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Lessons of Dynasty Part 2: Interlude Years	By : JohnDoe Category: +A through F > Exalted RPG Views: 277 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: White Wolf, Exalted and Exalted 3rd Edition are all trademarks of White Wolf Publishing AB, and official characters, names, places and text are copyrighted by White Wolf. I do not own Exalted and I'm not making money from this fiction.

Chapter List
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Introduction

The Chronicles of Dynasty is a series of Exalted games set loosely in the 3^rd Edition Exalted Universe. Lessons of Dynasty is fan-fiction set in the same universe, which explores the background of Mnemon Alinos Danireya.

Interlude Years is a brief series of snap-shots of her second and third year of study at the Heptagram, following on from Abecedarian and leading into Fourth Years.

Content Warning: As with Chronicles of Dynasty, these characters are the evil servants of an evil empire. Racism, discrimination, and bullying are central themes. If you’re uncomfortable with violence, sexual violence, manipulation, grooming, or named character death, it’s time to stop reading now.

Copyright Disclaimer: White Wolf, Exalted and Exalted 3rd Edition are all trademarks of White Wolf Publishing AB, and official characters, names, places and text are copyrighted by White Wolf. I do not own Exalted and I'm not making money from this fiction.

The Isle of Voices

The Blessed Isle lies at the heart of Creation. Created to be the home of the gods themselves, it was given over to the Exalted along with the Creation Ruling Mandate. Centered around the Elemental Pole of Earth and perfectly balanced between the other four poles, it is truly a blessed land with fair weather and bountiful harvests. Many civilizations have laid claim to the Isle over the centuries, but it is presently the heart of the Scarlet Realm – The Dragon-Blooded empire that rules over Creation, demanding tribute from the states of the Threshold. The Inland Sea, stretching for hundreds of miles, surrounds the Blessed Isle, isolating the Realm from her enemies.

Yet, there are a tiny smattering of islands in the Sea. Gloam, for example, stands as a lonely landmass, some two hundred miles off the Eastern shore of the Blessed Isle – a site of rich intrigue and espionage where the Eastern forces of the Seventh Legion pit their wits against the Realm’s All Seeing Eye. One of the smallest islands, is the Isle of Voices.

Less than a dozen miles from the Northern coast of the Blessed Isle, nestled in a rocky archipelago, the Isle of Voices is a place of wondrous and terrifying magic. Enchanted storms, impenetrable fog, shimmering mirages, malicious winds, and hostile spirits conspire to keep intruders from its shores. The people who live on its shores are few – a small fishing village exists on it’s southern coast, facing the mainland. It’s people raise sheep and goats for wool and milk on the hard and rocky earth and they fish in the white foam of the churning Inland Sea.

Cold winds blow from the frigid north, carrying the taste of sea salt on the wind. But the Isle of Voices is a broken and craggy land, of hills and vales, and here and there a green orchard grows or a lush valley thrives, breaking the dull grey of sharp rock and bare earth. These are some of the most dangerous places on the Isle.

Not for nothing is the Isle of Voices named the most enchanted place in the Realm. Picturesque hills are prowled by dread buck-ogres, bloodthirsty unicorns nest upon the wooded declivities, and the elementals who dwell within the Caves of Qana murder any who fail to best their maddening riddles. Yet whilst any sane person would avoid the carnivorous groves of cherry trees or the mutating waters of the Isle’s hidden caves, figures can often be seen trekking over the harsh landscape.

These are the students of the Heptagram, The Realm’s premier school of sorcery and occult secrets. Set on the highest point of the island, on it’s North-Western promontory, are its seven great libraries – six towers dedicated to the study of magic surround a central building at the focus of a precise working of geomancy. This, the most exclusive of the Realm’s secondary schools, instructs no more than eighty students at a time, and provides one teacher for every two students.

Sorcery is a dark and lonely art, feared and mistrusted throughout the Realm for the dread power it confers. But however much royal Dynast and commoner peasant alike might wish otherwise, sorcery is essential for the preservation of the Realm. The Scarlet Empress herself stands as the Realm’s foremost sorcerer (rivalled only by her daughter Mnemon and the dominie of the Heptagram, Ragara Bhagwei), ensuring that The Quiet Art is forever tolerated, if never truly accepted.

