Athenaeum of Quills and Blood

The **Athenaeum of Quills and Blood**, sometimes known simply as **Quills and Blood**, is the center of learning for Blood Magic and various miscelleneous disciplines on Aerb, and Amaryllis Penndraig's alma mater.

The Athanaeum is built on a high plateu in the city of Sanguine. It makes up the largest part of the city.

The "Quills" of the name refer to mundane education and administration, the Athenaeum's secondary focus after Blood Magic, as well as the arts. 3-to-5-year courses in administration (possibly with some arts of blood magic training on the side) make up a majority of the graduates. 3 years is also the mimimum beyond which a person is authorized to continue training in blood magic outside the Athenaeum.

Like any Athenaeum, it has what a visitor from Earth would recognize as ordinary classrooms and lecture halls and has a mandatory Ethics course. The school has a long tradition of climbing; it's one of the school's primary extracurriculars, with students joining "clans" of climbers, and elaborate climbing walls equipped with velocity wards to prevent any serious injury from falls. Climbing synergises well with blood magic, and some of the school's climbing routes are only possible by using blood magic to enhance your leaps. Music and dance are also taught to the students there, on the theory that a sense of rhythm helps with blood magic.

Sanguine and the Athenaeum have a rather rigid, hierarchical culture. Quills and Blood is gender-segregated, or something along those lines - heterosexual experiences are rare and difficult, same-sex ones are easier.

## History

Juniper invented the Athenaeum of Quills and Blood in one of his D&D games, although in his game it was abandoned.

Sanguine was once ruled by vampires. What would become the Athenaum was the Sanguinary Estate, home of the ur-vampire from which all vampires descended. The vampires were natural practitioners of blood magic. Together with various other night creatures, they filled the city with mortal slaves kidnapped from the surrounding region for them to prey on. Uther killed the ur-vampire; since slaying a vampire killed any vampires they had sired, this destroyed all vampires on Aerb.

Uther personally reformed Quills and Blood from the ground up, building it up into a major power in a few short years. Some consider him to have founded it, although there was considerable continuity with the surving mortal blood mages and administrators. In 13 FE, a rogue blood mage fled to Li'o, and was recaptured by Uther (following a whole adventure in Li'o) and executed. Under their new Utherian philosophy, the Athenaeum discovered Aerb's five-factor system of blood types in 17 FE.

