D&D: An Adventurer’s Guide to Strixhaven College
It’s the start of the school year. And the doors open to Strixhaven University, a college of magic unlike any other. Here’s what prospective students should know.
Strixhaven University is one of the most famous magical colleges in all the multiverse. Comprising five different magical colleges, each dedicated to a particular field of magic, it has a long and storied history.
It all began aeons ago, during the birth of the plane Arcavios which came about when two distinct planes of existence merged together, their essences forming powerful confluences of opposing mana, creating small regions known as snarls where magic grows even stronger and wilder. At the heart of five particularly powerful snarls, the mana condensed into luminous spheres that eventually hatched into the five elder dragons of Arcavios, who in the millennia after their birth would all come together to found Strixhaven University at the epicenter of these magical snarls.
Each of Strixhaven’s five colleges was founded to teach humanoids that disciplined study was the key to the safe use of magic. And only through rigorous and principled research can one truly understand the nature of magic and reality. Of course, now the campus has a small army of coffee shops and a semi-regular improv festival, so, things have blossomed in unexpected directions since the musty days of the university’s founding.
And though the Founder Dragons no longer directly associated with the college, their vast wisdom is available to all who seek it, making Strixhaven University one of the premier colleges of magical learning throughout the multiverse. Students from various worlds make their way to the campus to learn.
There they’ll join one of five different Colleges. Students with an adventurous and inquisitive nature might join Lorehold, better known as the College of Arcaheomancy, whose students are dedicated to digging through history and artifacts of the past to build a brighter future. Psychology, anthropology, and archeology all blend together in their study of magic and society–which seems to involve an awful lot of delving in tombs.
Students with a more creative mindset, who are called to express themselves through art as well as magic will fit right in with the Prismari. They are art students, theatre kids, and music majors, all of whom find that spells and magic are just another kind of art to be performed with passion.
Quandrix is the school of Numeromancy, whose mages wield math and magic with equal fervor. Their fractal spells help illustrate the fundamental forces of reality. If you think that numbers are the closest we can get to the handwriting of the gods, then Quandrix is the place for you.
Ambitious and eloquent students will find themselves a strong place in Silverquill, which prizes the magic of words and poetry and even puns and insults. Style and intimidation and competition are at the heart of this school.
And last but not least, Witherbloom proves that we all have a place in nature. Withrebloom students will study the natural sciences and draw power from the essence of living beings, either symbiotically or exploitatively. It is a school of life and death and the powers found in between these two forces blend with each other.
Students at Strixhaven will be assigned two counselors to advise them on their arcane and academic careers. They may provide conflicting guidance at times, but generally keep a student’s best interests in mind. But the real draw of Strixhaven is the Professors, who are advanced mages whose expertise in a given magical field makes them highly sought after, even by expert/graduate students.
Finally, for those looking for a more recreational activity, there is the sport of Mage Tower. Mage tower is a magical sport that involves placing your team’s mascot high atop a magical tower and trying to defend it while the other team tries to steal your mascot.
All this and more awaits students inside Strixhaven.
Happy adventuring!
