Quartz 5

Bards and their Colleges

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tagsgeneral, bard-college
aliasesBard Colleges, Organization-Bard Colleges

3 min read

Bards and their Colleges

Bards are the artists of magic - those who reach the old power not through study or blood, but through song, art, and self-expression. Their craft was the first to rediscover magic after the Collapse, and the many colleges that grew from it each interpret that craft in their own way.

The First Song

The art of the bards was born in the early days of the Peasant Uprising in Clairnia - the war later remembered as the War of Freedom, or the Watchers War. Fourteen years into that hopeless struggle, a young nurse named Fontina sang a new song of hers to a wounded soldier in the medicine tent. By the song’s end, the soldier was healed.

That day, called The Melodious, marks the return of magic to the world. Through Fontina - known ever after as the First Bard - and her students, the old magic was found again, reached now through performance and emotion. It was only some eighty years later that the merchant Mauran, with the help of one of Fontina’s students, learned to touch magic without song, and so became the first Wizard.

Fontina’s Five Students

Fontina took five students, and each found their own way into the magic she had discovered - and each founded a college:

  • College of Lore - founded by Mordan the Recorder, a writer of Loreshia who came to magic through knowledge, history, and story. Green-cloaked, seated in the deserts of Jaknia.
  • College of Glamour - founded by Elana the Fair, a Clairnian art collector who stumbled into the Feywyld and sought to capture hearts as it had captured hers. Purple-cloaked, in the jungles of Clairnia.
  • College of Swords - founded by Pepra, a battle-worn Dendulra of a northern tribe, who found her voice in the art of battle itself. Orange-cloaked, of the Lexalian Republic.
  • College of Eloquence - founded by Mizan the Well-Spoken, quick-witted and sharp-tongued, who held the word itself to carry more weight than the melody. White-cloaked, of the Holy Theocracy.
  • College of Whispers - founded by Dinar, Fontina’s quiet favorite and the last to leave, whose art became the retrieval of secrets. Cloakless, and - over Fontina’s protests - devoted to espionage and intrigue.

It is said that Dinar’s departure caused Fontina to cease teaching; her whereabouts were lost, and none know what became of her.

The Later Colleges

Not long after, blue-cloaked bards of heroism and glory appeared, claiming no place of their own - only that they followed the college that rose from the very first songs Fontina ever sang, the College of Valor. The colleges that came later did not descend directly from Fontina, yet all share her central idea: to grasp the strands of magic through expression and emotion.

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