The Circle
Original text by Aaron Allston
The Circle is a genuine academy of the arts arcane, a place where aspiring sorcerers of talent and noble inclination can learn the basics of the mystic arts. Due to the history
of its members and founder, the Circle has become a group closely associated with the superhero community of New York City.
The school consists of THE MASTER, a premier Japanese sorcerer; his permanent students; and a variable number of superheroes and talented normals who attend on an irregular basis to either teach or learn the finer points of magic. The Circle also acts as a center of magic research; heroes puzzled by wizardly references or ancient runes or myths bring their questions to the school and tend to gift it with magic talismans and crumbling scrolls they accumulate in the course of adventuring. The existence of the Circle is generally known only to the superhero community and its sorcerous enemies; the fact of its existence has not yet been discovered by the press.
Structure
Listed below are those associated with the Circle:
- The Master - Founder, Sensei
- Wanda Maximoff (The Scarlet Witch) - Instructor
Assets
The heart of the Circle's facility is the Master's Garden.
The Master's garden does not follow traditional Japanese forms; it is probably a sorcerous symbol in living sculpture, possibly analogous to a pentagram. This is the theory among his students, anyway. When asked about its unusual nature, he merely responded that this is the way it should grow.
The garden is a hexagon some 18 meters in diameter. Two-meter wide tunnels, like spokes from a hub, extend one from each point of the hexagon. Each tunnel is about 14 meters long, bricklined, and emerges through an illusory wall into a different place. One opens into a sewer line under 30th and Broadway; one opens under a small country bridge on Long Island; one opens into a cave mouth in Crete. The students don't know where the others lead.
The "sky" of the garden, while apparently sunlit, shows no sun. It is actually a dome of some polished stonelike material; a person's gaze tends to slip off it, and N-Ray and X-Ray vision will not penetrate it. The dome darkens at night, and dew will collect on the grass and bushes.
At the center of the garden, on a little knoll, is a cherry tree. lmbedded next to it is a large block of polished ebony; this was in fact the focus that Ebonfire used in the ritual that gained him his powers. A circle of red rose bushes surrounds the tree; around that is a circle of white rose bushes; and around all is a circle of yellow rose bushes. Soft grass grows where the bushes do not.
Each hallway ends in a wall of mist; walking through the mist is effortless, but the portal is usually concealed on the other side to blend in with the surroundings. Thus, the portal in the sewer will look like sewer wall and will feel like it, too: a normally invisible Force Wall bars the way for anyone The Master chooses to keep out. In addition, each hallway is monitored at its exterior end by a little scaly man, a creation of The Master's who relays him the mental image of all those who approach. The little homunculi live in niches at their appointed posts, feeding off rats, insects and occasionally off tidbits brought by members and associates of the Circle. Aureole named the sentinel of the Broadway access Jake.
People in the garden or its environs are immune to X-ray or N-ray vision from those without, and the garden acts as psychic shield between those inside and those outside.
History
In January of 1965, THE NIGHTWRAITH, legendary detective hero of New York City, was savaged by a mystic monster conjured by a powerful Satanist society he was investigating. Seriously injured and on the run, The Nightwraith escaped into the Manhattan sewer system with his attacker in close pursuit. The hero's last sight as he stumbled along, just before he collapsed from loss of blood, was that of a sunlit rose garden in an unused tunnel of the underground system.
When he awoke, two days later, he was almost fully healed. He was greeted solemnly by The Master, who handed him the artifacts of power used by the Satanists' leader.
Though they had been fierce enemies twenty years before (although The Nightwraith wasn't ever in The Master's league), the hero and the sorcerer became friends. The Master became tutor for the hero's young daughter Lara, then became her mentor when The Nightwraith disappeared on Halloween of 1965.
In the course of his acquaintanceship with The Nightwraith, The Master became accepted by the city's superheroes; most of his old enemies were either dead or retired, and those who still actively pursued justice became resigned to his peaceful reappearance. When The Nightwraith disappeared, The Master gathered about him a band_ of novice heroes, spent time enough to coach them in the rudiments of magical enterprise, and sent them hunting for the missing hero. They were the first Circle, and their first case was an utter failure. The individual heroes who formed that first gathering have gone their separate ways now, but most are still active and using their powers to noble purposes.
In the years since, The Master has tutored many heroes in the mystic arts and is considered to be among the most knowledgeable (if not necessarily most powerful) mortal sorcerers on Earth.
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