Selection
Every spring, during the warming days, the capital,
Akat, sends priests and priestesses accompanied by clerics, with escorts of paladins across the land of Mordeo to find new pupils to fill the halls of the school. Each priest or priestess is tasked with bringing home one child. Each child must be carefully vetted and evaluated. Only the most acceptable potential pupil can be accepted into the Divination School.
Children must be healthy, first and foremost. Clerics are the first to evaluate a child, giving them a full health exam. Children examined and chosen for the school of Divination must be seven years of age to be considered. If a child is found to be physically undesirable due to deformity or weakness of the mind, they will quickly be rejected. But it is also the
Cleric’s responsibility to check a child for communicable illnesses before allowing a priest or priestess near them.
The school only accepts four-hundred children every year. Many become Crusaders or Paladins, many others become missionaries. Fewer become clerics, fewer still mages. But among the fewest to be chosen, are those accepted into the higher schooling of
Divinity, to become a priest or priestess. And so, the protection of those who have successfully completed their divination are to be protected carefully. An ill child exposed to them could cause a devastating blow to Akat and Mordeo all together.
Children under the age of seven are noted by the
Clerics and examined early. These babes will be of age when the next season comes and can be vetted early for deformities or illness. The clerics are able to then record their findings in the seven year census so that they know to either check upon the child again, or pass the family by the next time around.
The job of the Priest or Priestess is to determine the possible strengths that a child might offer to Akat and further still, Mordeo. Are they intelligent? Cunning? Are they strong or brave, do they have inklings of magic viability that could be brought to the surface with guidance of Akat’s
Mageborn? Even with the most perceptive scrutiny, not all four-hundred children will succeed in the School of Divinity, some may not even survive.
Enrollment
Once the examinations have come to a close, and all the children have been brought back to the capital they go through their “enrollment”. Enrolling into the school can be a very different experience for children, depending on their recorded origin.
A child from a poor family would experience a more thorough enrollment. Bodies scrubbed clean, and old clothing burned. Hair cut short and dusted thoroughly with potash to kill any lice or other mites. Quarantine from other pupils for two weeks to ensure any parasites have been exterminated. However, in return for the less favorable treatment, these children, who often have been fed less than necessary for a healthy child to grow, are fed better than they could have ever dreamed. This is to give every child an acceptable start to their education so that they can be evaluated not on their level of nourishment, but on their true value to the
Divinity.
Curriculum
Once enrollment has concluded, education may begin. Many students, at the tender age of seven, have not learned to read or write. The first year following their acceptance into the school, children are schooled in learning literature, scriptures, mathematics, and the history of Mordeo. Most are taught these fundamentals and nothing more for their first year. However, one to two hundred young men are hand picked by the
Saint of the Crusaders to begin physical training for potential to become a
Crusader of Mordeo.
These children spend the early mornings in classes, learning their scriptures and history, but after the noon meal, they are sent to the training yards to begin learning how to strengthen their bodies and form extreme levels of discipline and obedience under the firm guidance of their Saint.
After the first year in the School, and once the children have an acceptable grasp of their general education, the true schooling can begin. The first month of their second year is brutal for all four-hundred children. Every child spends time with a
Mageborn from each school of magic. They are tested tentatively at first by each school, those who fail to exhibit any tendency towards magics are quickly filtered out and sent back to be filtered into other sects.
Those that show tendency towards the schools of magic are taken for more intense testing. They are filtered into their potential schools, and from there are tested for their level of potential. This process can be long, is vigorous and is where some children have been known to fail to survive the process of early testing and training, often falling victim to
Husking .
The other children are continuously tested and have been known to be shuffled from this sect to that to find where they fit best.
Usually half of the children picked to be trained by the Saint of Crusaders are filtered out into the Sect of Paladins. While they show potential, the Saint of Crusaders only picks the very best of his pupils. While the
Paladin sect is vital to Mordeo in maintaining order and enforcing the laws within the populous, the Crusaders protect not only Mordeo as a whole, but are the ones who protect the
Divinity. If the crusaders are subpar then the precious few Priests and Priestesses would be in jeopardy.
Young girls have fewer options than the young men, who can find roles in any sect. Girls can either be accepted into the
Cleric Sect, the
Missionary Sect, but only the truly exceptional will be taken into the
Divinity.
With the Divinity being overseen by the
High Priestess, the country being a matriarchy, only the truly special girls will be filtered to join the
Divinity, to represent the strong female lead.
Sect Education
At the fourth or fifth year in the School, the children are more or less set in their potential sects. Once this is achieved training in their unique skill sets intensifies. Every child conducts school together in the morning. This allows the children to socialize, bond, and keep brushed up on their scriptures, reading, writing, and mathematics. It is believed by the capital that a communal education in the first part of the day helps encourage loyalty and kinship amongst the pupils.
After midday meal, the
Crusader and
Paladin students return to training yards under their saints.
Missionary students go to learn about chemical brews, learning languages of enemy countries and how to mimic accents perfectly. How to play the part of a native to whichever country they are sent to siphon information from. Clerics go to learn how to tend to illnesses and injuries. Creating salves and balms, learning to mend bones and bandage, stitch wounds and stave off infections. Mages continue the rigorous training they began years before the other children were permanently placed. The young boys and girls chosen to study for the
Divinity are carefully taught the holy scriptures, many are tutored by individual Priests or Priestesses whom take them for sacrifices and ritual ceremonies to keep the belief of Akatosh strong, and his blessings upon the land.
The only sect that seems to show no interest in the education of the children would be the ever mysterious and hidden
Exorcist Sect. Yet the Sect never seems to be without their strange members. Rumors fly that Exorcists take children from their bed to keep their members at an acceptable number. Others say they are simply made of shadow and do not truly exist, therefore they never die.
In truth, the sect waits and watches from the shadows to find the perfect recruit. For as long as the sect has existed, it has only plucked one child who has stood out to them. One child who is chosen unbeknownst to themselves until their name is called at the graduation of Divination at their seventh year in the school. A young man or woman at the age of fourteen. As far as they’ve known, trained for a different sect, only to be scooped up by the
Exorcist. The only sects that are safe from being chosen from are that of the
Divinity, and the Mages. These young pupils too few and precious to be offered to the choosing of the hidden point of the
Six-Point Star.
Graduation
After the seven years of grueling training and unrelenting studies, the graduating class of four-hundred students gather for the formal placement ceremony. This ceremony is overseen by a member of the
Divinity sect, and the current Headmaster of that year. The Headmaster will call each student's name, their respective sect, and who their mentor will be. Over the course of the next seven years, all the new initiates to a sect will be trained via apprenticeship to an existing member of their sect, becoming an official member at the age of twenty-one.
Spring of Divinity
When the Divination School was first established by
Father Leon in 161 AT, it was a momentous occassion for the first graduating class to enter into service of Akatosh. As such, a festival was held in their honor, to celebrate new life flourishing within
Akat. This celebration would come to be known as the "Spring of Divinity". After the graduating class of 168 AT finished their respective apprenticeships, a second celebration was held on 175 AT, forming a cyclical tradition that is still in practice to this day.
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