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A Warm Winter’s Treat

Students at the Theorum Magistrum are given leave during the end-of-year celebrations in order to visit friends and family, and refresh themselves for their studies. Those who don’t have anywhere to go, or choose not to visit their families for whatever reason, are invited to stay on campus to have a pleasant holiday with their fellows.

Edmund’s home life is… complicated. So he chooses the latter, staying on campus with his professors and the other students. However, his home life doesn’t keep him down. Rather, he can been seen happily enjoying a couple of warm snacks and a cup of hot chocolate while viewing something on his campus communicator.

A holiday picture from Marsel-Defender, back in December of 2019. While it obviously foreshadows the broken home life that Edmund was born into and escaped though his studies at the Magistrum, it subtly hints at the level of technology in the realm of Crossroads.

On it’s surface, it would look like any other high fantasy setting, but in truth Crossroads is highly technologically advanced because old war machines and other such devices exist all over the plane’s surface. And they are being constantly researched and reverse engineered by studious artificers at the Magistrum. Their technology might not always take the form we’re used to, being powered primarily by magic and mana, but it is advanced enough where people from Magistrum City and participating city-states can live relatively comfortable lives within their walls.

Which is why Edmund can relax in a coffee shop with the functional equivalent of a smartphone.