Vernal Sanctuary Timeline

Prelude: The Vernal Sanctuary

Episode One: Sanctuary

• August 3rd, 2004: The students arrive from all over the country, and are picked up in Buffalo by Albert and Ms. Edith. They settle in and meet the headmaster that night at dinner. That evening, some of the students see strange phenomenon on Manitou Hill.
• August 4th, 2004: The students begin settling in to the routine of the school, and have their first class: Atlantean Runes. Additionally, they choose their Path Tools, in preparation for consecrating them. Later that day, they have a BBQ on Bluejack Pond.
• August 7th, 2004: The students gather in the Round Room to learn how to consecrate and dedicate Path Tools.

Episode Two: Paradise

• August 10th, 2004: Several of the students witness some kind of tall, strange furred humanoid creature climbing the walls of the Sanctuary that night.
• August 11th, 2004: Before dawn, the students are taken outside and taught how to harvest the Mana of a Hallow, through the use of oblations. Miss Edith also offers to begin teaching any of the students who're interested tai chi. Headmaster Sunya teaches them how to create personal oblations. That evening, the furred thing returns, tromping around on the roof of the Sanctuary.
• August 12th, 2004: The students go and do some shopping for school clothes at the Paradise Hills Mall. Ben and Angela do some shoplifting, but Ben is caught by the mall security, and taken into custody. Alexis decides to call Miss Edith, but Justin roughly snatches the phone from her. Ryan pushes Justin, who punches him in return and then Angela breaks into the fracas by trying to grapple Justin. All of them are brought into the mall security office to await Miss Edith's arrival. Miss Edith reads them all the riot act, hands out punishments and intimidates the mall security into not pressing charges.
• August 13th, 2004: Before class, Sunya explains to them that any further violence between students will be met with expulsion. The students then learn about the Initiate, Apprentice and Disciple practices, as well as begin the process of learning High Speech and Atlantean Runes. Strange noises are heard again on the roof, but then they are joined by some kind of chanting in a weird language. All is silent after that.
• August 14th, 2004: Headmaster Sunya takes them out to Manitou Hill, on the Sanctuary property, and teaches them about Paradox.

Episode Three: Academia

• September 3rd, 2004: The students are taken for the last bit of school shopping that the last visit to the mall cut short. While there, Alexis discovers a beautiful dark black wood violin called Il Dolore Nero, which its owner Michael Tannerson, recognizing Alexis, asks her to play. Ryan meets a young baby witch at the mall's occult shop.
• September 5th, 2004: The students learn about Arcana Tools, and are told to begin searching for objects meaningfully symbolic of their Arcana to use as such. He then teaches them the Practice of Unveiling and how to use Mage Sight, encouraging them to utilize High Speech in their casting. He then covers the other Unveiling effects, explaining how to use them.
• September 6th, 2004: Ryan notices the Mr. Grackleton isn't in his usual spot in the morning. Louise finds him asleep on the front step, and the crow seems listless and confused, not sure how he even got outside. The Headmaster sees them off to their first day of high school at Orchard Park High School, and reminds them not to practice magic where others may witness them doing so. The students experience their first day of high school. Alexis finds herself frequently in classes with much older students, while Angela and Ryan meet "Ridgepoint Rhoda," a young, slightly distracted young woman that the other students confirm has, in fact, been to Ridgepoint Care, a local mental hospital. They also encounter a homeless man lurking near the garbage bins, whom the other students claim is a child molester.
• September 7th, 2004: The next day of school, Angela and Ben's teacher never shows up, with Dake Matthews, one of the local toughs taking the opportunity to introduce himself to Angela. Likewise, on his way to the restroom, Justin passes a hot young woman that looks him up and down and then follows him into the boy's room, claiming to want a cigarette, introducing herself as Iosia. Ben is approached by Zeke, the homeless guy, who mentions that he's a vet.
• September 8th, 2004: After school, Headmaster Sunya guides them through the process of consecrating Arcana Tools, and then asks them about their experiences at school. He suggests that they use Unveiling Practices while at school, which will be good practice in using them in life situations.

