eagles, river-snakes, never an insect. It was the Starborn who first found
the place, long ago, making their precarious way through the ice-mountains,
on foot, or riding the great magical horses who have disappeared from the
world.
It is almost always foggy there, tendrils of low-hanging clouds, the sun a distant, wan thing, even on clear days. Many have been lost there, among the peaks; particularly Earthborn men who desire adventure to relieve the crushing tedium of their lives. Horses and humans have been crushed under magnificent avalanches, which are common there. Some say there are nameless creatures who roam under the Mountain, alive since the days of darkness before the dawn of the world. The safe paths are narrow, not remotely predictable, you must know them exactly, ride or walk in single file, easy to ambush. Great explosions of living stone rise up in places, startling and strange in the blinding whiteness, rooted under the ice, leading the wanderer to stray and fall.
And the Starborn, perhaps due to the hard edge of their temperaments, chose this place to build their Academy. The Mountain, which they sometimes called the Battlement, but usually Stargard, was hollowed out with their potent magic a thousand years before. Great sheets of glass replaced large stretches of the slope, lighting the inside like a great Earthborn atrium from the Lost Cities, those places that were once the wonders of the non- magical world. But like the Horses, Aether Fire, and the knowledge of their origins, the Lost Cities had retreated from the known earth.
The Starborn had their capital elsewhere, at the great city of Moonpath in the mountains, far from Stargard the way an Earthborn traveled, far from there and into the rising sun. But though the Academy was not their largest settlement, it was surely a marvel in all the worlds. Here young Starborn came to be trained, to grow into the power that was their birthright, and to one day become magi. There were a thousand students living in Stargard, a hundred per year of training. They lived in four Houses- Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Gryffindor, in spacious rooms spread throughout the mountain. For ten years they were schooled, growing slowly from terrified youths into confident adults, and preparing to take their place in the world of men and magi.
But rarely, only once in a decade or so, a child of two Earthborn parents would show qualities of being Starborn, and would be brought into the magical world for training and perhaps acceptance. She would be removed from her dank, earthly home, her dim, hidebound parents, and her dark, closed world- removed, and brought up into Stargard, for training at the Uriel Academy, among the sons and daughters of magi.
Unsurprisingly, these Earth-tainted Starborn were shunned by many, and their passage made arduous. Though sometimes, that was overcome by a brave child determined to be a magi. Sometimes, in the snow and ice at the top of the world, miracles happened.
It is almost always foggy there, tendrils of low-hanging clouds, the sun a distant, wan thing, even on clear days. Many have been lost there, among the peaks; particularly Earthborn men who desire adventure to relieve the crushing tedium of their lives. Horses and humans have been crushed under magnificent avalanches, which are common there. Some say there are nameless creatures who roam under the Mountain, alive since the days of darkness before the dawn of the world. The safe paths are narrow, not remotely predictable, you must know them exactly, ride or walk in single file, easy to ambush. Great explosions of living stone rise up in places, startling and strange in the blinding whiteness, rooted under the ice, leading the wanderer to stray and fall.
And the Starborn, perhaps due to the hard edge of their temperaments, chose this place to build their Academy. The Mountain, which they sometimes called the Battlement, but usually Stargard, was hollowed out with their potent magic a thousand years before. Great sheets of glass replaced large stretches of the slope, lighting the inside like a great Earthborn atrium from the Lost Cities, those places that were once the wonders of the non- magical world. But like the Horses, Aether Fire, and the knowledge of their origins, the Lost Cities had retreated from the known earth.
The Starborn had their capital elsewhere, at the great city of Moonpath in the mountains, far from Stargard the way an Earthborn traveled, far from there and into the rising sun. But though the Academy was not their largest settlement, it was surely a marvel in all the worlds. Here young Starborn came to be trained, to grow into the power that was their birthright, and to one day become magi. There were a thousand students living in Stargard, a hundred per year of training. They lived in four Houses- Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Gryffindor, in spacious rooms spread throughout the mountain. For ten years they were schooled, growing slowly from terrified youths into confident adults, and preparing to take their place in the world of men and magi.
But rarely, only once in a decade or so, a child of two Earthborn parents would show qualities of being Starborn, and would be brought into the magical world for training and perhaps acceptance. She would be removed from her dank, earthly home, her dim, hidebound parents, and her dark, closed world- removed, and brought up into Stargard, for training at the Uriel Academy, among the sons and daughters of magi.
Unsurprisingly, these Earth-tainted Starborn were shunned by many, and their passage made arduous. Though sometimes, that was overcome by a brave child determined to be a magi. Sometimes, in the snow and ice at the top of the world, miracles happened.