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  1. Dani and Good Coyote; "1. This is a case where the mechanics themselves suggest the answer to the question: you come into the game 2% more likely than you would otherwise be to fall under scrutiny at any given time. It reflects the fairly simple truth that you were associated with a fairly suspect institution... but you left it at age 11 or earlier. People are a little bit wary of you, but the assumption is that you didn't learn anything too dangerous. Engaging in Purple Academy-themed activities later in your academic career might change that balance, though. 1.5. In the long term? If you don't get into any future trouble, it will probably be assumed that your time at the Academagia taught you the error of your ways (or your parents/guardians/tutors' ways, more to the point). Though there are certainly some courts out there where even a hint of childhood association might inspire dark whispers. 2. In the general population, saying you went there would probably just inspire confusion - and maybe a bit of unease. The glory days of the Purple Academy were centuries ago, and it was officially shut down; most people probably aren't aware that it was reopened, given that its current scale is quite small. That said, the Purple Academy of old is largely remembered for collars of enslavement and various sinister kinds of enchanted chains. It's not presented as the big bad guy in folk tales, but it's the mysterious place where tyrants would go to get magical equipment to dominate the local peasantry. (Now, are these folk tales good history? No, not really - if only because the old Purple Academy and its graduates didn't really have a lot of time for venal lordlings.) If you go around bragging that, actually, you were a student there, a reasonable subset of the population is going to assume that you're not really suited for polite company. 3. Why would Highborn Royals send their kids to the school? Because it's actually quite good! Combining enchantment and astrology is just not easily done, and the modern Purple Academy has tricks that even Vernin would envy. Moreover, the whole reason the school was allowed to be reconstituted is that it did so under the auspices of the Von Hengst family, and their history of fighting against Mastery mages is absolutely impeccable - and they have more than a few drops of royal blood in their veins as well. If your family has blood ties to the current Headmaster, Sarabine Von Hengst, then sending a child there for tutoring for a season or two before going to Mineta would be a sign of political support as much as anything else. You might then ask, how does that square up with the Purple Academy as we experienced it in the story? The sinister, shadowy version that seems to call back to the bad old days? We would then chuckle knowingly and change the subject. ... How's the weather in your part of Elumia? 4. [Redacted] 5. That's really subjective. We can't really say that being the Black Sheep of a Family Descended from Traitors (or maybe Descended from Heroes?) with an extra dose of Prodigy: Bad Luck Magnet is the worst of all combinations, but we would find it a pretty complicated life to live. Especially if your Familiar is a rock. In terms of a happier narrative, We'd lean towards following up Black Sheep with having been a page, or having been apprenticed to a local wizard - something that implies that you made a different kind of home for yourself once the bridges with your starter family were burned. 6. Rock salt is fairly common, as it happens - ironically enough, there's reason to believe that a significant percentage of the landmasses on which humanity now dwells were underwater for extended periods of time in an age before the world got ripped apart. There are also alchemical specialists who extract particles of sea salt from the general atmosphere; sea-level magical volatility ensures that there's a fair amount of salty vapor getting blasted upwards pretty much constantly. All that said, Mineta certainly consumes more salt than it locally produces, and it imports from various sources to the north. (Durand's family controls a salt mine or two.) 7. Debtors' prisons and workhouses, per se, aren't as common in the Renaglian-speaking territories as they are further north, but there are debtors who've been put to work in the Isola Triste (formerly a wizard's fortress and now the Captain's very own prison, not too far from Mineta proper) and in the surrounding farms. You also sometimes see them clearing roads or improving existing ones; maintaining ease of non-magical transport is one of the Captain's minor obsessions."
    2 points
  2. Dani; "We can't believe we capitalized "von." Anyway, yes, the von Hengst family is originally from Staade, Vilocian is Sarabine's first language, and a royal from Staade could well be related. And the family - or a branch of it, rather - was given control of the region in which the Purple Academy now resides precisely because of their anti-Mastery credentials. The von Hengsts led a company of wizard-adventurers/mercenaries that secured a degree of peace in the region a generation or so ago, and they were granted local titles and a decent chunk of land in exchange for continued service. (That's not to say that they were unfamiliar with the place even then - von Hengsts were involved in the siege that broke the original Purple Academy. They've historically been a very active campaigning house.)"
    1 point
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