This was a rough week forme. I lost my job. But enough with such gloomy topics! Here is my current progress. I hope to be able to start sketching out the map in my head sometime soon. It was a bit of a weak week in my opinion, but I hope you all enjoy.
January 8: Wallwood Upper Floor
The stairs in the entryway lead up to a narrow landing and a T-intersection. Two doors lie on each side of the east-west passage, and a fifth and sixth on the northern passage into the tower. Much of the southern wall is made up of windows letting in sunlight during te day. On nights of the new moon, however, a ghost stalks this hall.
The shade is of a tall, cold man dressed in the solid black of one of the Old Faithful. A heavy rapier hangs at his side. The school gossips call him the Somber Man. He paces on the nights he appears, his heavy footfalls heard through all of Wallwood. In life, he had been a gentleman, a former knight turned Faithful, and a loyal servant of the governor by the name of Elijah Sutton. But he was betrayed by a woman he loved and murdered her. The governor had no choice but to execute his retainer and friend. Now, he paces that hall just as he did the night of the killing.
The Somber Man unfriendly but not hostile, save to those showing blatant disrespect for the Faith. He is not fond of wizardry, but could perhaps be befriended with some difficulty. It is said that the provost has earned his respect.
January 9: Office of the Registrar’s Secretary
Located directly above the office of the bursar’s secretary is the office of the registrar’s secretary. Like most rooms in Wallwood, it is wood-paneled, carpeted, and a bit on the stuffy side. This one in particular, however, is well organized. The back is lined with a row of filing cabinets, and the bookshelves are categorized with library-like efficiency. An ornate silver samovar sits in one corner. The desk has a typewriter on it.
The inhabitant of the room is one Augustus Thule, a slender, fine-boned man with smiling green eyes and a neatly trimmed beard of black curls. He relies on a tea to keep his body stable on account of a genetic condition. Though he acts as a secretary, his goal is to eventually gain a permanent teaching position at the school. He often acts as a student teacher with a focus on alchemy.
Augustus has a purple key with a silver ribbon. His focus is a silver cat ring set with an emerald eye and an onyx eye.
January 10: Office of the Registrar
The registrar’s office resembles the other offices within Wallwood. It is protected by a wall monitor to the right and a servitor resembling a humanoid stone cat. In the evening, orange rays of light stream in through the windows to the left. The shelves are, perhaps strange, scantily covered with a few dozen books and various trinkets from around the continent. The desk is plain and unadorned. The only strange feature is the stone door.
Behind the desk an arch of stones sits against the rear wall. Each masoned brick of the arch is marked with runic sigils. Those able to read the signs can tell they are of far journeying, obvious clues to a gate effect.
As to where the gate leads, it leads into a hidden archive in the dungeons below the library.
The registrar is a small old man, going by Magister Oxenthorn. Though his wrinkled hand shakes when he holds his pen and his veins are dark against his pale skin, his eyes are still sharp. His clothing tends toward rich, thick robes of dark colors. He relies heavily upon his secretary, his servitor, and an ensorcelled quill capable of taking dictation. He has little interest in the current goings-on of the school. His key is a black key with an electrum and opal ribbon, and his focus is a blackthorn rod set with studs of jet.
Magister Oxenthorn seldom teaches classes anymore, though he formerly was one of the principle instructors in soft necromancy.
January 11: Office of the Tribune’s Secretary, Unused
This dusty little office was once used by secretaries of the school’s tribune, back when it had such a political officer. Those days are gone now. Instead, the room is used for storage by the administrators of Wallwood and other teachers in need of an accessible but private place to stash away props and implements. As such, it requires a black key or equivalent permissions to open.
January 12: Office of the Student Affairs Manager, Formerly of the Tribune
The office once used by political officers in service of the king or queen or lord protector has now been taken over by a new manager tasked with providing assistance to the student body. This takes on a portion of the responsibility formerly held by only the deans. It is more brightly decorated than the other rooms in Wallwood, with paper cutouts and colorized photographs of the manager’s family pinned to the walls.
The manager herself, one Henrietta Harmon, is a short, plump woman of middle years with an effusive smile on her coral lips. She favors dresses with bright colors and complex patterns. Her focus is a short want of birch ornamented with carved and painted floral designs, and her key is green with a scarlet and amethyst ribbon. She is an alumnus, but her role is non-academic role.
Henrietta is usually accompanied by a familiar in the shape of a particularly playful dove. The two often play games together when bored.
January 13: Office of the Warden of Keys
The eastward door along the second story passage from Wallwood into the Governor’s Tower leads into a cramped, narrow room. The walls here are covered in hooks bearing various charms, bangles, ribbons, and other arcane trinkets. At the back, behind the small, stout old desk, there sits a heavy chest bound in rune-scrawled iron bands. A wall monitor hangs directly above it, alert for any sign of tampering.
The chest holds hundreds of keys and ribbons of almost every color. Any door in the school save only those openable exclusively by the headmaster could be opened by some item within it. The chest is larger within than without, and contains many secret compartments to hold the rarer or more dangerous components. Of course, only the headmaster’s colorless key or the black key with an electrum and colorless ribbon can open it.
The bearer of that key is a short, wildly bearded man by the name of Rufus Grynn. He is a master of artifice, specializing in defensive warding and structural reinforcement. Few know the byways and vaults of the school as well as he. Students attending his classes in the forge become familiar quickly with his habit of meandering off into tangents about the castle’s history and the various misadventures of its staff.
January 14: Wallwood Attic
Across from the office of the Warden of Keys is a door that can only be opened by purple keys and up, or by ribbons with permission. It leads up to the attic of Wallwood, a single dusty chamber lit only by sunlight coming through small, narrow windows. It is rarely visited. To those coming up here, it might seem to even be a holy place, a temple to years gone past. Boxes lay piled haphazardly all around, and scattered bits of furniture. Here, a table and two chairs, there a crooked astrolabe. A strange melancholy air hangs over the whole vast, low space. Even the teachers seldom spend much time up here.