Episode Four: Revelation

• September 14th, 2004: Headmaster Sunya teaches the students the use of Spell Factors, and how to perform ritual spellcasting, assigning them to design and perform a ritual within the next two days.
• September 15th, 2004: Early that morning, one of the students sees Mr. Grackleton flying towards Manitou Hill, and then sees some strange lights from there. By the time the sun comes up, the familiar is asleep on the front stoop again. Alexis is harassed in school that day by a bully named Tony Aracelli, who wants her to do his homework. When she refuses, he trips her in P.E., causing her to skin her knee. While she is in the nurse's office, he is brought in, unconscious and with a broken ankle. Madeline tells Alexis that it was Stacy's ghost that did it. While they are passing by, the students hear some kind of protest from a section of the school that is still undergoing construction. They push past the plastic tarps that separate the work area from the school in general, and find one of their classmates being pushed around by three toughs, while Iosia is watching them go through his backpack. When the students arrive, she acts very disinterested and bored with all of this. Then, a teacher arrives to break it all up, sending them on their way.
• September 16th, 2004: The students are assigned to create a ritual that grants them some kind of Mage Sight within a certain set of parameters.
• September 17th, 2004: Ryan meets a young man named Josh Chambers being picked on and helps him. The young man expresses a romantic interest in Ryan, who seems slightly freaked out and slightly intrigued, all at the same time. That evening, when the students arrive home, they are told to pack their bags, as Headmaster Sunya is taking them on a trip to Niagara Falls.
• September 18th, 2004: Over breakfast, Sunya explains to them that the has arranged for a number of interesting phenomena in the area - some spells, some simply supernatural things, some naturally occuring phenomena - visible to those using Mage Sight. They are to go around the area, find and investigate at least three such phenomena, studying them completely, and preparing papers on their findings. During the course of their investigations, however, the students encounter strange Resonances - coded messages via Forces, an odd "fingerprint" visible to Death and Life on certain people in the area - that turn out to be the work of a vampire named Red Anna. She confronts them in their hotel room that night, when they are alone, and it is only because she is being hunted by the FBI that they make it out of there alive. Sunya returns them home through the use of a Portal.

Episode Five: Manitou

• October 25th, 2004: The students learn about the Practice of Knowing. That evening, Justin and Ben hear Ryan sneaking out of his room. When they find him, he is walking like a sleepwalker, and when Ben tries to stop him, he hears a snarl and is pushed down the staircase. Ryan comes to his senses and has no idea what is going on.
• October 26th, 2004: Angela is invited by Kelley to Woodlawn Cemetary on Halloween. She wants to perform a spell meant to invoke "ancient spirits of witchcraft" with her. She seems very excited. Alexis is approached by one of the teachers, who recognizes her as the violin prodigy, and asks her to provide the theater group with some music for a production. Alexis refuses, however, anxious about the possibility of performing in front of an audience again.
• October 27th, 2004: The students on their way to perform tai chi that morning find Ryan sleeping on the front porch, and Mr. Grackleton is nowhere to be found. At school, Alexis befriends Victoria Cavazos, a young Hispanic girl, who is having trouble with English, and agrees to tutor her. Iosia meets Justin and asks him to follow her. She leads him down into the service tunnels under the school, where they make out for a while before they are found by one of Iosia's boys, who reacts with anger at seeing Justin there and attacks him. That evening, Miss Edith stays awake to keep an eye on things. That evening, however, the students see Ryan leaving the house, heading for Manitou Hill, and find Miss Edith unconscious due to some kind of Spirit magic.
• October 28th, 2004: Sunya teaches the students about the three kinds of counter-magic, and how to perform counter-spelling. That evening, a group of New York State troopers come to find Ben, asking him if he's seen his brother, who has run away from foster parents.
• October 29th, 2004: That evening, the students see Ryan walking to the hill. Sunya is nowhere to be found, and the Rybaks and Miss Edith are unconscious. They find Ryan standing in a circle of stones that is not there during the day, being drained of energy by a strange, shaggy manitou spirit. He asks for their help, promising to leave Ryan and Grackleton in peace. They must find the ritual within the Vault of the Chalice under the Sanctuary's hill, and perform it on Samhain night. They agree.
• October 30th, 2004: The students venture into the cavern beneath the well, finding the place where the Sanctuary's Tass gathers, as well as a golden-barred door that leads into the Forbidden Wing of the Sanctuary. Additionally, written up the wall through the use of entirely different kinds of stone than the wall itself is made of, they find the ritual itself.
• October 31st, 2004: The students perform the ritual, which actually frees the Manitou from its bindings to the circle of stones. In return, it tells them its true name, Dashial'chak, and promises to aid them however it may in the future.