The Heptagram is the only place in the Realm where sorcery is not just tolerated, but full throatedly celebrated. The school charges extortionate fees to mould the most gifted scions of the most privileged families of the Realm into the next generation of sorcerers. In this place, magic might not be shunned, but it is controlled. Every prospective student must complete a standard five year course of primary school, which teaches the basic skills needed for the Realm’s elite, but the Heptagram does not allow its students to rest on their laurels. In their first year, Heptagram students are confined to the central library where they are taught the basic skills needed for the Realm’s elite sorcerers. Lessons in etiquette are revisited for when one stands both above one’s fellows as a striding colossus of power and apart from them as a monstrous pariah. So too is the etiquette of foreigners who deal in mystic relics taught, to say nothing of the etiquette of gods, demons, and stranger beings. Likewise, skill in algebra is expanded to make sense of mystic formulas, skill in music refined to understand the cadences of wizardry, and the study of vocabulary and grammar extended to the mythic language of Old Realm. They are taught to channel foreign essence, and to placate the spirits bound to the service of the school. In this “Year of Hell”, a student’s every waking moment is scheduled and regimented – six solid days of lectures and exercises from sun-up to sun-down and a seventh day not for rest, but for homework. Not for nothing is the first year referred to as “the Ten Thousand Labours”.

But then…

In their second year students are turned loose from the central tower to study sorcery proper. Students undertake autodidactic study, pursuing their own course as they chart their route to sorcerous power. Each of the encircling libraries specialises in a different form of magic and is well stocked with libraries, laboratories, summoning circles, and the bewildering array of magical tools and mystic aides required by the most discerning and demanding students of sorcery. Formal lectures are held ad-hoc in the school’s single lecture hall (and frequently the entire school will assemble into their assigned seats to take lectures together), though the school’s master sorcerers frequently provide personal tuition and practical instruction to individual students and like-minded small groups.

Each year, students must prove they have mastered the tenants of one of the Heptagram’s libraries of magic. A student’s length of study is limited to a maximum of seven years, and at least four libraries must be passed to graduate successfully. Graduation is far from assured: simple initiation into sorcery can take a mortal lifetime and the standards demanded by the Heptagram’s teachers are commensurate with the fact that the Heptagram is the most demanding and exclusive school in the Realm. To meet these exacting standards, students brave the dangers of the Isle of Voices to conduct their experiments even as they drive themselves to read entire libraries of mystic knowledge Some students drop out in disgrace, still others run away or disappear (their final fates a mystery), and some meet a grisly end (the study of sorcery being far from a ‘safe’ endeavour).

Testament to this risk, on the far side of the Isle of Voices, lie the of the Versino: the Realm’s first school of magic. These haunted ruins are blighted by sorcery that slipped the bonds of the Princes of the Earth, wrecking lasting devastation in the form of a mystic wound upon the Isle.

Dramatis Personae

Danireya

Blonde, petite, “early bloomer” with an hourglass figure. Snow white skin and bright blue eyes. Air Aspect.

Reya dominated her first year at the Heptagram, achieving the highest levels of academic achievement. She has used her effortless confidence and consummate skills of manipulation to set herself at the centre of her own popular clique.

Best At: People skills, academia
Good At: Crafts, practical skills, personal integrity
Weak At: Physical confrontation, respecting other people

Ludila

Curly brown hair, brown eyes, olive skin. “Early developer”. Slightly shorter than average height. Water Aspect.

Udi was kicked out of her prestigious primary school to be sent to one of the Realm’s most notorious reform schools. There she learned not to curb her incorrigible behaviour, but to get better at hiding it from authority. Unpredictable and physically violent, Udi’s attitude ultimately stems from her own insecurities and masochistic tendancies.

Best At: Cheating, stealing, bullying people weaker than her
Good At: Stealth, occult lore
Weak At: Being decisive, honesty, impulse control

Rowena

Long red hair, thick glasses, pale skin, green eyes. Unassuming, short, and usually slouches. Fire Aspect.

Intelligent, bookish, and shy, Ro comes from a family of cold, Earth aspected traditionalists, who have dampened her natural passions even since she was young. A perpetually lonely child, Ro yearns to fit in. More than that, she wants to be led and taken care of. One of the most promising students in her class.

