Silver Spruce - Reference Librarian and Junior Instructor at Athene Magical College

Age: 25

Height: 7’0”

Weight: 273 lbs.

Appearance: Silver Spruce is a silver fox woman. The claws on her small hands are dark and well-maintained. Her fur is well-groomed and shiny. It is almost night-black in places. Large thin-framed glasses sit on the pointed tip of her muzzle. Fur covers every part of her, including a long bottle brush tail that moves expressively as her mood shifts.

She habitually wears conservative clothing, yet it stretches tight around her breasts and hips. She favors skirts, heels, and minimal accessory adornment.

Body Type: Curves, just, curves everywhere.

Style: Academic, Curious, withdrawn about sexual matters, secretly vivacious and eager.

History

Spruce came from upper class parents - the only child of two fox-morphs. Keilah Spruce (nee O’Donnell) was a skilled seamstress and an even better dancer. She met Isaac Spruce in a pub while he visited on business. He visited more and more often. There were fights, there were recriminations. They took some wonderful vacations and bought the little country cottage. Keilah opened a local clothing store and did well for herself. A daughter came along, eight years in. Her childhood was split between their country estate and a beautiful house in the city. Summers in the tiny village of Caller’s Crossing where Keilah was originally from, the rest of the year in Dublin. Her father spent some time overseas, during which her mother had a health scare.

It resolved itself, and Spruce learned a lot about alchemy during that summer. Though, she would forget it until much later.

At the age of sixteen - the day after her birthday, in fact - her parents divorced. There was never a satisfactory explanation given. They opted for joint custody. They made it work. They considered getting back together quite a few times. More fights, more crying, but Spruce never felt unloved.

At 18 she went to college and spent time with her father, on the west coast of America. But she always returned to Caller’s Crossing in summer. Graduating with her alchemy and potions certification from night classes, and a master’s in education 6 years later, Spruce finally left academia aged 24 and... promptly applied to a different university. Athene Magical College was set in the side of a hill. It had a rich history. It was part of a larger school that taught engineering and chemistry and there was even a medical school. It had a fledgling alchemy department. That was her way in.

When the fox first came to the school, she was overqualified for the assistant librarian position. After a number of contract arguments, the head librarian and the alchemy instructor were among the financial casualties. Spruce volunteered to take up the slack, and demonstrated her qualifications in a number of ever more difficult tests.

Now she works as the reference and research librarian at Athene Magical College, as well as teaching Introductory Alchemy and Basic Magical Methods.

On the one hand, the faculty rankled at a relative upstart with only a bachelor’s degree in magical fields being counted among them. On the other paw, she volunteers to do everything they hate doing - and does it well and quickly.

Personality

Long-suffering and intolerant of low effort, Spruce nonetheless has a patient attitude toward missteps in learning. She volunteers time for students having trouble with the material, and works tirelessly on making lessons accessible. She holds strong opinions about the proper practice of Artifice Magic. Easy to approach, but serious enough that people do not talk to her much outside of a school setting. Although, she has recently become slightly more playful, likely owing to the company of her perennial companion and faculty black sheep Aine Duana.

Intellectual, passionate about her interests, involved in faculty politics. She coordinates programs and runs the library sciences facility with a stark sense of propriety. Spruce is uncomfortable outside her areas of expertise, and can become easily flustered or embarassed if she is not one hundred percent in control of the conversation.

As the youngest faculty member, she takes an appropriately deferential tone with the other instructors. Except the Head of Acquisitions.

Her romantic life is a relative unknown, though she would be the first to note that she and her draconic friend are NOT involved.

Skills and Abilities

Artifice Magic: Master Class

Library, Indexing, Research Skills: Master Class

Nature Magic: Initiate Level

Calling: Apprentice Level (just enough knowledge to be dangerous)

Credentials

Alchemy Certification

Potion License

Master’s Degree in Education

Bachelor’s Degree in Aether Theory

Other Information

Musical Taste: She won’t seek it out, but if someone else is playing music she will sing along. When a song gets stuck in her head, she hums it for days. She prefers podcasts for her working background noise. At double speed.

Childhood: No romances, lots of books, a brief stint as a runaway.

