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The Orinas Colors Academy

by AntiVehicleRocket

"The subject of today's experimentation will be the gradation between orange and red and the sub-spectrum within it. Observe carefully..."

-- Orinas Vona, to her students

"It teaches you a lot about art, of course, but what it really teaches you to do is to see."

-- Saker Marlin of the Rainbow Spire

The Orinas Colors Academy is one of Nexus's most well-regarded and prestigious artistic and crafts academies. Located in the bustle of the Dancing Plaza near the center of the Nexus district, the Academy resides in a huge building, architecturally austere but covered with intricately-patterned and vibrantly colorful mosaics. The interior of the building is very similar, with virtually every wall, door, and floor covered in bright mosaics, murals, paintings, and tapestries, all exceedingly skillful and tasteful. Some say that the Academy itself is its own finest work of visual art, and they are not far wrong.

Within the Academy's walls, its carefully-picked student body are instructed in a wide spectrum of artistic lore and technique. The Academy's students are all talented in visual art or craft, picked by the leaders of the school from a perennially-large applicant pool; the student body is diverse in culture and socioeconomic class, as the Academy's admissions decisions are entirely based on merit, and thus talented students from all over Creation are housed together in the Academy's sleeping quarters and learn each other's artistic traditions and the Academy's teachings side by side. (One of the strangest results of this has been the Cinnabar Chalk Initiative, initially spearheaded by a coalition made up of a Whitewall merchant heiress, an unExalted Ledaal, and a native of Nighthammer.) The Academy's full tuition rate is quite exorbitant, but talented students from the lower classes often receive scholarships, and the administration of the Academy is dedicated to not having any talented applicant be unable to attend strictly because of money troubles. The curriculum is broad and strenuous, focused on a diverse range of visual arts and crafts but particularly focused on color. The name of the Orinas Colors Academy derives from this particular focus, and graduates are renowned for their insights into color and the vibrant palettes typical of their work. The graduation rate hovers between 70 and 80 % -- relatively high, given that the school is infamously demanding and difficult and that tales of Orinas Colors Academy students going mad or committing suicide are not uncommon. Graduates generally have no difficulty finding prestigious artistic positions, and many graduates make up the artistic elite of the Scavenger Lands; among the most successful recent graduates are Saker Marlin, heir to the Rainbow Spire, and the renowned portrait painter Six Radiant Stars.

The headmaster of the Orinas Colors Academy is Orinas Verken, an outcaste Water-aspected Dragon-Blooded who came to Nexus from an obscure Scavenger Lands kingdom to seek his fortune and established the Academy nearly 400 years ago. Verken is almost 500 years old, ancient even by the standards of Terrestrial Exalted, and has been ailing in recent years; although he has used his potent command of sorcery to extend his life, he knows that he cannot lead the school much longer and is seeking an heir from his extended family, who make up the majority of the Academy's teaching staff. His current favorite is his great-granddaughter Orinas Vona, also a Water-aspect and a talented artist and sorcerer in her own right; at a relatively-young 55, Vona would be able to lead the Academy for centuries more, and Verken is expected to offer her his position within a few years. Although a great number of the Orinas family are artists and instructors under the Academy's aegis, some have used the Academy's connections to acquire lucrative artistic patrons elsewhere, and the senior Dragon-Blooded of the house are known to have other business interests to supplement the Academy's tuition income. The relatively high rate of Dragon-Blooded births in the Orinas family has allowed the Orinas Colors Academy to educate those of its students with command of their Essence in thaumaturgic and even sorcerous artistic techniques.

Rumors

• The students and instructors of the Orinas Colors Academy have developed an alchemical treatment for the eyes, composed of extracts of keening iris and other unsavory ingredients, that deepens the user's perception of color. While this treatment is popular among students, its habitual use can lead to a deep and terrible madness.
• Orinas Verken long ago brokered a deal with the Fair Folk nobility, and the entire school stinks with Wyld energy; the Fair Folk feed off of the artistic energies of the student body and occasionally take the most talented (or most broken by madness) for their own, and in return the Orinas family are granted inspiration and glamour to fuel their own fame. Some even say that the Orinas family line has been tainted by Fair Folk blood and that some small number of the students are themselves changelings, sent there by their wicked parents to learn to be better playthings.

Secret

• "Orinas Verken" is in fact Iselsi Manoton Vasilo, perhaps the last surviving member of that doomed line, and fled the Realm to escape the attempted coup and the massacre that followed. The entire Orinas line is an offshoot of House Iselsi, and while they are not often called on by their House for service, they still pay fealty to it and grant its favors when requested.

Comments

Hehe :) Is Iselsi Manoton Vasilo any relation to Iselsi Hosil, by chance? And does he owe them a pair of armguards? :) DS

I'm not sure how much this matters, but you have more than four links here and you're only supposed to have up to four ... wow, you actually have four unwritten links alone. I admire the encouragement of creativity, but I'm not sure it's a good idea to proliferate so fast. These projects have a way of getting unwieldy very quickly.
~ Shataina

That's fair -- just killed the link to keening iris, then. I was unaware that that was considered BadForm and will note it in future. Apologies. -- AntiVehicleRocket