Best At: Book learning, following orders
Good At: Stealth, formal etiquette
Weak At: Combat, self-respect, sports

Harite

Dark skin and hair, a little overweight, a little short. Air Aspect.

Naive to a fault, Hari’s has a firm belief that if she does what she’s told, it’ll all work out in the end. She comes from a family that has ever taken a dim view of sorcery (and books): her lofty ambitions to study at the Heptagram being one of the few times she’s ever stood up for what she wants rather than going along with the path of least resistance. She desperately wants to be popular… and perhaps punished for her desire to study sorcery.

Best At: Cooking
Good At: Academia
Weak At: Sports

???, The Ifrit Lord

Orange skinned, tall, powerfully built elemental of fire.

Eight feet tall with noble, handsome, features, and skin which glows like the embers of a fire, the proud Ifrit rank themselves among the most powerful of the elementals. A rare few among their number rise to the position of Ifrit Lord, paragons to their kind and shining examples to other, lesser, creatures. Such beings have been known to offer their patronage to aspiring sorcerers, enlightening them with the fires of their essence, and blessing those with the potential to wield it a fragment of their own authority and power.

Best At: Being a preening peacock, initiating ‘The Worthy’ into sorcery
Good At: Combat, holding court
Weak At: Modesty, humility, Immaculate Philosophy

Ragara Bhagwei

Tall, willowy, older gentleman – Wan ethnicity, dark hair.

The dominie and founder of the Heptagram. Bhagwei is a gifted healer who has spent his entire adult life training and mentoring the young sorcerers of the Realm. His personal interests in sorcery are eclectic, but the healing of diseases is his first and most enduring passion. Whilst the Scarlet Empress is unquestionably the Realm’s greatest sorcerer, Bhagwei is a solid contender for second greatest – certainly no-one has the same degree of mystical infrastructure and support which he has.

Best At: Performing Sorcery, Healing, Sex
Good At: Teaching Sorcery, social skills
Weak At: Accepting weakness (in self or others), humility, forgiveness

Mnemon Duhalva

Slight build, dark hair, Wan ethnicity

Professor Duhalva is Head Librarian of The Hall of the Jade Cauldron, and the Heptagram’s leading alchemist. Duhalva has strong political connections to both her great-grandmother, Mnemon and the Scarlet Empress herself. Unofficially, Bhagwei’s second-in-command and heir apparent, ironically it’s Duhalva’s political connections which stop this appointment becoming official – her fellow professors respect her academic accomplishments but have no desire to see the Heptagram lose its independence to a dominie in the pocket of Mnemon.

Best At: Alchemy, House Mnemon nepotism
Good At: Sorcery and academics
Weak At: Impartiality

Sorrowful Leaf

Tall, willowy build. Wood Aspect. Blue woad tattoos.

Associate Professor Mistress Sorrowful Leaf originally hails not from the Blessed Isle, but from the Eastern Threshold. The acknowledged expert on Wood Elementals, she is ever served by a capacious Wood Spider. Her knowledge of magical herbalism is second-to-none and she can frequently be found in the Hall of the Jade Cauldron. It seems likely that this knowledge will make her a tenured professor in a handful of years.

Best At: Herbalism, elemental lore
Good At: Tattoos and glyphs
Weak At: Political connections with Dynasts

Tepet Senex

Bald, white moustache and eyebrows, pale skin.

Logic dictates that at one point Old Man Senex must have been young. Empirical evidence seems to disagree: even professors such as Duhalva, who have been at the Heptagram for a century or more, have no memory of Senex with hair or colour to his facial hair. Even the true ancients of the Heptagram, such as Bhagwei himself, will report that even when Senex was younger he’s never acted young. Many old curmudgeons sour with age after a tumultuous youth, but Senex has been an insufferable stickler from the moment he drew his Second Breath. He is fiercely loyal to Bhagwei, though he’ll often challenge the dominie’s decisions. Professor Senex is the Head Librarian of The Hall of the Cerulean Glyph.

Best At: School administration, playing devil’s advocate
Good At: Sorcery, formal etiquette, combat
Weak At: Fun
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Lessons of Dynasty Part 2: Interlude Years