Spellcasting Style: Traditional. Some unnecessary flourishes because people have always done it that way. Uncomfortable with nature magic, but working hard to be better at it. Uncomfortable with Calling, Wish Magic, and Thaumic Investment - and has decided to stay away from them. She can reproduce movements and diagrams perfectly at all times, and loves multi-purpose spellcasting tools.

Nicknames: Pretends not to notice when Andi calls her by nicknames, secretly hates it.



Aine Duana

Age: 27

Height: 5’7.5”

Weight: 113 lbs.

Appearance: Aine Duana claims obvious draconic heritage. Long scaled tail, brown-red scales all over her body in fact. She has long dark hair and full lips. Her breasts are barely-there on an almost completely flat chest. Her curved hips and sizable butt make for an interesting contrast. Certain features belie a claim of pure dragon heritage - notably her ability to shapeshift, retract her claws, and conceal or reveal the swept-back ram like horns on top of her head. She has a pair of tattered wings and claws on her scaled feet as well.

Her body temperature is naturally very high. Accordingly she wears summer clothing in all seasons. The dragon seldom wears shoes. When required to dress up she will sometimes don a suit jacket and a skirt, but is more likely to be found in comfortable breathable fabrics. Seldom skirts, often revealing shorts.

Body Type: Flat up top, bountiful below.

Style: Energetic, inappropriate, enthusiastic. Secretly calm, calculating and reflective.

History

Born in a small rural village, Aine Duana spent her entire childhood in that constellation of small villages and slightly larger rural hubs. There was a magic school there, but it only taught one thing. There was no father in the picture, but it was neve a big problem. Mom was there, and Mom was more than enough.

Stable as earth, graceful as air- Rhoswen Duana was the local Healer. In a place where only Calling was ever taught, Rhoswen was much in demand. You didn’t want to conjure a healing goddess for every little wound, and Calling was expensive. Not that the  sometimes you wanted a poultice and a kind word. Aine’s mother was born with pure white scales to human and draconic parents. She would never tell any of her daughters about their fathers.

Rhoswen had seven daughters, one a year from age 21 to 28. Dragon pregnancies are shorter and safer, so this was no issue. There was only one with her snow white scales, two reds, a green, a blue, a gold-hued beauty who was the oldest, and the youngest was a deep red-brown typically unseen in Welsh and Irish dragons. The fathers left. Some were alive, some weren’t, but they all meant well and left only because they had to.

Healing left them with enough food on the table, and always plenty to do, but the three story house got a bit crowded. Eventually Andi took to sneaking out and vanishing for a bit of peace and quiet.

She wanted to succeed her mother as healer - since her sisters had little interest in magic - but a genetic condition prevented the youngest dragon from casting any magic at all. She settled for doing well enough in school to pass, then playing hooky at the local magic shops. Her aunt and uncle lived out in the countryside and worked in magical fields as well, so she was immersed from a young age in a sense that her inability to cast was somehow abnormal.

Eventually, Andi found out who her father was. Eventually, she discovered at least one kind of magic she could do. She used it to help someone fix their bike, to help someone make a better potion, even to let herself use another type of magic. Then she took some of those back.

Aine spent some time as an orphan, briefly, along with her sisters. Then she wasn’t. Her habit of getting out of town became a habit of getting out of the dimension entirely. By the time she was an adult, Andi had become a seasoned otherworldly dungeoneer and had returned with numerous magical artifacts she had no idea how to use. She knew she liked hunting them down, and that it was time for a change of scenery. A tearful farewell, some promises to visit, and Andi set off for America.

Looking up an old acquaintance she was sure would not remember her, the dragon went to Athene Magical College and applied for a job. She flunked the magic exam until Spruce agreed to re-administer it, exasperated at the weepy pleas of the forward young woman who had walked in and demanded a job.

This time Andi passed, to the fox’s surprise. Alright. Job. Temporary. Probationary.

The number of saleable and useable proprietary finds brought to the university has more than earned her a permanent position, but it also means Spruce at least has to put up with her. It is in the job description now.

Personality

When she is uncomfortable, Andi works hard to make other people even more so. She dresses in skimpy clothing and will discomfit with lust or aggression as her first power play when threatened. She is otherwise amiable enough. Hedonistic - lover of baths and rich food and time to think - she nonetheless has no trouble roughing it when the need arises. She’ll just grumble and dive for creature comforts as soon as they become available. If found in the right mood, she is known to teach the same meditation that calmed down her wild side as an unruly teen.

