Blue Heron Institute

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The Blue Heron Institute is a school for Practitioners operating in Ontario.<infobox> <title source="name"><default>Blue Heron Institute</default></title>

<image source="image"></image> <header>Basic Information</header> <image source="map"></image> <label>Type</label> <label>Location</label> <label>Inhabitants</label> <label>First Appearance</label> </infobox>

Location

The Institute operates out of a former church. They have a library, dedicated ritual space, and sleeping quarters.

Residents

Alexander Belanger serves as the headmaster and one of the teachers. The other two core teachers are Rad Ray Sunshine and Ms Durocher. Guest teachers also visit from time to time and include Mr. Bristow, Electra Miraz, the Ports, the Crowes, Mr. Musser, and Ms. Lair.<ref>“Raymond has been serving as a guest teacher for a year while pursuing other projects, but is returning this summer and fall, at the very least. We’re glad to have him. On the topic of guest teachers, I would like to extent my gratitude to Mr. Bristow, Electra Miraz, the Ports, the Crowes, Mr. Musser, and Ms. Lair, for agreeing to come this summer, and to anyone and everyone else who decides they can find the time. To others too numerous to name, I would extend thanks for the loaning of books for the student library.” - excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.5</ref>

The pupils are largely, but not entirely, acolytes of the three core teachers. They include:

Belanger Circle - Mr Belanger's various acolytes. Largely live in the Institute year-round.
Zed - apprentice of Ray Sunshine.
Ulysse & Amine - apprentices of Durocher.
Eloise - Ulysse's fiance.
Jessica - partly self-taught, not tied to any of the teachers. A generalist with some focus on the Ruins.

New pupils as of summer 2020 include:

The Kennet Trio - blackmailing Mr Belanger
Brie - associate of Zed empowered by the Hungry Choir.

Curriculum

The full list of classes is given in this Bonus Material.

History

The Institute was founded by Alexander Belanger, Rad Ray Sunshine, Ms Durocher and some others (Mr. Bristow and Mr. Musser), after they met at the site of a Deus ex Machina and defeated it together. It was named after one of the forms the god-thing projected.<ref>“Years ago, there was something on the horizon that clouded my Sight. It recurred as an image. A teenage boy dressed as a king, sitting in a chair with water running over him, repeating the same nonsense phrases over and over again. If I gutted a bird and pulled out its entrails for a simple fortune telling, I could find papers in the guts, with the phrases on it. It was… obnoxious. I traveled from Toronto to Winnipeg, met with other Practitioners who had run into the same problem, some of your parents, as a matter of fact. A company that managed and experimented with server architecture had rented out three floors of its building to a startup and had unwittingly played host to a group of technomancers trying to get users to engage with rituals they’d programmed. They abandoned their work, killed by Witch Hunters or run off by Others, and their work was deleted. As Raymond Sunshine would be sure to tell you, however, deleted does not mean gone. Just as you can pull something out of your trash bin on your desktop, their work was still there, gradually taking form, reaching out into the rest of the servers in the building until it could become a small god. After that, it started expanding out, until it was interfering with my Sight. [...] It had taken over the building and the running of the company that managed the servers. Within was a world of its own that would take a month to cross. I went to deal with it, and ran into someone else who was doing the same. A young lady who would be best described as being very interested in the most vast and uncontrolled parts of conventional practice,” He indicated Mrs. Durocher. “She had already contacted a colleague of hers from a previous errand, a man who was just then achieving notoriety for his first practitioner-facing website.” He indicated Raymond Sunshine. [...] Together with Mr. Bristow and Mr. Musser, we annihilated the god, shared out its power, and we drank together that night. For Mr. Sunshine, Mrs. Durocher, and myself, it sparked a close friendship that has lasted ever since. One of the things I hold most important about that experience was the epiphany I had, during that night of conversation and light drinks. It wasn’t the power that I was happiest with -and I was as power hungry as they come- but the moments I had been with other practitioners and felt purpose and felt like we were all better for those deals. Better informed, and we all know having the right information makes us strong. Dealing with other practitioners makes us safer, better equipped, stronger, and more capable of covering our weaknesses. That epiphany would eventually lead to us starting the Blue Heron Institute alongside Mr. Bristow, Mr. Musser, and others. We named it after one of the faces the god in the machine had worn.” - excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.5</ref> Alexander drew on favours from his family to help set it up.

Ray Sunshine spent a few years prior to 2020 engaging less with the school, serving only as a guest lecturer, but he returned to serving as one of the core staff in the summer of 2020.

References