The Athenaeum is fairly popular as a place for Penndraigs to train, particularly for the defensive use of blood magic (against poison etc.) Prior to the story, Amaryllis attended Quills and Blood for three years from the ages of 13 to 16 along with her relative Lisi.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Amaryllis was good at climbing. The Athenaeum of Quills and Blood was built high up on a plateau, and climbing was part of the school’s tradition, a sport taken to the extremes that magic would allow. There were paths on the school’s climbing walls that could only be taken if you were skilled in blood magic, capable of flinging yourself to the timing of your pulse from one hold to another. There were competitions, and clans of climbers; it was one of the school’s primary extracurriculars. Amaryllis had only been at the athenaeum for three years, which was long enough to have learned a little, but not so long that she had considered herself a blood mage. Climbing had been one of the things she’d pushed herself into, partly for the social access it allowed to upperclassmen, and partly because it allowed her some solitude. (Most of the climbing faces had velocity wards beneath them, layered so that you would be slowed by degrees as you passed through them and hit the ground no harder than if you’d tripped over your own feet on ground level, which meant there was no need for spotters or someone to belay her.) - Chapter 88: The House of Solitude
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Amaryllis had spent three years at the Athenaeum of Quills and Blood, and thought she knew several spots that we could enter either it (or the surrounding city of Sanguine) from. Stealth and lies would probably be the name of the game there, though security wasn’t likely to be all that tight, not for the things we were looking for. [....] “We can vote,” said Amaryllis. “Juniper will break any ties. I know the campus of Quills and Blood well and have a number of contacts there, though none that I would feel safe revealing myself to. Still, I can send one of the three of you with some advanced intelligence that should make information gathering easier. Healing is a subspecialty of the blood mages. That has my vote.” - Chapter 37: Paths
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Formerly known as the Sanguinary Estate, the Athenaeum of Quills and Blood, the largest part of the city-state of Sanguine, concerns itself primarily with blood magic, though it has an unusual split focus into more mundane aspects of education, particularly those regarding administration and management. - Worth the Candle: A Brief Description of Aerb - Chapter 2: Athenaeums
4. ↑ In the mythology of Quills and Blood, the athenaeum is heir to Uther Penndraig’s artistic genius, but while it does produce the occasional world-renowned writer, poet, or musician, the vast majority of their graduates are there for three to five years in order to become managers, administrators, bureaucrats, and functionaries, usually with a token education in blood magic, if any. - Worth the Candle: A Brief Description of Aerb - Chapter 2: Athenaeums
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 [Amaryllis’ Notes: I do wish that I had gotten an extra few years at Quills and Blood. When I met Juniper, I had just the bare amount of knowledge necessary for Aarde’s Touch and the Crimson Fist. Once you have those first three years under your belt, you’re allowed to train on your own, but I was always busy with other things, and didn’t have the time to dedicate to eking out more utility just by working through the exercises on my own. Having access to one of the magics is pretty common among the Lost King’s Court, and blood magic is one of the more popular ones, but it’s the defensive abilities that really make that the case. Being able to burn out poisons is helpful, if you’re a noble of Anglecynn.] - Worth the Candle: A Brief Description of Aerb - Chapter 5: Magics
6. ↑ They were walking down a wide hallway with doors lining it. Amaryllis caught a few glimpses of classrooms, tiered seats that allowed an instructor to lecture as many people as possible at once. It reminded her of her time at Quills and Blood. Certain things were a universal part of the athenaeum experience. - Chapter 111: Peer Pressure
7. ↑ The course, Ethics, was a mainstay of the modern athenaeum system, and it was one that Amaryllis had taken at Quills and Blood, so I had some idea about what to expect. What had happened was, essentially, that someone at some point had pointed out that the athenaeums were complicit in a lot of the crimes of the Second Empire, whether that was by furnishing the Empire with trained personnel, or more directly using their considerable sway to make things worse (for given values of worse). Obviously this was a serious structural problem that no one wanted to have repeated a second time. Less obviously, the solution was to teach people to be ethical, which was to be done early in the education process for people who were going to find themselves in a fair bit of power. I couldn’t tell whether this was laughably idealistic thinking, or simple virtue signaling, but I was leaning toward the latter. I was expecting it to be the most boring thing in the world, so I was mildly surprised to find myself paying attention. - Chapter 145: Freshman
8. ↑ “Are you just really good at dancing?” I asked as I brought her in close for a more sedate, more stationary waltz.

“It’s taught at Quills and Blood,” replied Amaryllis. “Part of blood magic is timing your magic to the pulse of your heart, and music and dance both help with it. I wouldn’t call myself good, but I’m a fair bit past competent,” <and I’ve gotten better as part of Twinned Souls, I believe. Numerically, it would be in the thirties.> - Chapter 140: Commingling
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 He never really got the sense that she cared, but they traded stories all the same, hers always more interesting than his, stories about Quills and Blood, which she’d started training at when he was still wandering through the woods poking at snakes with his friends. He enjoyed hearing about Sanguine through her eyes, a place that was as alien to him as Li’o, but in completely different ways, rigid and hierarchical in spite of how many different species made their home there, firm and controlled, as though the vampires that had once made their home at the Sanguinary Estate had left an imprint so deep that it could never be erased. - Chapter 161: Reimer
10. ↑ Say, for example, she had wanted to get some experience with boys following a relatively cloistered existence at Quills and Blood, as I think is common there, sapphic experiences excepted. - Chapter 149: I Have to Hand it to You
11. ↑ “Which athenaeum?” she asked.

