Here are the results of my first week of Dungeon23. It was a rough week, but I hope you all enjoy.
January 1: Great Hall
The Great Hall is perhaps the most important room within the school and certainly the largest, though the Grand Ballroom and certain secret chambers rival it in size. It is the primary dining hall, though the Lesser Refectory also serves this purpose.
The hall itself is an immense structure, longer than it is wide, of finely masoned granite walls and fixed buttresses topped with a gabled roof of tight slate scales. The floors are of grey marble laid out in a herringbone pattern. Much of the walls above the height of the first floor is given over to tall windows of colorful stained glass. These do not remain rigid, depicting the same image all the year. Rather, they are animate with spellcraft. From season to season, the images change, trees blooming and turning red, animals ambling in spring and stalking in autumn, lovers walking through gentle snows, races and games of strength and skill under a summer sun. For holidays, the windows take up scenes from appropriate folktales.
Sometimes the windows seem to hint at secrets of the school, though never in clear and practicable ways.
In addition to the windows, the walls also hold four large fireplaces. These are a necessity to warm the vast, drafty space of the hall.
The windows let in much sunlight during the day, but as shadows lengthen the wisps come out. These are domesticated wisps, unlikely to lure travelers into bogs as their wild cousins do. Instead, they fill the hall with their glow. Each student in their first year is taught the songs to call and dismiss the wisps, to brighten or dim their glow, and to alter their hue. It is considered good manners to reward a wisp with something small for its service. Most are fond of candies, milk, and wine, but are disgusted with salty food.
Below the windows, on the ground floor, the walls are lined with benches, murals depicting famous graduates, and numerous dumbwaiters connected to the kitchens below. During the day, this is also where the servitors stand, seeming like eccentric statues. Each servitor is a unique construct, fashioned of stone, ceramic, and wood and often dressed in strange costumes from years or decades past. Each one was crafted by a graduate of the school as their final test for passing the required classes in Artifice. The ones in the Great Hall are all humanoid in shape and act as servants, laying out the tables and collecting what remains after each meal.
A few servitors also stand in the short antechamber at the front of the Great Hall to act as coat checkers, storing their charges in an adjoining cloakroom. Also attached to this antechamber is a sizable unisex lavatory and a staircase leading down to the kitchens.
The Great Hall holds a total of seven trestle tables of walnut wood. The teachers’ table stands upon a short dais at the head of the hall, with the remaining six arranged in two lines down the long length of the hall. Hundreds of matching walnut chairs line these tables, each seat in front of an embroidered cloth placemat in colors appropriate to the season.
One final note about the Great Hall is to mention one of the school’s other types of ubiquitous construct. Perched atop the roof amid the chimneys or resting upon ledges and buttresses sit gargoyles. These winged stone figures, some beautiful, most hideous, form the core of the school’s security. They are ever watchful for intruders and uninvited guests as well as any student breaking the midnight curfew. Though made of stone, the magic in their craftsmanship allows them to fly short distances, and they have considerable strength.
Of course, any student who knows how to treat with them or otherwise drive them off need not fear reprisal for such a minor transgression as curfew-breaking. In fact, it is one of the secret tests of the school: learn how to break the minor rules that get in the way of your success.
January 2: Main Kitchens
Beneath the Great Hall lies the largest and most important of the school’s kitchens. They are low, dim vaults of dull red brick and concrete. The walls and pillars are thickly built and the ceilings are arched, the better to support the immense weight of the hall above. Numerous great ovens line the walls, contributing to the chimneys on the roof high above. There are tables too, and pantries full of food and spirits and sweets. On the north wall, a pair of massive wooden doors gives entrance to the sloped tunnel leading down to the Lesser Court, where supplies are brought in to the castle. The servitors who staff the kitchen use hand carts to bring in the deliveries.
Amid the interconnected vaults of the kitchens, close to a staircase leading from the Great Hall’s antechamber, is a modest office. Within, behind a heavy mahogany table ruined with many cuts and burn marks, can usually be found the mistress of the Great Hall servitors: the ghost known as Annabelle Meere. “Old Ann”, as she is sometimes known, is said to have once been the wife of a former headmaster who cheated on her and drove her to suicide. In time, she aided in revealing that and worse crimes and he was executed by order of a reigning regent.
She was given the kitchens as a reward.
For three hundred years, give or take, she has overseen the servitors responsible for preparing, serving, and cleaning up after meals. She is a sharp-minded woman and highly protective of her servitors. If threatened, she makes use of her poltergeist abilities to assault the transgressors with pots and pans (or, if the threat is serious, knives).
Besides the desk and her worn and faded burgundy plush seat, the office holds a couple other chairs, a shelf with cook books ranging from ancient to cutting edge, a beautiful knife set with ivory hilts and adamantium blades, and a decorative vase that is actually her burial urn. There is also a stone face on the wall, one of the school’s wall monitors.
The wall monitors are another common construct, though unlike gargoyles and servitors they are stationary. Their purpose is to see, speak, and remember.
January 3: Hall Court
Just outside the Great Hall lies one of the castle’s numerous courtyards. This one, the Hall Court, is a perfect square. Walkways paved in neat stone blocks run along straight paths connecting the centerpoints of each side in a cross and diamond pattern. Along the southern wall runs a peristyle walkway as well, connecting to three separate entrances to Cormack’s Hall, the nearest of the dormitory buildings to the Great Hall. A pair of ash trees give the courtyard a fair degree of shade.
Opposite Cormack’s Hall lies the Wallwood Building, an ironically named two story limestone structure built right up against the base of the Governor’s Tower, the largest of the school’s many towers. The Wallwood building itself is used for much of the school’s mundane administration.
