Taqadum School of Technomancy

Few institutions in Shal’Azura could claim so flamboyant a birthright as the Taqadum School of Technomancy, the youngest and most restive of the city’s three magical academies. Its campus, on the sun-lanced plateau of Warda District at the intersection of the Min Althalatha, was a living testament to the marriage of utility and excess, a testament that neither tradition nor reason could ever fully domesticate. Its halls and lecture theaters, assembled from quarried grey marble and intricately inlaid basalt, sprawled in a loosely concentric pattern around the Albarq—the school’s crowning tower and, for many who gazed up at its flickering nimbus, the true icon of Taqadum’s spirit.   The building’s outer walls were softened by a riot of gardens and orchards, each plot more ambitious than the last. Vines of bioluminescent melons tangled themselves around transmuted lemon trees, and beds of experimental carnivorous sunflowers snarled at the wayward ankles of undergraduates. At dawn, the whole compound shimmered beneath a roiling haze that was equal parts morning mist and ozone, as if the very air around the school had been chemically altered in a permanent act of academic rebellion. The pathways between classrooms were paved with solar-charged glass tiles that pulsed in rhythm with the ambient magical residue, ensuring that even the most fatigued student would be gently prodded into wakefulness by a mild static shock.   The Albarq itself soared above the rest, a needle of obsidian wrapped in a double helix of copper wire and gold leaf, as if the architects had been dared to render a lightning bolt in metal. It was said that the topmost chamber, the Sommet, was perpetually occupied by some unfortunate postdoc whose dissertation required intimate communion with the storm system swirling just outside the window. For this was the Albarq’s true function: to create and sustain a perfectly scaled atmospheric phenomenon, a personal tempest, chained to the iron will of the Technomancer on duty.   During the days, the storm was a tamed, obedient pet. It provided endless electricity for the city’s ever-sprouting machinery, and powered the school’s notorious “perpetual espresso engine” in the main refectory. On certain nights, however—when the moon was high and the Chancellor’s patience was low—the storm would grow unruly and lash out, gifting the city below with a spectacular if sometimes worrisome display of St. Elmo’s fire. With every forked bolt that shattered against its lightning rods, the Albarq flexed the will of its founders anew.   The energy harvested from these tempests was routed through an elaborate matrix of copper veins embedded in every beam, every lintel, every stairwell handrail and bench. This ceaseless current gave the entire Taqadum School a faint, ever-present hum—at night, it was possible to follow the sound of the building’s own heartbeat, and find oneself shivering in sympathy with the restless spirit of invention that haunted its corridors.   The greenhouses that ringed the Albarq were the second pride of the school’s faculty. Here, in glass domes shrouded in clouds of condensation and alive with the susurrus of tropical growth, a different miracle was underway. Rows upon rows of hybridized grain, genetically coaxed to thrive on the peculiar rainfall generated by their parent tower, produced harvests at a rate that fed not only the city, but even the many remote outposts and oasis towns. The waste water from the storm was filtered, purified, and pumped into the plumbing system of the Bennain Guildhall to fuel the many steam powered engines and apparati that in turn powered the thousands of cooking stations, home appliances and electric lighting systems of Shal’Azura’s citizens, making the Taqadum not only self-sufficient but the benefactor of every neighborhood garden within a mile.   Most days, the gardens belonged to the students, who had no shortage of ways to subvert the school’s intent. They cultivated fruit that glowed in the dark, corn that sang when the wind passed through it, tomatoes that ripened into perfect spheres and floated several inches above their stalks before being harvested. The faculty would grumble and mark up the violations, but the Chancellor—himself a notorious eccentric, with hair permanently charged in a state of thunderous static—was known to be secretly delighted in the irreverence.   Yet for all the pageantry and spectacle, the Taqadum School of Technomancy was also, at its core, a sanctuary for the visionary and the mad. Its research labs turned out as many patentable miracles as they did existential threats to the city’s stability. Within the walls of the Bahara Library, where every book was indexed not only by title and author but by volatility of subject matter, the next generation of Azura’s problem-solvers and troublemakers cut their teeth on the paradoxes of energy and entropy.

The Taqadum School of Technomancy consists of a multitude of different interest groups that are loosely catalogued into the Branch of Protoplasmurgy, the Branch of Biolurgy, and the Branch of Mineralurgy; or as they are more commonly known Arm, Branch, and Vein. Every Branch has a leader, going by the title Ealamon, who is appointed by vote and holds the office for one year. The Rahisun presides above the Ealamon; he sees to administration and funding and represents the school in official matters.

The school's main building is located in the prestigious Warda District of Shal'Azura. As the Branch of Biolurgy provides most of the city's food in its mechanized greenhouses, the school grounds are vast and well maintained. The entire marquesian railway net was invented and built by scholars of the Branch of Mineralurgy, in concert with the artificers of the Bennain Guildhall, and so their workshops are well stacked at all times. The workings of the more reclusive Branch of Protoplasm are not well known to the public, however there are rumors about them working and maintaining the city defenses. The school has many outbuildings in Shal'Azura and also a vast holdings in Wadi Akhdar.