Downtime

• September 2004: The students begin attending the Vernal Sanctuary.
• February, 2005: Alexis' parents announce they are getting a divorce.
• March, 2005: Gaerun, the Hierarch of Rochester/Buffalo, is forced to grant the Orders access to the students of the Vernal Sanctuary. Over the next month, they are approached by a variety of other magi, who introduce them to the Orders.
• May, 2005: The students graduate the Vernal Sanctuary. Alexis (now called Kore) and Angela (now called Daimona) go to the Boston Consilium, to be trained in their Orders. Justin returns to his family in Athens, TN, while Ryan returns to his family in Idaho, while figuring out what he wants to do. Ben heads out in search of his brother, south into Florida.
• June, 2005: After a month in his home-town, his Aunt Dorothy (the witch Enula) offers Ryan a free education in London. He takes her up on the offer, and flies out to England. Later that month, Justin packs up his sister and moves to Memphis, TN, to join the Consilium there under the apprenticeship of a Silver Order magus. In his search for his brother, Ben goes through New York, but doesn't find any other mages.
• July, 2005: Kelly transfers schooling to England, and flies out to join Ryan, who has taken the name of Storm and joined the Free Council in London. Later that month, Sara visits as well. After searching for his brother unsuccessfully, Ben returns to Boston, and joins the Adamantine Arrow, taking the Shadow Name Promachus.
• September, 2005: Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans. Daimona wants to go there immediately, and the Curator of the Boston Athenaeum, seeing that she won't be dissuaded, persuades her to undertake a recovery mission there. She agrees. Additionally, at the Curator's request, the Adamantine Arrow sends Promachus to be her guardian.
• October, 2005: Her participation in relief efforts finished, Daimona begins hunting for the lost artifacts and books of the Athenaeum of New Orleans, which have been scattered by looters, rival magi and other supernatural creatures. In this effort, she makes the acquaintance of Taboo, a mambo of the Guardians of the Veil.
• November, 2005: After helping Daimona and Promachus fend off the attacks of some vampires, Taboo tells them that she is going to New York, to look into the disappearances that have occurred there recently, and to secure some of the resources that have been abandoned there. She tells them to look her up if they ever end up in the city.
• December, 2005: The Curator of Boston contacts Daimona and tells her to deliver the things she has retrieved to the new Curator in New York, Theophrastus, at the old Ironrose Pub in Manhattan. He also suggests that if she begins to find the rebuilt New Orleans to be too strange of a place to live in, she may find the opportunities in New York to be quite fine, indeed.
• January, 2006: Kore's parents finalize their divorce. Her mother gets legal custody of Kore, and moves the two of them to Manhattan, where she can pursue her career as an artist…of some kind. Enula, Storm's aunt, hears about the disappearance of the Sodality coven in New York, and begins doing some investigating from afar. Finishing what they are doing in New Orleans, Daimona and Promachus leave, detouring into Florida to search for Promachus' brother, Jacob, a bit, before heading north.
• February, 2006: Enula asks Storm to accompany one of her initiates, the witch Boudicca, to New York to see about finding what has happened there. Storm agrees, having gotten a letter from Kore telling him that she is now living in New York City. Marbas (as Justin is now called) is sent to New York by his mentor in Memphis, who says he can no longer properly train him; he is to meet up with a Clavicularius magus named Valdus to continue his education. Daimona and Promachus arrive in New York.