AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

Me again (sorry if I'm abusing these forums), where could I find some source material regarding institutes of higher education in the FR setting? I'm trying to further flesh out my character's back story and I'm not finding the kinds of info I'm looking for, it's likely I don't know where to look or how to look. My current resources are the Forgotten Realms Wikia (I take everything there with a grain of salt as I know not all of it is cannon for Amia) and the few sourcebooks I've been able to find available online. I basically want to be able to say that my character was taught and trained in archaeology at "X" institute/academy, preferably a prestigious place but not the best. But I also want as much info on such places as I can read about so I have a good basis on what kinds of things these places teach.

AFAIK, in FR, there's very few, if any, institutions that you might call universities or colleges. Those that do exist are generally for bards (New Olamn) or warriors (Evereska Academy of Arms, plus others). An archaeologist would be more likely to have learned their craft one-on-one or one-on-few with a master who had also learned on both his own and from his own master, etc. The old master-apprentice style of learning that is also common to mages.

As for institutions that might sponsor people to go digging around in various ruins... Candlekeep, the churches of Oghma and Deneir, noble families prying into their own history or that of the realm, wealthy merchants who like collectibles, etc.

Keep in mind, this isn't 100% graven in stone. It's just my impression of how things go in FR.

I was going to type something here, but Gers pretty much pre-empted me completely. Higher education in the FR is a very individualized thing, more like the master-apprentice structure than the university structure. I think if a FR character was looking to be able to claim a prestigious education, she'd be more likely to want to claim "I was trained by the eminent Master So-And-So" than "I was trained at the Waterdeep Academy for Advanced Whatever."

I know of a number of magical discipleships set up in the old Elven societies, but I'm not familiar with any archaeology schools, but I know of a few groups that would probably resort to Archaeology for the sake of knowledge protection/recovery.

There's an Elven/Half-Elven/Ally group known as the Order of the Setting Sun that dedicates itself to the discovery and recovery of ancient Elven Artifacts. So they do a lot of ruin-diving, researching, and generally try to piece together Elven history and the potential for lost items of power. All under the watchful eye of Labelas Enoreth. And he's all about learning!

Dem Oghmanytes do a lot of teaching as well. I'll shamelessly quote a passage from a non-canon source. But for flavor, this kind of stuff can be really neat:

Oghma's nj-pbem wrote:

Candlekeep is traditionally the greatest center of learning in Faerûn, and one of the most holy places of Oghma. The Leaves of Learning temple in Highmoon (Deepingdale) is the most recently prominent center of worship., but several temples are vying for supremacy in Oghmanyte worship in Faerûn at present: the Tower of Thought in Selgaunt, where Most High Learned Priest Urdiyvan Eraen leads the Church of Oghma; the gilded Domes of Reason temple in Procampur, where High Loremaster Librarian Estember Orntalar seems to be winning a vicious power struggle to succeed the Patriarch of Procampur as leader of the Orthodoxy; and the House of Many Tomes fortified abbey in upland Impiltur, west of Songhal, where Loremaster Most Exalted Prespaerin Cadathlyn claims to have reached "a new closeness" to the Binder and has taken on the title "Binder of Faerûn" as a mark of his oneness with the god. The Font of Knowledge in Waterdeep is also notable as the most recently completed Grand Temple of Oghma. It was finished in Midsummer of the Year of the Banner (1368DR) and is led by Loremaster Most High Sandrew the Wise.

The Library of Curna in the Curna Mountains (also known as the Mountains of Wisdom) in the Shining South holds the most prominent center of scholarship and worship of Oghma in the guise of Curna. Its contents are said to differ from Candlekeep's in that they focus more on current events, business, and naturalistic studies than Candlekeep's collection, whose strength is by far in historical works.

Cited Source

Those would be a few locations where one might learn about ancient ruins and the like. I would have to agree with the others so far, in that university institutions were rare, while mentor-pupil relationships were much more prominent. This is still very much the age of the Rhetorician, or the wise and famous teacher that everyone seeks to learn from, because he's wise and famous. But hopefully this helps!

Gers summed up my thoughts. There are a few colleges, specific to certain professions. But I'd as well the the majority of "higher education" to be handled through apprenticeship. So instead of saying you graduated from a particular academy, you'd say who was your mentor, and his mentor, etc, etc.

My initial thought was to say that my character was educated and trained at Candlekeep and under the tutelage of two separate masters. So my best guess does seem pretty good, but I wanted to ask in case there was anything I was missing in particular. Most of the info I had found echoes what you all have said, but I did learn a few other useful things, so thank you all very much.

This thread gave me an awesome idea..

Dead wrote:

This thread gave me an awesome idea..

You cannot build the Amian Institute of Academia, at least not without my help. I'm already trying to lay down the groundwork.

Amian? No. Tarkuulian? :wink:

Higher Education

Who is online