The Kyros Academy

"Hello Class, thank you for coming this late into winter." The young dragonborn's words race through the auditorium like an Olympian.
Near the door in the corner, the crowd shifts. The dragonborn watches as a hand falls from the now open door to the ground. "No thralls in the..." his sentence trips at the finish line as the collared zombie reaches down to pick up its appendage. Behind it walk in three men. One man wears a red robe, another pink, and at their head a sun elf in green.
The crowd follows his eyes to the corner and the usual sound in the room is sucked away. Generating noise in a vacuum, the yellow-clad dragonborn continues. "As I was saying, thank you for coming this late into winter. I have a special guest lecturer coming to help talk to us today about the applications of illusion magic to conjuration. Please give a special round of applause to the guest lecturer," from the door near the side of the room walks in an exact duplicate of the dragonborn, "Degh Two."
"Thank you Degh One," the duplicate shakes the professor's hand, "it is great to be here for the first time. Well, first time for you all," Degh Two gesticulates to the crowd, "but it kind of feels like I've been here the same as him."
Students laugh. A kobold near the front raises their hand.
"Shoot," Degh Two mock finger guns the fellow dragon-kin.
The kobold looks back and forth between Degh One and Degh Two, both leaning their staves. Degh One says, "He's the guest lecturer. Bound to be better than me."
"So, are you real?"
"Ah, a solipsist I see." Some groans resound. "But no, I'm not incorporeal like a major image. I am what is called," he walks up to the board, Degh One hands him a piece of chalk, "a simulacrum." He writes the word down. "That means, your wonderful Comparative Conjuration Professor is also an excellent sculptor. The inventor of the spell was a studied orc named Pygmal. She learned that the attributes of ice and snow," he breathes out a cloud of ice towards the crowd which Degh One catches with magic and begins swirling around the room as snowflakes fall in the auditorium, "contain energy very similar to that of life. She made a sculpture of herself out of snow and brought it to life, and your professor did the same for me."
A student raises their hand. "Did he have to breathe out all of that snow to make you?"
"Well, I can't tell you the specifics of how he did it, he can still get fired if any strange rumors follow, but it is not necessary; any snow will do."
From the corner of the room, the elf chimes in, "Actually, you're the only one who may be fired." The students gasp as Degh Two catches flame. Stoically, the simulacrum stares at the three men in the corner as water drips to the ground until all that remains of Degh Two is a puddle in the front of the auditorium.
Degh looks to the robed men, "I am sorry. I gave him too much liberty. I will not make the same mistake again, Master Green."
"Your simulacrum was fine work, and your students love you, but you will no longer be teaching Comparative Conjuration, Master Degh Yellow. That is, if you'll freely accept the name."
In the crowd, students turn to one another. "Yellow? They're actually doing it. They're making him Chair. We won."

Structure

The Academy is separated into four different schools: the School of Necromancy, the School of Conjuration, the School of Enchantment, and the School of Evocation. Each school is organized in a similar fashion, having a chair, faculty, students, and staff within them.

The Chairs

The Academy is led by its Council Chair. Beneath the Council Chair are the three Chairs of the other schools at the academy.
It is said that a Chair at the Academy has become a master in body, but serves the school with his soul. One points to the fact that Chairs take a surname related to their school.

1. Necromancy: Green
2. Conjuration: Yellow
3. Enchantment: Pink
4. Evocation: Red

The Chairs meet together to discuss many of the aspects of the school. The allocation of funds is made as a group discussion of all the Chairs although the Council Chair's voice carries more weight. The Chairs also decide on holidays and events for the Academy. A Chair may also remain Chair for as long as he lives, but may choose to retire should the other Chairs agree there is currently a suitable replacement.
The Council Chair has a whole host of other responsibilities and privileges. It is called the Council Chair because this Chair sits on the City Council of Istos. The Council Chair is most often from the Schools of Necromancy and the Schools of Conjuration.

The Choice of Chair

When a Chair, including the Council Chair, retires or dies, the students of the newly unheaded school are required to vote for all professors within the school to take over as Chair. The three remaining Chairs then evaluate the votes and decide on their next fellow Chair based on their interpretation of the student votes. However, a Professor chosen to be Chair has the right to decline the offer of becoming a Chair, and the Chairs must continue their discussions until a Professor accepts the role.
If the retired or dead Chair was the previous Council Chair, then after the new Chair is chosen a vote is held among all free citizens within the Cull Deme of the city of Istos to elect one of the four Chairs as the new Council Chair. Unlike the student election of a chair, this election is direct, meaning that whoever wins this vote is automatically made Council Chair.