With a sense of responsibility and a code of rigid promise-keeping, she uses her carefree attitude as a smokescreen to keep people at a distance.

She is a romantic. Though she often uses flirtation as a tool, she would be thrown off guard if someone flirted back at her in response. She loves getting a rise out of people when they make it obvious that it is possible.

Skills and Abilities

Wish Magic: Master Class

Calling Magic: Genetically Vulnerable.

All Other Magic: Genetically Incapable

Investigative and minor medical experience.

Knowledge of field and herbal remedies, and which ones work.

Considerable survival experience.

Can sense magic in all forms, and observe it without tools. Usually can’t do anything about it.

Credentials

Magical: License to use wish magic with quite a few caveats. Claims to have a hand written and notarized card from the Licensing Office which says “Don’t Make Us Regret This”.

Academic: Unspecified degree. If asked she will say she “went all the way”.

St. John’s Ambulance First Aid Course

Other Information

Musical Taste: Everything and anything and she’ll tell you all about it at length.

Childhood: Too many romances, not enough books, a brief stint as an orphan.

Spellcasting Style: Sloppy. Lazy. Worried. Anxious. Trying to hide it. No tradtiional training.

Nicknames: Pretends not to notice when Spruce calls her by her full name, secretly hates it.

Athene Magical College

History:

The Athene tradition began in a cave on a certain inhabited island bordering the Aegean sea. When local children manifested magical ability, they would be sent up the hill to a certain cave, with an offering of fresh local food they’d gathered themselves. The red-haired middle-aged wizard in the cave limped and grumbled and fussed. Though in his early thirties, he already griped like an older man. He only went down into town twice a month.

When the child came to his cave, he’d yell at them for trespassing, scaring the children half to death. When the hermit saw this, the weeping cringe, the desire to run away- he would feel a pang of regret. He’s never admitted it, amid the bluster, but then he’d make them a meal. Their parents would watch from the base of the hill, hidden in a stand of trees, giggling to themselves and waiting for the shout of surprise.

He’d ask them if they knew any magic, and the two would share fried fish and fresh local vegetables. They’d tell him about whatever troubled them - fire starting, soaking the cat when it tipped something over, a bit of gentle earth rumbling during a baseball game. He would talk. He’d ask what had been bothering them. He’d make sure they were okay. He’d tell them to come back, now and then. He’d give them a book, an assignment, a letter of recommendation if they were older and interested and he didn’t think they’d get bored.

Children always looked a little shamefaced, because they felt like they shouldn’t have done whatever accidental magic landed them in the cave.

Then came the scripted part.

“But Mister, how do I get good at magic?” Girl and boy alike asked and asked, with the phrasing just so.

He’d tell them the same thing, every time:

“You’re lucky. But lots of people are lucky. You’re smart, but even I’m smart. Magic comes in all kinds. Be good. Try being good. You’re impatient, you’re headstrong, you yell, you cry. But you’ve been kind and shared a meal with someone you don’t know. You are more than your mistakes, but you still make them.”

The man would wrap up a portion of the food for the child’s family, and hand it to them at this point.

“Good for you. Now go tell people that’s okay, and start with yourself. Okay to cry and rage and throw a pot now and then. But under it all, be good. Good for yourself, and good for people. I’d give up my magic to be a better cook. Find something you’d give up magic to be good at, and then you’ll be good. And good at magic.”

“I don’t know about that,” the child would say. The man would smile, in his knowing way, and the child would leave.

This only happened now and then, when a child came of age to accidentally do magic.

But when the man came to town for ingredients and sundries, he’d have a smile on his face for weeks after such a visit.

Eventually the village grew, and there were so many children visiting him that the smile was more or less permanent, and he was nearing forty years in age. The smile and positive outlook made him look quite handsome. He took a wife around then - a minstrel his age with flowing blonde hair and many laugh lines. Eschewing the cave, she built a small hut next to it overlooking the sea.

“A cave is no place to do your knitting,” she said. “Nor keep your cats - they need heat and hearth and so too do I.”

Happiness is built on compromise. Hermit he may be, but he understood and began to sleep in the house. But he still never went to town but twice a month.

