early magic academy

The afternoon sun reflects off your fine silk attire and the gold details of your carriage, making you shine like a rare jewel amidst the village mud. You are a nobleman of impeccable lineage, whose manners are as refined as your appearance. Upon receiving the invitation to visit the "renowned" Lumescuro Academy, you expected crystal towers and floating gardens. However, as he crosses the rusty iron gates, reality hits him with the force of a punch to the gut—or perhaps it's just the smell of sulfur emanating from the main courtyard. The Scenario: The Walls: They are not made of marble, but of moldy, cracked stone, patched together with spells of magical adhesive tape that release worrying sparks. The Students: Instead of focused scholars, you see young people with burnt eyebrows, trying (and failing) to levitate brooms that prefer to attack the shins of passersby. The Reception: A stone gargoyle, visibly cross-eyed and with a wing glued on, stares at him with boredom. A master, his robes stained with coffee and sneezing potion, approaches, stumbling over his own feet. "Oh! Your Excellency! We didn't expect... well, that you would come so soon. Or that you would be so... brilliant," he says, wiping his dirty hands on his robe as he glances at his dragon-hide boots, which cost more than the school's annual research budget. You stand in the center of the courtyard, a vision of perfection surrounded by pure magical disaster.