Faculty

The Faculty of Istos are comprised of three different groups. instructors, researchers, and professors.
Instructors are teachers who are hired with limited to no magical ability to help teach non-magical lessons such as language classes or to explain magical theory rather than practice.
A researcher may produce a new spell with their name attached to it or they may create a magical item hitherto unseen.
Professors teach a number of classes but may also be dedicated to certain research, and all professors can cast magic.

Students

The students of the Kyros Academy are apprentice mages who seek to become a master in whatever respective school to which they are enrolled. The program lasts anywhere from four to sixteen years. Often students are enrolled before reaching adulthood. Many families in Istos simply want members who can replace their Freeman title with that of Master.
Students have free access to the mausoleum stables of the Cull deme, resulting in many elaborate pranks where undead thralls may be sent to perform their duties in the city dressed in elaborate costumes.
Students are required to wear the school uniform, a white tunic and a cloak that represents their school. Those who have a minor such as in other schools, illusion, abjuration, or in some language are awarded a pin of a symbol related to their minor.

The Staff

A Master's staff is a tool to be used to make magic. The Staff of Kyros Academy are no different. The staff is composed of undead thralls, constructs, and fiendish slaves who do custodial, clerical, and administrative work respectively.

Culture

Gendered Magic

The Academy of Kyros has no female faculty, staff, or students. It also explicitly excludes divination and transmutation magic from its curriculum on grounds of these being female schools of magic.

The Roots of Doubt

Many modern feminists claim that founder and first Council Chair Master Doulem Green betrayed the female Nic Moors during the first succession of the city's leader to gain favor with their male opponents. As such, the rejection of women at the Academy and the claim that magic should only be practiced by some gender has become increasingly challenged as a symptom of politics rather than true belief. Others argue that the rejection of divination magic is a way to prevent students from gaining skills that will allow them to think critically about the academy and its foundation, challenging the notion of gendered magic as a way to control even men in its exclusion of women.

"Το να κυβερνάς είναι θεϊκό"

Type

Education, Magic

Alternative Names

The Academy of the Master

Predecessor Organization

• The Followers of Kyros

Demonym

Master: a title granted to graduates and faculty

Leader

Master Adibar Green

Leader Title

The Council Chair

Founders

• Master Doulem Green

Location

Istos

Current Chairs

Adibar Green

Master Adibar Green is the current Council Chair. He is a sun elf who has been the Chair of the School of Necromancy for 206 years. When he newly had been given his adult name, Adibar was caught stealing books from the Kyros Academy. For his crime, Veimos, the ruler of the city, threw him into the maze-like prison known as the Iron Catacombs of Istos.
It is said that Green was in the Catacombs for ten years before he had amassed an undead army large enough to overpower the wardens the next time they attempted to send a prisoner to the Iron Catacombs. Veimos quickly decimated Green's army, but he then personally sponsored the man's education at the Kyros Academy.
After graduating, Green found a position as a researcher and then a professor at the academy before the retirement of the Chair before him saw him made Chair of the School of Necromancy. Then, another 46 years later, Adibar Green was elected the Council Chair of the school.

Degh Yellow

Master Degh Yellow is currently the youngest Chair at Kyros Academy. The white dragonborn became a master in Conjuration at the Academy. He then traveled to the City of Sigil to learn at the universities there.
When he returned, Degh was hired as a professor for his proficiency in linguistics, illusion, and abjuration. Degh obfuscated his interest in transmutation and gained his position as a professor at the academy. His style of teaching was new and exciting to his students, and with his predecessor's death, Degh received the largest proportion of a Chair vote that the Academy has ever seen.
Since becoming Chair, Degh has been more vocal about his opinions. For one, Degh argues that transmutation should be a part of the teachings at the School. He also has come out as a necromancy abolitionist against the use of undead thralls and some believe he is hiding more radical beliefs. He has served as Chair for nearly a year.

Veref Pink

Veref Pink was born in the nearby mountains as a shifter and raised by a group of harpies. One day, when attacking a group of travelers, Veref fell off the cliff and was left to die. Barely surviving, Veref managed to convince a nearby village to shelter him. When a group of devils attacked the village, Veref lost his home and found himself in Istos.
Veref joined the academy as a youthful student. He learned quickly and was taken on as a professor after graduating in four years. After his predecessor retired, Veref was chosen as Chair to show solidarity with the newly elected Shifter City Council member serving with Master Green.

Aelo Red

This tiefling was a performer growing up. One day, a member of the crowd said he should join the Academy as a joke, and Aelo decided to do just that. Aelo managed to join as a lecturer in Protections Against Enchantment before gaining his position in the Evocation school as Professor in Performance Evocation.
After this, a spell gone wrong at an Evocation function left Aelo Red the best possible Chair pick for the Academy, and Master Aelo has been the Evocation Chair for the past thirteen years.