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Riversmeet Menagerie and Old Mage School

Hephaestoos making pots at Riversmeet Mage School
Hephaestoos making pots at the Riversmeet mage school.

Summary

Riversmeet’s Menagerie is the former mage school, later locked down by mages after its staff failed to return to Grand Towers. The party’s entry into the site opened historical school planes, memory rooms, emotion-orb and void-sphere research, automation and power-armour clues, and evidence about the five creators of the Dome. The school also contained the stolen and altered Original Goliath Sphinx, records of Hannah’s erasure, Garadule’s reincarnation, and the invisible memory entity that temporarily made the party forget it existed.

Known Details

  • Day 35 identified Lady Yadreya Egrine as Baroness of Riversmeet and connected her menagerie to stolen experimental creatures later recognized as memory grubs.
  • Day 43 reported that mages at the Menagerie did not return to Grand Towers and locked it down; it used to be the mage school.
  • Day 43 also identified the interfering memory spell as waterwise at the Mages College at Riversmeet, involving Attabre magic plus another force.
  • On day-44, the party reached Riversmeet, found Ruby Eye’s melted house ruins and gravestone, and joined Lady Yadreya Egrine’s siege outside the Menagerie.
  • The Menagerie grounds had broken cages for griffon, dragon, wolf, and human subjects and a wall of force or similar effect.
  • Inside, the party entered old-school time or planes: Menagerie outpost and grounds, apothecary, infirmary, head teacher’s office, Divination, transmutation, study hall, common rooms, lessons, Air common room, room above the Air common room, white classroom, tower tunnels, classrooms, kitchen, and astronomy.
  • The school spaces retained strong room identities: an auditorium-style transmutation classroom, student-filled Divination lesson, necromancy class, first-year rec room and cloakroom, common rooms, a dining hall, and classrooms with coloured objects, birdhouse-like setups, blackboards, or missing-door holes.
  • The Air common room was marked by pictures of a dwarf with a bushy beard and a blue dragonborn; its door led into dark corridors and strange transition spaces, including a janitor’s closet, bathhouse room, empty white classroom with blue viewing and red desks, brass room, dusky cracked-window version of the Air common room, and the room above it with a nearly transparent black crystal door.
  • Mr Moreley’s room was fully painted as a Snowsorrow mural, with a large desk, pedestal and cushion, glass sphere of smoke, gold, silver, copper, and white dragons on the walls, and dragon-head buttons that opened the painted gates of Snowsorrow.
  • The astronomy room had a large telescope, blackboards showing the moons as they truly looked, a room that moved with the telescope, named constellations, and Squwal’s Belt appearing as a dark eclipse-like patch with writing rather than an ordinary constellation.
  • The Day 48 magic school headmaster's office note belongs to the old mage school; it held the clue reading mines beneath the real.
  • In the study hall or transmutation-classroom sequence, the party encountered Hephaestoos’s four-armed vulture-man body making rudimentary Dunnen-style pots while two wizards observed.
  • The old school involved Cardonal, Ruby Eye, Everard Browning, Thomas / Ennui, Hannah, Valenth, Bosh, Mr Moreley, Principal Grey, Torlish Hartwall / Hartwall, Humerous Torn, Hammerguards, and Grand Towers transfer plans. Thomas was Ennui’s earlier name before he changed it.
  • Major discoveries included an empathy alteration orb, the green liquid / possible Noxia blood, power armour, an automaton core, Bynx as a baby Attabre spirit, a draconic book for Ruby Eye, a sixth sphinx clue, void containment, and the need for eight spheres.
  • On Day 45, the party continued through the school, encountering chimeras, squid-headed experimenters, Willowispa, Tarnished copper-goliath / dragonborn offspring of Verdigrim, a basement map with eight orb divots, the Storm Orb, a mushroom organism, Hephaestoos’s incomplete vulture-man soul, and Garadule’s reincarnation. Internal rooms and school spaces explored included the kitchen, drama classroom, hall, first-year dorm, Evocation, Elemental Lore, Alteration, Weather, Herbs, the basement map room, and the orb room. The map and orb rooms held the eight-divot map, orb placement, the altered Original Goliath Sphinx battle, the invisible memory entity defeat, and Joy’s illusion. Willowispa is the same dragon as the Willowispa / Willowispa from Galimma’s dragon-family list, and her father is Infestus.
  • A corridor between the third-year dorm and main hall had four ray-like floor or rug images from different places. The orange Dunnensend ray showed Garadule from one angle with the word Terror; this was internal school imagery rather than a separate place.
  • Day 44 school routes and classroom material also referenced Far Grove, Waterrose, Great Farmuth, Blackhold, Brass City, Ruby Eye’s old stomping ground, Pri-moon, the second moon, Tri-moon, and Squwal’s Belt as lesson, route, astronomy, void-sphere, or planar-history clues rather than separate minor locations.
  • The school contained the Original Goliath Sphinx, stolen and altered long ago when the Dome was created and used to alter memories across the Dome.
  • The Dome was created by Everard Browning, Ennui, Brutor Ruby Eye, Valenth Cardonal, and Lady Evalina Hartwall.
  • Mr Moreley was the spectral dragon holding the altered Sphinx down during the orb-room battle.
  • During the battle, an invisible entity escaped and made the party forget it, but the entity was defeated; the party’s memories were restored after they protected a glowing thing in linked rooms.
  • Day 46 connected the school to Riversmeet’s current town-hall infiltration, because mind magic used by the infiltrators began malfunctioning after something happened at the school.

Open Questions

  • Are the school spaces time travel, preserved planes, memory rooms, or another mechanism?
  • What are the eight spheres, and who created or hid them?
  • What happened to Hannah after being wiped from time and space?
  • What is the current state of the twenty wizards who locked down the Menagerie?
  • Which of the Dome creators stole and altered the original Goliath Sphinx, and did any of the others oppose it?
  • What is the relationship between Willowispa, Mother, Verdigrim’s Tarnished offspring, and the hidden objects in the school, beyond Willowispa’s confirmed place as Peridita and Infestus’ daughter?