The Five Universities

Athenaeum entry. Correspondent of record: Vel Asharen. The Athenaeum has standing exchange agreements with all five, separately negotiated, in five different languages of contract. None of the five is aware of the precise terms the others have signed. This arrangement was, in retrospect, the only one that would have worked.

Overview

The Five Universities are the continent's most prominent institutions of higher learning, each specialized in a single broad discipline. They are not a federation. They have no joint governance, no shared compact, no mutual recognition of credentials, and no rotating council that handles disagreements between them. They were founded independently across roughly two centuries, in five different nations, by five different sets of people who in most cases would have been irritated to learn that the others were being built.

The Athenaeum lists them on a single page because we find it convenient. The institutions themselves would mostly prefer to be listed separately.

What follows is a brief overview of each, with an honest accounting of how they currently regard one another. The picture is not pretty. Higher learning at the top of any field tends to produce people who care intensely about being right, and the Five, between them, contain a great deal of right-caring.

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I. The Arcanum of Lethyrn

Discipline: Magic — arcane theory, applied spellcraft, the comparative study of magical traditions Location: Divine Kingdom of Alfheimr Founding Dean: Theryen of the Bright House Standing posture: Aloof. Considers itself the only serious institution among the five.

The Arcanum is the oldest of the five by several decades and the most prestigious in its discipline by an enormous margin. Established in Alfheimr at the request of an elven Council of Magi who saw value in having mortals trained to a comparable standard, the Arcanum has produced — by Athenaeum estimate — the majority of practicing high-tier mages currently working on the continent.

Its curriculum is rigorous to the point of austerity. Admission is competitive and largely meritocratic; the Arcanum cares less than other institutions about the candidate's background and more than any of them about the candidate's demonstrated capacity for the work.

Krorus is the closest the Arcanum has to a patron deity, though the relationship is, like most things involving Krorus, informal and oblique. Small shrines to him appear on the upper floors of the older buildings. Students who study late into the night occasionally report the sense of being watched with interest by something… large in presence. The faculty consider this a good sign.

Relations with the other four: The Arcanum does not formally recognize the degrees of the College, the Stratagem, the Seminary, or the Mercantile. Its faculty refer to the other four institutions, in formal correspondence, as "the regional academies." The Stratagem in particular is regarded as an upstart imitation; the Mercantile is, by a long Arcanum tradition, simply not mentioned by name.

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II. The College of Halaer

Discipline: Arts & Crafts — visual art, music, theater, architecture, the working trades Location: Grand Duchy of Rilirzur Founding Dean: Mestrel Halaer (whose name the institution carries) Standing posture: Loud, populist, openly contemptuous of any institution that thinks it is better.

The College of Halaer was founded with the explicit intention of refusing the historical distinction between fine arts and crafts. The College considers a master smith and a master painter equally accomplished, and trains both under the same overall framework: technique, history, originality, and the ethical responsibilities of someone capable of making something that did not exist before.

The College is the largest of the five by enrollment and the most internally varied. Its workshops, theaters, studios, and forges occupy a substantial campus on the outskirts of one of Rilirzur's larger cities. Its annual end-of-term Exhibition draws visitors from across the continent.

Relations with the other four: The College despises the Mercantile with a clarity that has not faded in several generations — its faculty consider mercantile values an active corruption of the work of making things. Indifferent-to-cordial with the Stratagem and the Seminary. The College has, by Athenaeum record, poached three senior Arcanum mage-artisans in a single decade approximately eighty years ago. The Arcanum has not forgotten. The College has never apologized and will not.

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III. The Stratagem of Caelirn

Discipline: Strategy & Governance — political theory, military strategy, public administration, diplomacy Location: Duchy of Brocquia Founding Dean: First Steward Caelirn of Brorstad Standing posture: Pragmatic, ambitious, openly tired of being looked down on by the Arcanum.

The Stratagem trains the people who run things. Its students study political theory in the morning, military doctrine in the afternoon, and case-by-case applied governance in the evening, with the explicit understanding that they will spend the rest of their lives applying what they have learned to situations the textbooks did not anticipate.

It was placed in Brocquia at the urging of the Conclave of Stewards, whose system was, even then, distinctive enough that other realms wanted their administrators exposed to it. The Stratagem trains diplomats, civil servants, generals, and the occasional reformist who later returns home to attempt to remake their own government in the Stratagem's image. The reform attempts succeed about thirty percent of the time, by Athenaeum tracking.

The current Dean — by long tradition of the institution — is selected from candidates who have actually held substantial governing office, not from career academics.

Relations with the other four: Open and mutual rivalry with the Arcanum, conducted across centuries in faculty letters, doctrinal pamphlets, and the occasional duel between particularly opinionated students at neutral conferences. The Stratagem considers the Arcanum calcified, elitist, and several centuries behind contemporary political thought; the Arcanum considers the Stratagem upstart, vulgar, and several centuries away from earning respect. Cordial-but-wary with the Mercantile (governance and economics overlap, but the Mercantile's interests are not always the Stratagem's). Polite distance from the College. Tense with the Seminary, particularly on questions of where religious authority ends and civil authority begins.

