Amethyst is where Plate Three sends its children to be useful. Every student, starting from middle school, is boarded and sorted. They are shifted between four specialized educational zones based on how their relationship to magic manifests. Those with the potential for raw power are trained as sorcerers. Those with the intellect to understand how magic works are pushed to become wizards. Those with a knack for synthesis and creation are directed into artificing. And those with the capacity to contain others’ arcane force, are inducted as warlocks. Each of the four wards is built around its own research bastion and serves the same purpose: to refine magic until it solves the city’s doom.
Amethyst exists because the Senate needed a controlled environment to develop solutions to the Unraveling. Plate Three was pliable enough to serve. Everything else is marketing. The families believe in civic duty. The students are told they are part of something bigger. They are. If there is a solution to the end of existence, maybe a new, younger magi will have the innate ability. Or unearth the truth. Or build a magical answer. Or be able to better channel and enhance the magic of others.
Amethyst Three West: Prepared Magics
Amethyst Three West is where Plate Three trains its wizards. Every child from the plate with an aptitude for the written spell and reading ritual is sent here to learn the craft of Prepared Magic. It’s the most prestigious of the four educational tracks and the one with the highest failure rate. A handful of graduates will reach Plate Two. A few will join elite research teams. Most will become career wizards, spellcrafters, executors, and technicians right here on Plate Three. The track is hard, but if your child gets in, your family’s future is secured.
ArchMage School District
The ArchMage School District runs six institutions: four boarding middle schools, and two high schools: Dalton Marius Pennison (DMP) High and the Prepared Magics Preparatory School. Of the four Amethyst tracks, Wizardly Magic demands the most structure, the most memory, and the highest failure rate. Students are required to master increasingly complex rituals, navigate multi-script spellforms, and demonstrate fluency in magical languages. Roughly half of the in district middle schoolers don’t make it to high. They’re rerouted to another district or, for the more obedient, the Ruby Stronghold’s military academy.
DMP High is known for pushing students to actual power. Some graduates test straight into Plate Two or land research contracts. Prepared Prep, meanwhile, filters for clean record keepers and high compliance. Their students have a higher University acceptance rate and end up with more stable, better paying jobs on Plate Three. It’s a choice between potential and security. But both schools know the truth: Prepared Magic isn’t about talent. It’s about control.
University of St. Hardeta, Plate Three
USHP students know they’ve already made it. Just getting in is the hard part. If they were gifted enough to earn a Plate Two scholarship, they would’ve taken it. This school has a reputation for rigor, but the truth is, the pressure ends at the gate. USHP exists to turn high-performing adolescents into obedient, stable Plate Three wizards with well-paying, dependable arcane careers. It’s where the sons and daughters of Plate Three go to enjoy their youth, round off their edges, and come out certified Wizard.
University of St. Aindra, Plate Three
USAP is the most prestigious public university on Plate Three. It’s heavily funded and carries elite research contracts. It even hosts an annual appearance from Senator Sutherland Dash himself. The school’s curriculum is closely tied to spellweapon development, and the courseload is brutal. Many students don’t make it, transferring to the softer spoken sister school, USHP. But those who graduate from St. Aindra… tend to stay in Amethyst the rest of their lives getting jobs in research.
The Brass Array Laboratories
The Brass Array Laboratories are the intellectual heart of Amethyst Three. The Array is where the brightest minds of Plate Three come together in structured pursuit under the guidance of the Wuh-Zhei elite. The unraveling cannot be ignored, and the Array offers students and researchers alike a chance to contribute. Every spell theory, arcane apparatus, and crossbow prototype born here is a step closer to ensuring Wuh-Zhei survives. The Paragons lead. The Senate funds. The Array delivers. If they can just figure out how to shoot nothing, surely the next generation of spellweapons can push back the deep, encroaching void.
No one hides what the Array does. They don’t need to. It wears its purpose like a badge. Posters across Amethyst boast, “Reality won’t protect itself.” Faculty from USHP and USAP funnel their best into internships. Alumni flash their clearance sigils like medals. Parents are proud. If your idea’s good enough, it might even get built.
The Open Vault Library
The Open Vault Library is not hidden. It’s not secret. It’s just so big most people don’t know how to use it. Everything cleared for public knowledge is here. Everything. Literally, everything ever imagined. Rumors are there is even a century old wizard living with clones of himself still trying to read every book before the unraveling gets here, but that’s just a rumor. The Vault even has a private primary school of its own and a Technical Highschool for direct placement without university.
The Open Vault Library is an extradimensional space. On street level it’s two back to back doors set into a stone block. Inside, the vault is endless. In a sense, wasted. So much knowledge that so few in Wuh-Zhei know how to properly use.
It’s a tool of control and a tool of pride. The Senate can say nothing is censored, and technically they’re right. They don’t need to lock knowledge away. They just file it under floor 743-C, in a language you haven’t learned yet, cross-referenced to a spell you don’t know how to cast. Some of the best researchers on Plate Three got their start getting lost here.