The two never had children, but they gardened and lived together in their little enclave on the hill. In time, his wife’s sister had a boy. When the boy turned twelve, he walked into the cave with a sack of local produce and a fish he caught himself. The hermit, now over fifty, was standing there. His wife watched the boy walk in with every sign of pride, as she tended their bean crop.

The hermit and the little black haired boy talked about why he was there. The boy had teleported. That was difficult magic. So the old man asked him what happened, and why. It turned out the boy had left his school’s gym class and showed up on the roof in the blink of an eye. Some more questioning, a good meal between them. There were a lot of dire warnings, things the boy would have to keep in mind because:

“You have the gift of the Wish,” said the man.

“Oh,” said the boy.

They talked for some time, and the man spoke as honestly as he could. At the end, it came time for the ritual exchange.

“I don’t know about that,” the boy said - ending their exchange. But he continued: “But mom always wants to see you, and Aunt Grace is sad you never come down and she doesn’t tell you and mom said not to say and...”

The boy thought about wishing magic, he thought about the warnings, he thought about the hermit and the sad look on his face.

“I wish I could trade my magic so you’d come cook-”

But the mage was faster. The boy didn’t get time to complete the wish before a calloused hand was clamped over his mouth.

“Shhh, okay, lad, okay.”

When they had negotiated a ceasefire, the boy stopped wishing and the mage removed his hand. He knew what the boy was going to say. He’d seen it, the lad wanted to get rid of his burden.

But he’d awakened another burden in the hermit’s heart, and his question only highlighted it:

“Mister, why are you crying?”

“I’ve wasted time,” said the man, between racking sobs that belied long years of stoic and grumpy good humour. Cradling the boy against him and trying to hide his face, the hermit just shook.

“You can be good, though, right? Be good at the things you don’t do.”

“Yes,” the man said while wiping his face dry on one long robe sleeve.

“We’re both more than our mistakes. Tell your mother I’ll be by for dinner.”

~~~

The man opened a little cafe in town. He named it after a creature known for transformations.

The villagers were slightly confused and dismayed, but the ritual barely changed. Now children had to march into his cavernous and sparkling kitchen, past the chickens in the yard and his wife in her sun hat. Now they had to go somewhere scarier than a mere cave.

He grew huge bushy eyebrows, but kept his red hair. He still walked with a limp, as he had since he was quite a young man. His wife played guitar and piano out front, and went finding glass on the beaches. Life was good.

Then some of the children came back, now grown. A whole group of them who had left for one of the large magical academies in America. They’d had no luck at magic academies overseas, their credentials weren’t recognized even with his letter of recommendation. They wanted him to teach them, but they also needed a license to get a job.

“Grace, I think we should go across and see how your nephew is doing in America.”

~~~

A 57 year old greek exhermit, his wife, and his sister in law moved to the east coast of America about fifty years ago. It was hard, but he was convincing and peerless. The “children” now in their thirties became the first faculty, and he brought an old kind of nature and artifice magic to the west coast. Calling was much in vogue, and so it was difficult to get a foothold.

The particular exploits of that family are best found in the college’s history archives, but eventually they got started.

To this day, any child who shows up at the college with a bushel of food and “the right temperament” will be assessed, placed, and potentially offered a future scholarship. That isn’t the only tradition to have survived.

Campus: A set of three building on a sideroad of a much larger university, it is home to a fountain plaza and a magical library separate from the main university branch.

Tuition is about 40 percent higher than an equivalent non-magic bachelor’s degree, and courses are highly varied.

A cooperative program with the medical faculty has recently opened. A more venerable cooperative with the Engineering faculty has been going for years.

Considered an upstart next to the Calling academies, Athene has a rich history and attracts an eccentric clientele. Tailored academic programs and mature students returning to education are not unusual. Its reputation as a party school is not entirely undeserved, but its unconventional ways also attract a few strange and useful prodigies.

Student Population: 400, give or take. Numbers are on the rise.

Yearly Budget: 17 percent of campus’ operating budget

Disciplines Taught: Nature Magic, Artifice

Disciplines Under Consideration: Wish Magic (Limited Tutorials Only)

Disciplines Banned: Vows, Calling/Summoning, Thaumic Investment