Finally, opposite the Great Hall, on the eastern wall of the courtyard lies the entrance to a short covered bridge leading to the Gardenways, the verdant snakey path that connects many of the buildings of the innermost portion of the school. The bridge in fact passes over the very tail end of the Gardenways, the button of its great loop where it leads into a lower entrance into Cormack’s Hall.
January 4: Wallwood Entryway
Entering the Wallwood building from the Hall Court, one comes to a seemingly normal entrance room. It is square in shape and double-height. To the left, a hallway leads to a pair of offices, while to the right lies a firm oak door. An L-shaped staircase leads up to the second floor, and under the upper portion of the stair sits a desk. Beside the desk and in front of the entry door, a second hallway runs deeper into the building and the tower beyond.
Every weekday from 10am to 5:30pm, with a half hour break starting at 1pm, the desk is occupied by one Juliette Roswood, a somewhat lackadaisical woman acting as a secretary of sorts to the school administrators. She is not a magician herself, but is rumored to be a former adventuring companion of the provost himself. What is known is that she is quick, much older than her round freckly face would make people think, and a lot quicker than they would expect as well. She has auburn hair and wears glasses, and spends much of her workday reading erotica. She always has a few knives hidden about her person and possesses a green key with an iron ribbon.
Iron ribbons are given to staff and, rarely, students with demonstrated martial ability, and grants access to certain dangerous passages.
The entryway is also the true residence of Felix Fortunias, one of the school’s current living cats. Felix is a sleek grey cat with a mischievous and friendly spirit, and sleeps on a cushion hidden under the stairs. Juliette takes care of feeding him, often with help from animal-loving students.
Finally, a short way down the forward hall lies the door into a small lavatory and another leading to a servitor-manned supply closet.
January 5: Office of the Bursar’s Secretary
Heading left from the entryway into a narrow hall, one comes first to the room of the bursar’s secretary. It is a small room, paneled in dark walnut, with a burgundy carpet. Much of the room is filled with filing cabinets and shelves holding various financial records of the school. The room’s desk is slight and stacked high with papers. Upon it sits a jade monkey statuette.
The secretary’s name is John Wylcraft, a much put upon diviner of moderate skill. He is a former student, though truth be told he graduated in the bottom quarter of his year group. While only an adequate magician (even a poor student of the school is still on par with the average), he is a fairly good secretary. He is a mediocre fencer as well, though he carries a smallsword for self defense. His true strength lies in his own servant.
If John speaks the command word, a call of awakening in a dead tongue from the eastern jungles, the monkey statue comes to life. Other command words allow it to grow of shrink and give it instruction. The monkey is attuned to John, and will only obey him or the bursar.
John has a green key with an electrum and amethyst ribbon. He is an alumnus, but is employed technically in a non-academic role.
January 6: Office of the Bursar
Beside the room of the secretary, connected to it via a side door as well as through the hall. It is similarly upholstered to the secretary’s office, but is more tightly packed with records. The desk is far larger and the legs shaped to resemble dragons, but is similarly piled with papers.
The bursar herself is not what most would expect. She is a tall woman, with an unkempt black mane of hair. Scars from claws ravage her face, and she lacks most of her nose. She wears a voluminous jacket of ragged faded red. Beneath it lies a steel cuirass. At her hip hangs a falchion with emeralds set in its golden hilt. Her staff is a gnarled blackthorn rod reinforced with iron and silver bands. Her name is Meredith Llowel Powers, but most call her only the bursar.
At the back of the room, hidden behind a mahogany trolley piled high with financial records, there lies a secret door. If a certain pattern is tapped against the wood panel it slides open to reveal steps down into the lower levels. These steps in particular are close to the vaults, where stores of wealth are hidden away.
The bursar carries a black key with an electrum and quartz ribbon. In addition to her financial work, she also teaches classes on numerology and defensive magics.
January 7: Provost’s Office
Through the heavy oak door in the Wallwood Entryway lies the office of the Provost.
It is a large chamber, used in some distant day for meetings of the governor’s cabinet. The far wall is dominated by a large window giving a view of portions of the Gardenways. In cold weather, the fireplace on the left-hand wall will be blazing through much of the day. Much of the wall is covered by wood panels, broken up by bookshelves. Paintings showing the portraits of long-dead wizards stare dispassionately down from their high mountings. A wall monitor also gazes dispassionately down.
In the corner between the fireplace and the door stands a table covered with a three-dimensional scale map of the country. Upon it, illusions of clouds and tides roll. It is a legacy from an older time, when magicians played a more proactive role in the course of empires.
The desk of the room is heavy and old, of fine workmanship. In addition to the usual books and pens, it also holds one of the new modern typewriters and a large, smokey green orb clutched in a curling iron frame like the claws of a dragon. This is none other than an Orb of Dragon Command. Though the provost does not use it as his primary focus, he does occasionally have use of it when dealing with the three dragons of the school.
For protection, three servitors dwell within the chamber. Two resemble archaic suits of armor marked by runic glyphs and armed with swords. The third is a feminine doll dressed as a servant, who hides within the folds of her dress a second set of arms bearing terrible claws.
The room also has a gramophone in one corner along with a modest library of baroque music and poetry recitals.
The provost himself is a man of middle years by the name of Sir Jeremy Waite, of the esteemed and deeply ancient Waite clan. He is tall, clean shaven, with steely blue eyes and salt-and-pepper hair neatly slicked back. As an administrator, he is perspicacious and thoughtful. As a teacher, he is strict but generous. His expertise lies in ancient history and archaeology. He carries a black key with a patternless gold ribbon and an ivory wand from the eastern jungles.