Penumbral Hall

by Marc-Olivier Jodoin

Penumbral Hall

Penumbra is the border light and shadow -- the space between. Bright and Dark, Enlightenment and Ignorance, Work and Play, all exist in various half-capacities in and around the Penumbral Hall. Here the students come to escape their pre-set roles of academia and exist as something inbetween.

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Place Inbetween

Church... community hall... barracks... it's all of these things, and it's none of these things. Most think that the Penumbral hall has existed for as long as humans have called the City of Night and Shade home; they profess that it has to have been one of the first buildings ever built in the shadow of the Great Embrace. The volcanic stone making up the grand columns and archways is worn, scratched, graffitied, having witnessed a myriad of uses over the years. This flexible space has been home to medics, mayors, and more. Treaties have been decreed and pub chants have been cried, from the floor to the rafters. The Penumbral Hall has no destined use, no true calling, and that's exactly as it is supposed to be.
These days this malleable hall has been reclaimed by students -- reclaimed, as once long ago, before the Veiled Academy was a thing, it was student housing for a previous university -- and turned into a place for them to unwind and relax. Here, in the hall that rejects the shackles of preordained programming, students then too reject their masks and costumes of every day life and fit into a place where there is nothing to fit into. Here the sense of belonging comes from no longer feeling forced to belong to one image or another.
Not fully integrated into the Veiled Academy campus, nor entirely removed from it, the hall manages to similarly hide in plain sight. It has multiple entrances, each coming from a different seemingly inconspicuous location, via a maze of interconnected buildings built on on-top another, opening up into the grand black and red interior. It has started to become known as a notorious party spot among academics, but that use comes and goes in waves, depending on the time of year. Most often the various nooks spread across the hall's two levels are filled with groups of students, some large and some small, relaxing and taking the time to just be human for a change. It's thought that the Veiled Academy's unofficial slogan "May you pass through the veil unscathed" was first uttered in and then etched into the walls of this hallowed hall.