The Far College: A Prospectus

The Far College's prospectus for the study of relic-reading, in the proud register of an institution selling itself — fee schedule and survival rate given the same matter-of-fact treatment.

You come to the reading-hall because you have heard, correctly, that there is a trade in the Vale that pays better than smithing and asks less of your back than salvage does on its own. That much is true. What it leaves out is where the pay comes from: putting your hands where a dead empire's engineers meant no living hand to go, on purpose, over and over, until you can do it without dying of it. That is the craft we teach, and this is the prospectus for it. The reading-hall sits on the town square for a reason. Walk in on any morning the lamps are lit and you will find the tables covered in Imperium bronze — cracked instruments, sighting-glasses, a fitting still crusted green from whatever vault it came out of — and a dozen Readers bent over them, not praying, measuring. The Far College does not train you to fear Old Work, and it does not train you to worship it either. It trains you to read it: to still your own hurry, learn the grain of four-hundred-year metal under your fingers and a tuned glass, and find the exact moment a warded seam wants to be pushed rather than forced. Two generations ago that skill did not exist anywhere in the Vale. A Listener held her hands and her breath still enough, long enough, to open a sealed working that had already killed or maimed everyone who had gone at it faster than she did, and she did not have to fight the thing to do it. She was not braver than the salvors who came before her. She was stiller. We have taught the same discipline to ordinary hands ever since, and we will teach it to yours, provided you can hold them steady and pay the fee. Course of Study The First Term is instruction only — the reading-hall, the sighting-glass, the theory of the grain, and enough Alteration to know what you are looking at before you touch it. No live reading is attempted, whatever a First Term student may tell you at the tavern. The Second Term introduces Destruction and Conjuration under close supervision, worked on decommissioned pieces the College keeps for exactly this purpose. You will break several of them badly. That is what they are for, and no fee attaches to breaking one. The Practicum is your first reading of a live sealed working, in the field, at a Master Restorer's shoulder. This is the term where the College's instruction and the trade's actual danger meet for the first time, and the College does not soften that meeting for anyone, regardless of how well they did in the Second Term. Beyond the Practicum lies the deep-reading rite, offered only to those the College judges ready for it and not counted as part of the ordinary course of study. What that rite costs and what it asks are explained in person, to the few it is offered to, when it is offered, and not in a pamphlet handed to every applicant at the door. Terms and Fees The First Term: six crowns. Hall attendance and instrument loan against deposit are included. The Second Term: eleven crowns. Kit is not included; a Fitter's kit may be purchased through the College at cost, which is less than the market and more than we'd like. The Practicum: eighteen crowns, plus a bond of twelve crowns, returned in full to any student who completes it. One entrant in eleven does not complete the Practicum. The College regards this as a considerable improvement on independent salvage, where the trade's own reckoning puts the figure nearer one in four, and it publishes the number here, beside the fee, for exactly that reason: a prospective Reader should be able to weigh the cost of the craft the same way they weigh the cost of the term — plainly, and before signing rather than after. Lodging, for those who come from outside Vallenfield, may be arranged through the hall at a fair weekly rate; several Second Term students share rooms and split it further, which the College neither encourages nor forbids. On What We Are Not The College does not sell charms. It does not read futures, bless caravans, or lift curses said to sit on a particular relic — if such a curse is real, and the College's Censors keep a short list of findings that suggest at least a few are, that is a question for the deep-reading rite, not the reading-hall floor. Nor is the College a temple. We do not ask what you believe about why the Vale keeps failing, only whether you can hold a sighting-glass steady for the length of a working, and whether six crowns is within your reach. Admission requires no letter and no house name. It requires steady hands, which are tested at interview, and the fee for the First Term, which is not waived. Apply at the reading-hall counter, any morning the lamps are lit.

This world ships in Valenfeld. Wishlist on Steam →