Spiral Academy

One of the four Great Academies of the Scarlet Empire, the Spiral Academy is the birthplace of bureaucrats, satraps, ministers and all manner of those who keep the Thousand Scales in smooth, seamless operation. Though it is physically the smallest of the Academies, it boasts one of the largest student bodies, boasting up to 250 students at any one time, and usually filled to capacity.

Of the four Academies, the Spiral Academy is also the only one located in the Imperial City itself. It sits in the bureaucratic heart of the Imperial City (and thus, the Empire), the Thousand Scales district. A pair of massive, square towers rise from a relatively small set of courtyards and gardens. These towers flank one of the major thoroughfares of the district - unlike the other Academies, it gives no impression of being remote or distant. It is undeniably part of the pulse of the city's infrastructure.

Teachers

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Student Life

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Defenses

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Secret Societies

Not only is membership in the myriad secret societies that infest Dragon-Blooded society tolerated in the Spiral Academy, it is practically required. Where other Academies see conspiracies beyond the control of the administration, the Spiral Academy sees the weaving of contact networks that is perhaps the central lesson the Spiral Academy seeks to instill: Nothing matters as much as who you know. Some of the best-known (but least-acknowledged) societies active in the Spiral Academy include:

• The Jumosh Brotherhood: An active brotherhood composed of those who deeply value information and what it says about communities. The Jumosh initiates are notorious for their "double copying" habits, in which any information that crosses their desks gets copied into their coded journals for sharing within the Brotherhood. The Jumosh are known to be recruiters for the All-Seeing Eye.
• The Diligent Inksmen: Scribes and accountants, the Diligent Inksmen are a secretive order of calligraphers who revel in cypers and code-breaking. Like the Jumosh Brotherhood, the Inksmen have ties to the All-Seeing Eye. They rarely actually become members of the Eye, however - most often, they pull small salaries for the whole of their lives as informants for the Eye.
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• White Veil Society: X

Academic Year

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THE SPIRAL ACADEMY Of the four secondary schools located on the Blessed Isle, the Spiral Academy is the only one that sits at the heart of the Realm itself. Its massive marble walls tower above other buildings in the Thousand Scales District, and its grounds are secure and heavily guarded, for the never-ending fl ow of reports, tallies and accounts that fl ow through the hallways of the Spiral Academy are truly the pulse of the Realm. For all that its students are looked down upon by graduates of the other three academies, the destruction of the Spiral Academy would likely be a fatal blow to the Realm, especially in the Scarlet Empress’s absence. Not that any individual within the academy is of singularly vital import to the Realm’s welfare, but the destruction or corruption of the sheer quantity of vital information held within its walls at any given time would be a devastating blow to the Imperial Bureaucracy.

By necessity, the Spiral Academy is not physically large. Space is of such a premium within the city that even an institution as vital to the health of the Realm as the Academy must constantly justify its need for the space it does occupy, and expansion would be nigh impossible. Compared to the sprawling grounds of the House of Bells or even the austere accommodations of the Cloister of Wisdom, the Academy is diminutive. Physically, of the four secondary schools in the Realm, only the Heptagram is smaller.

Yet, the Spiral Academy’s 240 aspiring apprentice tallymasters and would-be bureaucrats outnumber the student population of any of the other academies, and the sparse living accommodations necessitated by their close quarters allows little to distract the studious from the tasks before them. Together, they process a veritable mountain of Realm paperwork each year, handling—in the guise of “apprenticeships” and “experience-building”—a sizeable portion of the mundane tallying, accounting, number-crunching and report processing that keeps the Realm functioning. As the students are not paid for this work, which is incorporated into their scholastic program, the Imperial Bureaucracy keeps its overhead very low and has amassed signifi cantly larger coffers than it would without the Academy’s free paper-pushing labor.

The Spiral Academy is administered by the Right and Responsible Offi ce of Offi cial Education, headed by the Minister of Education, Sesus Valtor, an un-Exalted son of Sesus Magel and Cynis Parovar. Valtor inherited both his mother’s head for politics and his father’s business sense, and both are inordinately proud of their son’s position, even if he was not deemed worthy of Exaltation.