Amethyst Three North: Spontaneous Magics
Spontaneous Magics is the district for children lucky enough to be born with latent magical power. It’s not about intellectual arcane talent or spellbook work ethic. It starts with a spark. A reaction. A show of raw, internal power. The Senate considers it promising. The schools treat it as duty. If you’re lucky enough to be weave-attuned, you’re pulled in, tested, and trained. Some students burn bright. Every decade or so, a sorcerer from Amethyst North becomes city famous. Everyone knows theirs names. Every new student arrives believing they might be next.
GrandMagi District
The GrandMagi District runs two middle schools and three high schools. Most students who qualify stay the course. The district’s special education funding is among the highest in Amethyst, and nearly every student graduates. The hard part is getting in. Students must show a clear attunement to sudden, unscripted magic from an early age. The system is designed to spot that spark and push it.
Middle schoolers are tracked into one of three high schools: Metamind Academy, Sorcerous Technical, or Spellsurge High. Teachers are strict about placement. Transfers are common. About two in five students switch tracks during their first two years. Metamind students tend toward refined casting and end up at university. Sorcerous Tech is for direct-entry work. Spellsurge is different. The raw weave shows up there.
University of Matilda Brightside, Plate Three
Imagine being such an old Lich that a school was built and named after you while you were still alive and ruling in the senate. UMBP produces excellent sorceress and sorceresses. Yes, Senator Brightside funded the building of the school. But she doesn’t visit because these aren’t the students who will change the world. These are the sorcerers who will lead Plate Three in compliance.
The Planar-Singularity Institute
It grants degrees, but it’s not a university. The Institute is a massive, government run facility dedicated to metaphysical testing. Students pulled from Spellsurge are pushed through escalating trials of solo casting. It starts with magical wind tunnels and unstable weave compression rooms. Eventually, the chosen few enter resonance amplification spheres, structures designed to generate power for interplanar gates. This is where the Tomorrow Project hunts for hope.
This is no small feat. Most fail. Some burn out. A few [redacted]. And for those rare successes? Grand Magus Senator Matilda Brightside bakes them cookies. That’s not a euphemism. She may be a two-century-old sorcerer lich conjurer, but she brings her own ingredients and bakes the oatmeal raisin cookies herself.
The Oscillary
Not every spellweapon can be engineered. Some have to be felt.
The Oscillary is ancient. It was originally built as a meditation retreat for Chaos sorcerers struggling to control their surges. Quiet. Contemplative. A permanent, completed Silence field runs over the northern edge. Always active.
The facility still offers focus chambers and guided casting rooms. It still trains sorcerers to regulate their output. But the Paragons have a more urgent vision. Behind the padded doors, paid and consenting casters are pushed further. They’re matched with volatile spell conduction tools. Swords that respond to rage. Crossbows that ask for memory. Arrows that ignite on grief.
The goal is simple. Spellweapons worked once. That means they can work again. Someone just has to figure out how to fire the new, higher-tier prototypes no one else can hold. The Oscillary finds out which sorcerers survive.
Amethyst Three East: Contractual Magic
This is where most of Plate Three ends up. The Contractual District isn’t about brilliance. It’s about scale. Supreme Arcanum School for the Gifted takes on about as many students as the other three districts combined. Most will graduate. A few will excel. For families who’ve worked the docs, the streets, or the lifts for generations, that’s enough. You don’t need to be a prodigy. You just need to follow the terms of your pact.
Here, magic is assigned, not awakened. It produces workers who know magic, respect power, and trust their institutions. Some graduates rise further. Those who sign lifelong pacts with Mage Supremes become the Plate’s middle management. They speak with power.
Supreme Arcanum School for the Gifted
The Supreme Arcanum School for the Gifted is a single sprawling arcane campus, housing boarding students from middle school onward. Every fall, students sign a temporary pact with their assigned teacher, binding them into a year-long magical contract. Their instructors are not human. They are planar entities like Fae, Genies, and lesser Fiends. Entities whom, at some point, became indebted to Wuh-Zhei’s ruling wizards and now serve the educational system as bound professors.
Supreme doesn’t ask brilliance. It demands reliability. The coursework isn’t punishing, but the contracts are strict. Break terms and you’re out. The upside is stability. Students learn to handle volatile power under controlled conditions. When they graduate, most are ready to join Plate Three’s infrastructure, fully cleared to work with embedded magic systems or interface with high-value relics. The parents love it. It’s seen as an honor. After all, their child is gifted. Not exceptional. Not bright. Just literally handed a power they didn’t earn. Supreme Arcanum School for the Gifted.
University of Mage Supreme, Plate Three
The University of Mage Supreme, Plate Three, does not train wizards. It trains warlocks, specifically, those who will sign lifelong contracts with elite spellcasters from Plate One or Two. Patrons qualify as Mage Supremes or higher and only appear at the beginning and end of each semester. The school isn’t hard to get into, but few make it through. The coursework is brutal, the expectations absolute, and the burnout rate high. The Mage Supremes are looking for powerful resonance that can only be forged in youth, before the mind and soul harden. Mage Supremes don’t want talent. They want compatibility. They need students who will carry their intent and never resist the tether.
