Athenaeum of Keys and Cloaks

When the Riaj Delta would flood, the farmers needed somewhere to go and something to do. Their god-king commanded them to work for him, building immense structures that would stand the tests of time and secure for him a legacy. It was during one of these great constructions that a curiosity of the place was discovered, one which warped time for those who stepped within. The effect was small, amounting to no more than a quarter hour lost in a day, but the god-king saw some promise, and in later constructions, made attempts to manipulate this phenomenon. Over several generations, a scholar class arose, one which was dedicated to the mysteries of how these buildings might manipulate time. Progress was slow, given the size of the constructions, but the state of the art eventually progressed to the point where a single sand scholar, working with a team of just a hundred men, could create a structure that would manipulate time for useful purpose, rather than just as a curiosity.

At the same time, very close by, a group of desert nomads were further developing air magic, which they had been using in minor ways for millenia. The nomads built skiffs from wood with sails of hide, which an experienced air mage could use to cross the desert, saving (but not quite eliminating) the labor involved in transportation. The developments allowed for greater utility, keeping people cool during the day and warm at night, though there were hard limits to how much an air mage could achieve, given both the inherent limits of the magic, and the fact that they came one or two to a group, with little cross-pollination or independent study.

In roughly 2,000 BE, the god-king of the Riaj Delta formed an institution of learning, one which had a primary focus on sand magic, but secondary focus on other arts. Because of their close proximity, and claims to governance by the god-king, a number of nomads were brought in, and study of air magic was begun in earnest, though it was always a difficult magic to learn, with uses so niche that it was almost always better to find some other solution that didn’t require the magic. Together, the two magics allowed something useful, as an air mage could allow a time chamber to stay habitable for much longer than it otherwise would.

By the time of Uther Penndraig, the Crooked Citadel was the most powerful force in the region, with the tendrils out into every nearby kingdom, and numerous time chambers of various abilities accruing power. The Citadel had been a late entrant to the Mage’s Agreement, but with Uther’s arrival, became one of the first converts to the athenaeum system, largely because of the leadership’s fear that they would be left behind, or that their techniques would be stolen.

The newly minted athenaeum took the name of Keys and Cloaks, the former a symbol of the sand mages, who still dealt almost exclusively in large buildings, the latter the attire of an air mage, who uses their cloak to help feel the winds.

In the modern day, the Citadel is among the weakest and smallest of the athenaeums, owing mostly to the niche applications of both its component magics. Much of the Citadel’s power comes not from its workforce (as is the case with many of the other athenaeums), but from the multitude of time chambers and other structures built over the past few hundred years, which have many industrial uses.