Shatterspire
[mod edit: this spire is no longer a going concern, please do not ask to join!]
45 miles south-southeast of Elos, atop a storm-lashed and distressingly forested clifftop, the Spire of Shattered Art Reforged is the third spire on this site. The first one sank into a swamp^H^H^H was destroyed by rampaging Spring magic. The second one burned down, fell over and THEN sank into a^H^H^H was burned by Emperor Nicovar. But the third one has stayed for these past ten years, and this one looks like a keeper. It’s a research establishment really, or it started that way, a bunch of crazies living in the upper levels of a clifftop spire that actively tries to kill anyone who lives there, where you can’t really do much below the treeline because of the omnivorous trees, where the cress seed you grow on your windowsill will sprout legs and come for you in the night. The spire was envisaged a hothouse for Spring research, and its mana sites are spectacularly productive, but certainly for the first few years there was basically nothing else - like a more permanent version of a field trip.
Then the population started growing. People started moving there as a fresh start - it’s got what you might consider a pioneer atmosphere - it’s possibly the Urizeni equivalent of a Wild West frontier town, a tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone else, except that no frontier town was ever bound together with such an oath of loyalty. And it seems to breed and attract strong personalities and strong minds, the kind of person who sees a young spire as an opportunity, a stepping stone on the path to power, a place to stand and place a lever to move the world. The recent change in Arbiter - and from a Seer to a Mage, at that - has thrown a new kind of energy into the spire, and the political connections forged by the spire’s delegates to Anvil have transformed the spire’s economy.
Magically, the spire is a recognised centre for Spring studies, but there has been a strong insistence by both the outgoing and the incoming Arbiter that a proper Urizeni education includes at least enough of the lore of Day to understand the conversation at dinner.
Fiction (cw: hygeine paranoia and (brief mention of) suicide)
empirefiction.livejournal.com/178142.html
Vital statistics:
Province: Redoubt
Symbol: Mawrig and Evrom runes just touching one another, in green on a tan background.
Delegation to Anvil: 6
Imperial Positions: 2
Specialities: Celestial Arch matters, Spring magic, scrying