Amai Alakead

The Amai Alakead, also known as the Great Academy, is a vast complex of buildings found in the Sarnori city of Sallosh-by-the-Silver-Shore, dedicated to learning and understanding of the Known World.

It is many orders of magnitude larger than the Citadel of Oldtown.

## History

Whilst the Amai Alakead has existed for millennia, its current construction dates back approximately three hundred years, to the time of Halzor Alexi, High-King of Sarnor. After the ravaging of Sallosh by the khalasar of Khal Lajatto in the early years of the Century of Blood, the Great Academy had been severely damaged and High-King Halzor acknowledged the importance of the site and its inhabitants for the ongoing success of Sarnor.

The rebuilding efforts were completed in 32AA, and the Amai Alakead has continued its research ever since.

## Science and Technology

Before the Doom, the Valyrians were considered the most advanced nation west of the Bone Mountains, but given their absence for near four hundred years, they have found themselves surpassed in many regards by the forward-thinkers of Sarnor, particularly those of the city of Sallosh-by-the-Silver-Shore, colloquially known as the City of the Scholars.

It is widely believed by alchemists in Sallosh that all substances in nature are built of the same fundamental building blocks, be they a man, the bow in his hand, or the saddle placed upon his steed. This idea has led a number of alchemists to search for the agents required to turn one substance into another, to largely limited success. The concepts of concentration and distillation have long been utilised, by attempts to isolate the legendary *Akesar* necessary to transmute copper into silver and lead into gold remain naught but fiction thus far.

At the Keakh Starh Ha (The Palace of the Stars), astronomers study the skies and heavens above in hope of further understanding the nature of the surroundings, as well as more feasible and practical applications. It was noted by the famed astronomer of the Tagaez Fen, Savan Ohra that certain stars followed a rhythmic cycle of moving across the skies, disappearing for a period of time before reappearing moons later. This lead Savan to determine that the Known World must either exist on a spherical object rotating on an axis, or that the heavens themselves were shifting around the lands of man. Noting that nature was often inclined to the simplest and least complicated solution, he concluded that it was most likely the smaller object, the lands upon which he stood, that would be moving. His proposal of a spherical mass remains one of contention within the Academies of Sallosh, with vocal opposition lead by a number of high-profile thinkers even a century and a half after his declaration.

The thinkers of Sallosh are also famed for their deep-rooted interest and hunger for understanding of the flora and fauna, the thorough detailing of each another effort to further their knowledge of the natural world. In the Braj Shashh (The Glass Tower), it is said that nearly a thousand species of bush, shrub tree and flower grow, facilitating detailed examination of each in terms of cycles of growth, fruit, blossom and seed production. From the delicate winter roses of the frozen North of Westeros to the towering hardwoods of the Summer Isles, the hardy grasses of the Lhazar to the shrubs of the Red Waste, the scrolls produced by the botanists of the Braj Shashh are said to extend in their contents across most of the Known World. Equally so, the Great Academy contains over two hundred stuffed and preserved beasts, ranging from Manticores from the eponymous isles in the Jade Sea, to a banded shadowcat acquired from Tyroshi slavers who had landed upon Storrold’s Point seeking freefolk to enslave.

## Medicine

By the nature of their shared general desire to further understand the natural world around them, Sarnori savants and thinkers have long investigated the form of mankind, and its inner workings. The collective works of Hira Erazami and Laxo Sayahi are heralded as the pioneers of the concept of bodily circulation, stating that through breathing, vessels within the body are provided with air, which then work to energise the body through an oscillating back-and-forth flow of blood. Much of their research and diagrams are based on the bodies of those slain in the fighting pits of the Kingdoms, particularly that of the Qatal Ba’alash in the High City of Sarnath.

With an increased understanding of botany over the past centuries, it has been noted by many alchemists that several floral extracts can be distilled and mixed with solvents for the cure of a range of infirmities, from a racing heart to persistent melancholy. Such findings have been collated into the *Mjemw’eh* or *Compendium of Healing*, a tome of nearly two thousands pages and ten thousand diagrams. The original is continuously added to as new research and investigations are performed, and is kept in the vault of the Great Library of Sallosh under a heavy and continuous guard.