“I, uh, I don’t know what that is,” I said. It was true when I said it, but right after a memory sparked and I recalled the term; it was a fancy term for a place of literacy and learning, taken from the name of the Greek god Athena. I’d used it in a D&D campaign before, when the party had been tracking a goblin ranger through the halls of the abandoned Athenaeum of Quills and Blood. - Chapter 2: Thickenings
12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Sanguine was originally a city of decadence inhabited by various creatures of the night, vampires chief among them. The populus was harvested from the surrounding countries, who could do little against vampiric night raids, and those who were fit were brought within the walls of Sanguine to become servitors. During the day, while the vampires slept, abominable creatures kept watch and prevented escapes from the captive population; during the night, the vampires would take their blood tax, occasionally killing for sport. Vampires were natural practitioners of blood magic, especially when engorged, and it was one of the chief complements to their vampiric might. When Uther Penndraig swept in and killed the ur-vampire, all of those the vampire had turned died with him, sweeping Sanguine (and all of Aerb) clean of vampires. The creatures they’d used were put down easily after that, and the city of Sanguine was thrown into crisis as an immense power vacuum formed. The athenaeum eventually rose from the ashes, largely thanks to a number of un-turned scholars and low-ranking hangers-on of the vampire court. This new leadership was largely despised by the people of Sanguine, but many of them were third or fourth generation blood chattel, and fell in line as a matter of course.

The extent to which Uther Penndraig was involved in the establishment of Quills and Blood is a matter of some debate. In public opinion, it is sometimes considered the third of the athenaeums that he founded, but blood magic had a rich history in Sanguine, and most of the eventual instructors at the athenaeum were blood mages who had been bound in service to vampiric masters. To that extent, it’s sensible to say that Quills and Blood is only a continuation of existing vampiric research and thought, both where blood magic and civic administration are concerned. The unclear history hasn’t stopped Uther Penndraig from figuring prominently in the mythology of Quills and Blood. - Worth the Candle: A Brief Description of Aerb - Chapter 2: Athenaeums
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 In 13 FE, Uther Penndraig arrived in Li’o during the height of an internal conflict between two factions of still mages, a conflict which was largely about the Mage’s Agreement and had been sparked by a blood mage ‘defector’ who had come to Li’o seeking asylum. This was only a spark; the role of still mages within the international community was a topic that had been provided a great deal of fuel and tinder over the years.

Uther sided with those in favor of cooperation, which effectively pitted him against the people keeping the blood mage under their protection. It had been Uther who had reformed Quills and Blood essentially from the ground up, making it into a juggernaut of power within a few short years, and so his role in the conflict was set from the beginning. When all was said and done, the inner circle of opposition had been either killed or subdued, and the rogue blood mage was turned back over to Quills and Blood, where he was summarily executed (those being somewhat uncivilized days by modern standards). - Chapter 142: Sound and Silence
14. ↑ Even given the above variety of blood seen in the mortal species, the average blood mage cares most about where that blood falls along the five factors of alignment, which is a categorization system established by the Athenaeum of Quills and Blood in 17 FE in the wake of the Penndraig reforms. Using complicated methods of study, the athenaeum was able to determine normal ranges for five factor blood typing in almost all of the mortal species, as well as how often individuals of these species fell outside the normal range. If tested for blood type, you will be given a five-letter designation, such as IORUM or LPSEM, though testing is not recommended except in rare circumstances. - Chapter 51: Blood in the Water
15. ↑ [Amaryllis’ Notes: Quills and Blood is my alma mater. I was sent there by my aunt Rosemallow when I was thirteen, then came back to Anglecynn at sixteen. It was an education, certainly, but it was also a way of tucking me away somewhere I wouldn’t interfere with Anglecynn politics until Rosemallow was ready to give me my debut. I learned just enough blood magic to give me an edge in unarmed close combat.] - Worth the Candle: A Brief Description of Aerb - Chapter 2: Athenaeums
16. ↑ “The second thing … I wanted to talk about Lisi.” She took a breath. “We actually went to the Quills and Blood together.” - Chapter 146: Terrors of the Black Age