Бытие Aкадемия (Bytiye Boarding Academy)

### Location:

Бытие Академия is located relatively near to the major Russian society of Vladivostok, Russia, and lies not far from the glass beaches of the Ussuri Bay.

### Climate:

While many people think of Russia as being an icy tundra, from the late Spring through the early Autumn, the school's students and faculty enjoy fair weather of 10-21 (50 - 70 F) and pleasantly warm rains throughout the fair season. In the Winter, heavy snows fall, making beautiful scenery but bringing with it biting, cold air.

### Size:

Бытие is a fairly large school due to the fact that its student body spans such a large age range. Students typically begin attendance at the age of 8 and continue until they reach their coming of age at 17. There are variances in how many new students are accepted each year, but the general size of the school typically remains around 800 students.

### History:

In the year of 1550, as the age of the first Russian Czar's began, Бытие Академия was founded by Yuri  Solovyov and Yevgenia Semenova. The two were lifelong friends and created the school in the hopes to provide stable and safe education for young mages Eastern Eurasia as the region faced rapid changes on every front. Among the base subjects of magical education and skills, the two were heavily involved in the arts and divining of the past and present. Solovyov held heavy connections to astronomy and was a leader in expanding the practice of connecting divination to the movements of planets and appearances of constellations from Earth. As Solovyov worked to play divination heavily into the school's curriculum, Semenova supported just as strongly providing students with opportunity to view their skills beyond their specific definitions. Her ways of exploring magic through discussion of its history and use, as well as testing it through artistic endeavors were interwoven with Solovyov's open views of past, present, and future, to create a highly open philosophy for the school and its students to follow when exploring the possibilities and limits of magic.

### Notable Features and Traditions:

One thing heavily supported around the school, is the strength in superstition. All around the schools students abide by these rules and superstitions in the hope of either avoiding long spells of bad luck or bringing good fortune into their days:

* All who reside within the castle will look into a mirror as soon as entering the room. Mirrors are placed in most rooms of the academy. This is done so, so that anyone passing through may look into the mirror to find any deception or cursed doppelgängers about. If the image matches, everything is fine, but if anything is different, particularly the viewer's reflection, curse-breaking must be sought out immediately. The only exception to this rule comes at night. *Never* look into a mirror at night.
* To whistle indoors is to ask for the simplest of bad luck, whether tripping over shoelaces or receiving an undeserving detention.
* When flowers finally bloom in the southeast of Russia, they're quite lovely. Many are gifted bunches of odd numbers of flowers for good luck.
* Finally, and perhaps the most strictly enforced of the school's superstitions is to never pause within a doorway. Stop before, stop after, but never within Бытие Академия may a person stop directly upon a threshold. This is meant to bring about loads of bad luck that spread throughout the perpetrator's family. Faculty and many students themselves scold anyone who slows at their approach to entering the building.

Because of the school's proximity to the Ussuri Bay, famed for its beaches of colorful sea glass, the school holds an event involving the glass itself. The school possesses a massive library in which hundreds of lanterns made of colored glass adorn the cathedral-esque ceilings. At the beginning of the school year, students may begin their collecting of materials and construction of their own lantern for the year. The winter solstice falls upon the last night before students return home for holiday, and so a massive feast is held followed by the hanging of the new year's lanterns. Students are welcome to spend the night in the library beneath the gleaming patterns of the new creations.

## Notable Alumni

* Nola
* Platinum