The Mystic Academy

[Comic]

Augustinian is the headmaster of the secret Academy of Mysticism, located on a mist-shrouded island near Greece, it is said.. An island which appears on no map.

 

Graduates of this school for superhumans -- wizards, aliens, mutants, psychics, gadgeteers or whatever -- all have demonstrated mastery of the five Augustinian virtues: invisibility, intangibility, transitivity, immortality and omniscience.

 

Some came to the school gifted capable of some measure of one or more of these abilities, either innately or learned.

 

Augustinian's mind-body philosophy however requires more than mere ability to demonstrate an effect. His students learn skills meant to more closely integrate the physical body with the ephemeral spirit through knowledge and disciplined exercise.

 

Martial arts training, for example, is integral to the virtue of intangibility, and even those with perfect ghostly untouchability or who by employment of physics can become desolid must learn one of the many schools of combat taught at the academy.

 

Likewise, controlled movement on a personal scale - gymnastics, as it were - is linked in Augustinian's regimines to supernatural levels of movement. A child crawls before walking. Walking precedes running. Running becomes acrobatics, becomes leaping, flight, teleportation, extradimensional movement and, like Jonathan Livingstone, true liberation from the tyranny of location.

 

Augustinian's pupils proceed from the basics of concealment, disguise, stealth and subterfuge to the subtlety of clouding the mind and even escaping detection of the forces of the universe, along the paths of invisibility.

 

All Augustinian's adepts master immortality, the ability to persist in some incarnation and return to their Augustinian form, before graduation. To them, Death is placed in its proper, and minor, place in perspective. Their path flows out of scientific and scholarly study of anatomy, physiology, medicine, theosophy and the like.

 

Like Augustinian, though perhaps not all to the same degree, and whilst maintaining their own subjective individuality and independence, his students benefit from access to the One Mind effect, and can in some fashion claim omniscience, senses that breach physical barriers and see what to the occluded masses is hidden. This path pursues history, science, art and philosophy to give context and content to the sensory abilities of those apprenticed to the academy.

 

Characters who have this background may be heroes, villains, or neither. They might have vast powers directly applicable to combat on a superheroic scale, or merely be pulpy mystics with abilities on the outer edge of human kenning, suggestive of fraud produced by skill and tricks. All will be able to demonstrate more than ordinary skill levels in each of their five virtues, and at least one power or effect emblematic of each of the five Augustinian studies (eg Invisibility, Desolidification, Teleport, Regeneration-Resurrection, N-Ray Vision), though this can be done through a small VPP -- however limited it may be and still called 'mastery' in the campaign setting.

 

Augustinian has no agenda except to pass on his teachings and preserve his academy and the principals upon which it was built.

[Pariah]

Re: The Mystic Academy

 

Excellent concept! Much more esoteric than the Xavier Institute, or even Hogwarts. Where do I sign up?

[Comic]

Re: The Mystic Academy

 

You may already have.

 

I'm thinking of putting together a loose collection of package deals, scenarios, settings, disadvantages and characters reflecting the Academy, and it's Illuminati-like graduates.

 

One idea I have is a fake Academy, run by a con-man who'd heard of rumors that some very wealthy people would pay enormously to have their children enrolled in this 'mythical' school if it were real, and who used his knowledge of stagecraft, legerdemain, props and deception to dupe a surprisingly large first class. When he realized the power these young minds would have as they grew up, he collected some teachers and put together something that could withstand more scrutiny, while brainwashing the students.

 

That was four hundred years ago. The world has many graduates of this false Academy. And the real Augustinian? He doesn't mind. After all, some of the ideas taught there are the principles he loves. And anyone clever enough to pierce the deception of the false academy.. may be invited to learn at the real one. Or maybe this is just another fabrication, meant to keep students loyal to this multigenerational fraud.

 

(Ironically, highly skilled graduates of the fake school may end up as powerful as real graduates.)

[Kevin Schultz]

Re: The Mystic Academy

 

Heh - and some of the best Stratovarious violins were actually forgeries made afterwards.

[Necromancer]

Re: The Mystic Academy

 

Hello all. Just wanted to know what happened to this; if there was any more info. It sounds really interesting. Kudos.

[Comic]

Re: The Mystic Academy

 

It's on the back burners, at the moment. Though I admit, the CCC thread has given me a bit of impetus to rework my ideas.

 

There's no better way to build, than to steal blueprints from a more expert architect.

 

I will be resuming, though I'm not sure if in the form of an organization outline, or a PBEM, or a website put up by one of the students.

 

I do welcome direction and suggestions.