Arcane Guild and University

The Arcane University has its roots in the R&D dept. of the church. As the Church became more of a political institution, it began to become more concerned with spreading its evangelical narrative than with attempting to know the mind of God. The department was mainly designed to give legitimacy to the Church, and because some of the earlier people were genuinely anxious about proving their accuracy. Ever since the Church got its religion established and it became something virtually beyond question, R&D received greatly decreased prestige and recognition. However since the R&D dept was not opposed to the mission of the Church, it sort of stayed around, continuing with some basic experiments on lightning and magnetism as well as theological speculation. It also serves as one of the Church’s main schools, educating the new priests and re-educating the old.

Inspired by the Florentines, the directors of the R&D department decided to reinvent themselves as a university, after a notable incident where they were prohibited from discussing a certain experiment because it cast doubt on the divine canon. They discovered the phenomenon of bio electricity (this will be my science journal extract), discovering that the only thing which created magnetism was basically a form of electricity, (via experimentation with static electricity such as amber, and with comparing the effects of lightning on lodestones with the effects of the arcane organ)  whereas the Church’s official line was that storm-summoning was solely the purview of the Lord of Storms. The Church deemed the dept. heretical and had it disbanded, and all the members were placed under house arrest. The craft was still practiced by the priests, and the non-heretical writings were widely distributed. However, the study of the craft stagnated. Discoveries were still being made by gentlemen of independent means; However since experimentation was banned by the church and there was no longer an institution with an archive to store and disseminate the literature; people couldn’t build on each other’s ideas.

During the dark ages they were like an alchemical association which actually worked. They were painted as a cult, and being a member of the society took on a distinctly anti-religious connotation. A common criticism of this period of the society is that it was more concerned with acting against the Church than with understanding the universe. Likewise, a common criticism nowadays (more from within than anywhere else) is that it is becoming far too commercial. Fortunately, since the guild grew out of a university, it is still more concerned with truth than with revenue, except for a few of the newer ones who are used to seeing practical examples of the craft in civil engineering.

 The Arcanists began to resurface just as the economy hit its stride. The city needed industry- both the government of investors and the merchants, and it just so happened that the University’s studies had some practical applications. It resurfaced, but still as an unofficial organisation, and one focused entirely on commerce rather than study. They were first hired by the shipbuilders who asked them for perfected compasses and any form of propulsion which they could provide. The arcanists still consider themselves somewhat in debt to the shipbuilders. Eventually there was a ‘wizard’ at nearly every major business, in charge of doing the heavy lifting. It got to the point where the guild became official, and people were so used to it that even the Church had to let it pass. The guild got rich enough to set up a guild school, and the university was reborn.

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The guild is currently a model of a private research institute; They have a desperate incentive to make their inventions profitable, but its structure and outlook are holdovers from its days as a university. The university has an ‘open source’ library and laboratory, which can be used by any scholar, student, or guildsman.

The guild and university have two separate buildings on separate streets, but are deeply integrated. The organisation has a guild council (of 7 members) and a representative, who speaks for them in political or financial matters. The representative is almost always from the guild branch, and the council generally favours the university somewhat; the chancellor is always on it, as is the representative. The council selects itself, with periodic mandatory replacements where each member selects a successor. Corruption abounds, naturally, but no more than everywhere else. The university is focused on the arcane craft, which forms the basis of all of its natural philosophy, but it also provides a full humanist and classical education. It does not teach theology or law, since those are the purviews of other guilds and their own schools.

The guild handles practical R&D and engineering, while the university handles research and applied physics. It is an everyday matter for a guild craftsman and a university researcher to meet and collaborate on a project, with the craftsmen focusing on the practical matters such as costs and design, while the researchers mostly handle the maths and the principles.