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IV. The Seminary of Seraph's Landing

Discipline: Religion — comparative theology, divine doctrine, applied pastoral care, ritual practice Location: Diocese of Mongatia, adjacent to the Great Cathedral Founding Dean: Archbishop Seleth of the Mongatian line Standing posture: Pious, well-funded, doctrinally certain of its centrality.

The Seminary is the largest center for comparative religious study on the continent and the only one of the five located inside the formal grounds of a continental religious institution. Its curriculum is dominated by the faith of Aerith Soln — unavoidably so, given its location — but the Seminary trains scholars in the doctrines of every major god of the pantheon, every documented planar deity, and a substantial number of folk traditions that the other institutions would not consider rigorous enough to study.

This breadth is doctrinally controversial in some Mongatian circles. The Seminary defends it on the grounds that a clergy that does not understand other faiths is a clergy that cannot serve its own, a position Aerith herself has reportedly endorsed.

The Seminary produces clergy of multiple faiths, pastoral counselors, religious historians, and — increasingly in recent decades — diplomatic specialists who broker between religious communities in conflict.

Relations with the other four: Cold war with the Arcanum — magic and faith have, here, a centuries-old quarrel about which is the deeper truth. The two institutions politely refuse each other's invitations and have, on three documented occasions, attempted to discredit each other's graduates in public hiring competitions. Tense with the Stratagem over the boundary between religious and civil authority. Distantly polite with the College (the arts have, the Seminary admits, religious value). Has formally excommunicated two former Seminary scholars who took faculty positions at the Mercantile; the position is taught at the Seminary as a cautionary tale.

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V. The Mercantile of Pellord

Discipline: Economics, trade, finance, mercantile law, the management of large enterprises Location: Rertachian League (founded when the League was at its height; now lobbied for by several nations to relocate) Founding Dean: Master-Trader Othen Pellord Standing posture: Pragmatic to the point of cynicism. Politically vulnerable. Surrounded by people who would prefer it did not exist.

The Mercantile was the last of the five to be founded and is, at present, the most politically exposed. Its location in the Rertachian League made sense when the League was the continent's largest trading confederation. The League's current decline has made the Mercantile's presence there increasingly awkward, and several nations — most notably the Holy Tromen Empire — have offered substantial inducements to host a relocated campus.

The Mercantile itself has so far resisted relocation. Its current Dean, Master-Trader Velnis Carrish, has been quoted as saying that "the institution is not the building, and the building is not the city, but the city has nonetheless been kind to us." The implication is that the Mercantile is staying.

Its curriculum covers trade law, banking, market dynamics, the management of large guild-ventures, contract drafting, and the long history of mercantile institutions on the continent. Its graduates run most of the major trade houses and a notable number of the smaller national treasuries.

Relations with the other four: The Mercantile has the worst relationships overall of any institution on this page. The College openly despises its values. The Seminary has excommunicated faculty for accepting positions there. The Arcanum refuses to acknowledge its existence in formal correspondence. The Stratagem cooperates with it grudgingly when policy and economics require coordination, and otherwise keeps its distance. The Mercantile faculty are, as a result, the most internally loyal of any of the five — there is, in the standing institutional joke, nowhere else for them to go. The Mercantile has, by some accounts, simply outlasted its critics on multiple historical occasions and intends to do so again.

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Why They Do Not Cooperate

The simple answer is that they were never founded to. Each institution emerged in its own region under its own political pressures, served its own initial purposes, and developed its own internal culture before the others were established. By the time all five existed, none of them had any incentive to formally yoke themselves to the others — and several had developed actively negative views of the work the others were doing.

Several attempts at formal cooperation have been made across the centuries. None has lasted. The most ambitious — a proposed Concord of Five floated approximately three centuries ago — collapsed within two years, after the Arcanum refused to sit at the same table as the Mercantile and the College refused to participate without the Mercantile present, specifically to spite the Arcanum. The Athenaeum maintains the founding documents of that failed Concord as a small archival curiosity. They make instructive reading.

Faculty Movement and the Poaching Trade

Despite the institutional hostility — or perhaps because of it — there is a small but persistent traffic in poached faculty between the five. A senior scholar at one institution who falls out of favor, or simply receives a more attractive offer, will sometimes accept a position at another. The Arcanum loses faculty to the College most often; the College loses faculty to the Stratagem occasionally; the Mercantile, despite its other problems, has been known to attract Stratagem economists with shockingly generous compensation packages.

Each such move is treated by the losing institution as a small betrayal and by the receiving institution as a vindication. The scholars themselves usually keep their heads down for a few years and try to publish quietly.

Multi-Institution Credentials

Holding credentials from more than one of the five is rare, prestigious, and frequently politically awkward. A scholar who has trained at both the Arcanum and the Stratagem, for example, will find each institution slightly suspicious of their loyalties forever. The handful of mortals who hold credentials from three or more of the five are, almost without exception, eccentric, well-traveled, and unaffiliated with any of them by the end of their careers.

The Athenaeum employs a disproportionate number of these multi-credentialed scholars. They make excellent correspondents.

See Also

• Krorus
• Aerith Soln
• Divine Kingdom of Alfheimr
• Grand Duchy of Rilirzur
• Duchy of Brocquia
• Diocese of Mongatia
• Rertachian League
• The Interplanar Athenaeum
• Yggdrasil World System

— Vel Asharen, The Interplanar Athenaeum