Thread: University of Corsini - [GD x Lysander of Rhodes]

The actual campus of the university was several miles wide, a veritable urban sprawl of buildings constructed through the centuries until it became a little town unto itself, surrounded on all sides by the hinterland town of Verucca to serve its non-academic needs. Most the buildings were constructed in the same earthy brick and mortar with stone edifices and black towers and metal roofinga style common in this part of the world where the ocean and mountains were squished so close together. Verdant gardens of many flowers and trees could be found along the cobblestone path that Konrad walked, including a series of magnificent redwoods from across the ocean that were quickened by special evocations and kept alive in a climate most unusual for them by Northern runic configurations gifted from the University of Loddbruken. The particular building Konrad was heading towards was his home away from home. While his small residence on campus was farther west, in the much more homely d'Rafael Hall, he could more often be found in the Tower of Evocation. While it did sport a rather stunted tower, in which a variety of different birds roosted in the parapets of the unused walkway around the tower roof, it was still a larger rectangular structure that was covered in a swarm of vines and a wild garden of flowers from the far east. It was one of the oldest buildings on campus, near the very center and not far from Dimora di Corsini, the once home of the near-mythical Thaumaturgist whom founded the university well over a millennia ago. Pushing the ancient doors of the Tower ajar, Konrad was greeted by the branny scent of the central chamber of the hollow tower of which the building was named. The Tower of Evocation was, for all intents and purposes, a library-turned-laboratory. Entire walls of the T-shaped central chamber were lined with bookshelves filled with books going up to the roof with a secondary catwalk nearly thirty feet up. At the intersection was a circular block of stone of rough granite with the landing of the spiral staircase at the bottom, leading up to the erstwhile tower roof. Dozens of smaller rooms and private studies could be found throughout the building, lacking any symmetry and varying in sizes as if a madman had designed the plans to abolish the notion of the natural laws which labored to abide by the concept of equilibrium. At least that was what Konrad felt when he entered the Tower and why he enjoyed coming to this place to do his researchthat and how very few usually came to the Tower. It was not exactly fashionable among the intelligentsia of Corisini and only utilized when certain books, usually centuries old, needed to be found. Konrad walked between tables covered in dusty tomes and disused evocations tools until he came to a gap between two bookcases, revealing a hall deeper into the building. A slanted window angled from the wall to the outside illuminated the hallway as he tread down it, hearing the click-clack of his new apprentice behind him, until he came to a solitary door which he opened by pressing his palm against it, using a bit of simple magic to unlock, and crossed through leaving the door open behind him. Inside was a larger room, illuminated by the same slanted window to the outside that ran across its breadth just under the ceiling, that clearly was used more than others. As a matter of fact, it was Konrad's room for lack of better words. Tables sat against the walls littered with papers and implements of magic alongside chalkboards covered in various evocations and thaumatrugical mathematics, as well as other esoteric symbols from far off lands and their different styles of thaumaturgy. Bookcases lined the closet wall to the door as well as a ramshackle sofa a smaller table which seemed to be for eating and drinking, with an easel not far with a blank canvas sitting upon it. A whole section of the room though, on the western side, was completely empty except for a circular stone in the ground much like the one in the central chamber but much smaller. White and black chalk marred its surface in a complex array of symbols that formed what a Thaumaturgist would call a Conjuration Permutation, one of the highest orders of evocations used in magic. At the center sat a block of lead almost a foot wide, tall and deep. A perfect square of utter darkness. Konrad pulled his pocket watch from his vest pocket and gave it a look over as he came closer to the Conjuration Permutation, watching the hands of it click closer and closer to where he needed it to be.