University of North Carolina

**University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill**, also known as **UNC**, is located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It is the main setting for the *Legendborn* *Cycle* series.

## Description

Bree Matthews and Alice Chen are able to attend UNC as high school students through the UNC-Chapel Hill's Early College Program. It's a two year program that allows advanced high school students to earn college credit, experience life in a dorm, and become independent. It's called EC for short. Thirty students are admitted to the program every year. Due to their age, students in EC have extra rules they must follow. For example, getting caught off campus at night is an automatic expulsion. Another requirement is that students must participate in a student activity, excluding sororities and fraternities. While trying to research the Order, Bree discovers that there are five known secret Orders associated with the University: the Gorgons, the Golden Fleece, the Stygians, the Valkyries, and the Round Table. DiPhi is Carolina's student debate society.

The UNC campus is dotted with old-growth trees, low bushes, and Confederate statues. The campus covers seven hundred acres and has about thirty thousand students. The library has massive columns and stone verandas and is open twenty-four hours a day. Bree and Alice's dorm is on the third floor in Old East. It's a beige-yellow brick building with unremarkable identical windows running in rows down its sides. It's almost two hundred and thirty years old, the oldest state university building the country. The Bell Tower is the very center of UNC's campus.

The Arboretum, a botanical garden devoted to trees, is abundant with root energy. The herb garden sign says it's home to more than five hundred species and cultivars. A black granite table is in the middle of a quiet grotto. Underneath the table, bronze figurines representing Black folks reach their hands high to the tabletop as if holding it up. This is the Unsung Founders Memorial. It was a class gift and UNC's way of acknowledging the enslaved and the servants who built the school. It's surrounded by thing ribbons of pale, yellow mage flame. This is where Bree meets Dr. Patricia Hartwood for the first time. The Carolina Club is a fancy event space used by alumni, faculty, and staff in the center of campus. It's where the Order hosts the Selection Gala.

The Old Chapel Hill Cemetery is part green lawn, part wooded preserve, and very beautiful. It feels like a hidden park. When UNC was founded in the late eighteenth century, it began with one building, Old East. Only a few years after it opened a student, a young DiPhi boy, died unexpectedly. He was buried on an empty tract of land. As the campus expanded, the university marked the perimeter of the cemetery with informational placards and a low rock wall built sometime in the early 1800's to separate it from the rest of the ground. The carved headstones at the edge are made of polished, reflective granite and most are simple. There's a courtyard of mausoleums. In the middle are the oldest graves. The cemetery is managed by the town and everyone buried here was associated with the university or town in some way. A wall marked where the segregation begins. All the Black folks are buried in two sections that only have a few stone markers and tombstones despite being filled. There are almost five hundred unmarked graves.

### History

The Shadowborn spread from Europe to the Americas and grew in number alongside the colonies. By the 1700's there was a high concentration of Gates on the East Coast. The founders opened the first Round Table chapter, built the Lodge, then added the school around it. UNC was partially built as an excuse to gather and train eligible Scions. Early College was manufactured fairly recently to bring sixteen-year-old Scions to campus as early as possible so they could live and train near the Gates with the chapter. The Lines are spread out along several historic schools, but the Southern Chapter is the oldest. There are secret tunnels hidden below the campus. The founders knew that the university would need to be a public front, so they dug tunnels for easy movement and caves for storage before the campus was built. They are fail-safes and escape routes. The original Merlins warded them to mask aether so that Shadowborn cannot follow, even aboveground.

## Notable Locations

* The Lodge
* Cave of The Dragon (*ogof y ddraig*)
* **The Arboretum**
* **Old Chapel Hill Cemetery**
* **The South Building**
* **Playmakers Theatre**
* **The Library**
* **Bell Tower**
* **Greenlaw Hall**
* **Little Frat Court**
* **Biltmore House**
* **Old East**
* **The Pit**
* **The Stores**
* **South Road**
* **Campus Y**
* **The Carolina Club**
* **Ehringhaus Hall:** Dorm room
* **Hill Hall:** Music building
* **Lenoir:** Dining hall
* **Polk Place:** The main quad
* **The Old Well:** It's tradition for students to take a drink from the red brick well on the first day of classes for good luck.

## Notable Residents

* Bree Matthews
* Alice Chen
* Nick Davis
* Selwyn Kane
* Charlotte Simpson
* Evan Cooper
* William Sitterson
* Sarah Griffiths
* Victoria Morgan
* Felicity Caldwell
* Peter Hood
* Fitzsimmons Baldwin
* Mariah
* Russ Copeland
* Greer Taylor
* Whitty Whitlock
* Vaughn Schaefer
* Lewis Dunbar
* Spencer Monroe
* Celeste
* Carson
* Blake
* Sydney Hall
* Craig McMahon
* Tucker Johnson
* Ainsley Edwards
* Mina
* Dustin
* Teresa
* Les

## Notable Staff

* Dean McKinnon
* Dr. Patricia Hartwood
* Dr. Martin Davis
* Dr. Christopher Ogren

## Notable Alumni

* Faye Ayeola Carter Matthews
* Natasia Kane
* Ruth Hartwood
* Jonathan Davis
* Anna Rheon
* Stephen Morgan
* Thomas Johnston
* Malcolm MacDonald
* Charles Henry

## Trivia

* Bree is enrolled in classes like Statistics, English 105: Composition and Rhetoric, and Bio 103: Intro to Plants of the Piedmont.
* Nick is enrolled in classes like Genetics 201.
* Alice is enrolled in Classics.
* According to the Order's archives, the Scion of Arthur is drawn to Excalibur's resting place. This is why Faye and Bree both felt drawn to UNC.
* The school colors are blue and white.
* The *DTH* is the school newspaper.
* Tracy Deonn took some liberties with Battle Park and campus geography. She moved the Unsung Founders Memorial, added mausoleums to the cemetery, and renamed the Silent Sam memorial statue the Carr statue.
* There is no Early College program in real life.