Borough Bound

Elseridge Academy 09 - Alternative Educations

Added 2024-02-29 13:42:47 +0000 UTC

There's more than one way to earn a spellmark

Greetings all! I hope you enjoyed our sojourns in Hauthell and Meddenfirth. Today, we're returning to Elseridge Academy! With this ninth installment, Elseridge is now tied for our largest borough, and we've still got 3 more released to go. This release is all about Arcanology and Harmony, two of the "alternative tracks" available to Elseridge students. This also begins our third row of maps, with map 9 slotting in due south of map 5. Let's dig in!

Finally: quick reminder that if you have yet to check out the preview for our Yllmourne Kickstarter, we'd love it if you could give it look and consider pre-saving!

Borough Guide

In lieu of joining one of Elseridge Academy's six colleges, students may opt to pursue one of two alternative tracks. These are Arcanology (an interdisciplinary analytical study of magic) and Harmony (spellcasting via acts of creation or performance). For both of these two tracks, our borough guide expounds upon curricular requirements, outlines three NPCs, lists points of interest, and presents a table of rumors and plot hooks. This guide should give you everything you need to present options for PCs who are either non-magical or are some variety of bard archetype.

Maps

This map slots in directly beneath the College of Druidry. This section of campus gets quite close to the adjacent salt flats, perfect for (either) weird combat encounters or the outset of journeys into the wastes. As with each of our Elseridge maps, we provide 5 additional aesthetic variants: Tropical, Forest, Winter, Fluxum, and Starfall.

Patrons at the Chief Courier tier also gain access to interiors for the Hall of Marvels—a museum of magical artifacts—as well as the Elseridge Amphitheater. Both spaces are perfect for set-piece encounters or traditional classwork scenes.

Music

Our track this week is "Admist Harmony," a meandering, meditative tune meant to evoke the creative spirit of Elseridge's harmonists. (Fun fact: the bassoon solo is canonically performed by Harmony coordinator NPC Mwah Ehrobi). This music is maximally tonally ambiguous, so it's perfect for magical scenes in which you don't want your players to know the valence of an encounter. Is it dangerous? promising? romantic? eldritch? If you want something a bit less ostentatiously magical, we also provide a charming solo guitar arrangement.