Those who graduate find work representing their Patron on plate three. They speak with their Patron’s authority when they oversee major ventures and anchor high-risk magical operations across Plate Three. UMSP alumni are among the best positioned on the plate. Warlocks Supreme. Prestige with a signature.
Dual Coil Research Centre
Once the crown jewel of Plate Three innovation, the Dual Coil Research Centre now rots in place. Eighty years ago, it was shuttered after a Senate review labeled Head Researcher Sintetra’s work inhumane and unstable. Officially, it was shut down. Unofficially, parts of it still hum. The Coil family, powerful backers of the original project, never sold the property. They didn’t have to. No one wanted it. Not with the stories. Not with the monsters. Not with the rumors of spell-modded test subjects still whispering in the halls.
Sintetra’s work in arcane transcendence and internal spell modding was controversial. It is a lightly guarded secret that Dual Coil holds an active Unraveling incursion, Marshal Creek says in reports that “there isn’t an incursion on Plate three” because she doesn’t consider Dual Coil Research part of Plate Three. The perimeter is secure. Spellweapons are sometimes tested on the breach. The Enforcers know better than to go in. When the alarm spells blare, they set a perimeter, watch the exits, and wait.
Recently, one wing of the Centre was re-opened. Catkin tech mogul Spoing, founder of Supernormal, received formal blessing from the Coil family to convert a west wing into a secure lab and office compound. No one knows why he was allowed. No one questions it out loud. Supernormal specializes in nonmagical tools that behave magically even in anti-magic fields. Spoing says his work is the future. People suspect he’s still digging in the past.
Temple of the First Three
The gods are history, literally. The Temple of the First Three is one part replica and one part research hub. It’s staffed by “Clerics” and “Priests” who hold those names as academic titles. Prayers are dissected under spellscopes. Divine magic is mapped, measured, and misunderstood a little less each year. Students from Amethyst often field trip or even intern here. The gods died. The city lived. This place remembers how it happened and wonders: their magic wasn’t enough to stop the end. Surely, after hundreds of years, the First Three won’t mind a few more daily autopsies. They’re dead, after all. And maybe divine spell residue will finally help us unravel the Unraveling.
Amethyst Three South: Engineered Magics
Engineered Magics is indispensable. This district turns out potion-brewers, toolwrights, systems engineers, and spelltech operators. The schools here are competitive by design. Middle schools feud in public fairs. Select High schoolers present at the OverPrime Conference Hall with the somewhat realistic hope of making it up to Plate Two. If your kid builds something that works, elites notice. And if they don’t? There’s still a good enough job waiting if you graduate. Artificers make the power flow.
OverPrime District
The OverPrime School District features five Engineered Magics middle schools with a long history of rivalry. Alumni stay deeply involved, especially during the Golem Games competitions, which draw full crowds and old grudges. Students here learn to make, fix, and improve. OverPrime boasts the smallest class sizes in Amethyst early education. The teachers are hands-on. The evaluations are unforgiving.
The district’s three high schools don’t pretend to be equal. Engineered Magics Technical is for students who need a job lined up by seventeen. It is the only non-boarding high school on Plate Three. Alchemist’s Conservatory is small, selective, and well-funded. It teaches only potioncraft, beautiful, precise, and profitable. And then there is the Leyline Institute. It doesn’t promise prestige, but every year or two, one student gets into a Plate Two university. The school’s science fairs are intellectual bloodsport. You should go. Elites do.
University of Dr. Xaterion, Plate Three
The University of Dr. Xaterion, Plate Three, is where you go when you’re serious about working. Not every caster is cut out for invention, and not every student has a bloodline. UDXP trains the essential middle class of Plate Three’s arcane labor force. Grads fix what breaks, install what’s needed, and keep the systems humming. It’s not glamorous, but it’s stable, respected, and comes with advancement tracks into better posts or even wizard universities. Dr. Xaterion may not be remembered clearly anymore, but his name is on every service tunnel in Amethyst Three, and his university keeps his work going.
Amethyst Polytech, Plate Three
Amethyst Poly is the top artificer university on Plate Three, feeding directly from Leyline Institute and the Alchemist’s Conservatory, though some wizard-track students make the switch after high school. Each major tracks to a professional specialization. Artillerist students often land Paragon spellweapon internships, while Battle Smiths find placement with the Enforcers. Poly is public, competitive, and officially tied to the Authorities, particularly Fabrication and Infusion. It’s not exclusive like the wizard schools, but it doesn’t need to be. Everyone on the plate knows Amethyst Poly grads are effective and get hired.
OverPrime Conference Hall
The OverPrime Conference Hall is the most respected presentation venue on Plate Three. A sprawling, multi-stage complex overseen by the Research Authority, it hosts everything from inter-school exhibitions to headline lectures by senior researchers from the Array or Oscillary. Students who present here, whether in their district fair’s final round or through university sponsorship, walk a little taller afterward. Careers are launched on these stages. Discoveries are debuted. It is common for Plate Two elites to show up. The building is clean stone and structured light. Patriotic, prestigious, unmistakably Plate Three.
