History of the Heptagram
The Common History
For most of the Dynasty, the Heptagram is a sorcerous palace filled with the demonic and the profane, thankfully kept distant from properly civilized society on the Isle of Voices. Few give much thought to the place, considering it an ancient institution perhaps dating from the foundation of the Realm or stretching back even further into the Shogunate Era... many consider the Isle of Voices to have once been a ghost- and demon-filled Anathema stronghold before the Immaculate Dragons descended and bound them in the Jade Prison, though wether this is followed by 'sorcerors there now learn the power to bind demons and wield mighty essence against threats to Creation, as was done in ages past' or 'sorcerors there study the secret heresies left by the Anathema to access unnatural powers' depends on the politics of the individual.
The Alumni History
Those who have attended the sorcerous school, and some who have a deeper interest in arcane studies, know another history... the ghosts on the Isle of Voices do not rest easy, and the cries of the dead paint a deeper picture.
The Heptagram was founded by a cabal of seven sorcerors, given the task personally by the Scarlet Empress. Foremost amongst them was Ragara Bhagwei (eldest son of his House founder), who remains Headmaster at the school. The remaining founders are varied: three Dynastic sorcerors and three mortal thaumaturges (Heptagram graduates cite only two mortals, with the final founder a Sidereal astrologer). It is upon the teachings of these seven sages that all the Heptegram's sorcerors are trained.
There is a ruin across the Isle of Voices from the Heptagram, a crater within which the Isle's ghosts are most heavily concentrated. The teachers at the school tell that it stands as a testament to the risks of demon-summoning... an occasional professor might mutter something about imperial daughter Mnemon before quickly shutting up.
The Heptagram opened to its first class (of 20 students) in RY 428.
The True History
The true history of the Heptagram is known only to a few in Creation… to Princess Mnemon, most assuredly, to some ghosts haunting the Isle of Voices, at least in part to the Scarlet Empress and to the founders of the Heptagram itself (all but one of whom have passed into Lethe), and to perhaps a handful of gods and Sidereal Exalted.
During the Shogunate Era, long before the Great Contagion, there was a school of sorcery on the Isle of Voices. It was called the Versino, and its curriculum included not only sorcery but the Immaculate Faith, its teachers monks dedicated to both sorcerous research and enlightenment. When the Immaculate Order took shape in the reign of the Scarlet Empress, the Versino was made center of the Realm’s sorcerous research, studying the artifacts and magicks of the Anathema. The greatest sorcerous texts of the former Shogunate were gathered there, both to be studied and to be kept safe from those who might pursue them without Immaculate guidance.
Around RY375 (Imperial Calendar), all of that accumulated knowledge was obliterated, leaving only one survivor: Mnemon, daughter of the Empress and a student at the school.
Mnemon was cleared of responsibility, and in truth she was not the cause: the teachers at the school had summoned a demon of the 2nd Circle and failed to bind it, after which it had set about slaughtering them all. The Imperial Daughter had simply ordered her own demon-slave to kill a few of the Immaculate monks rushing to the fight, so that she might acquire the artifact whch empowered a Terrestrial to make such a mighty summoning: the Emerald Thurible. One could argue that killing several of the monks who might have beaten the mighty demon and fleeing with the only arifact that had the power to bind or unsummon it, makes Mnemon culpable. One would be right… but the Empress did not press the matter.
The Versino, its records, its experts, were gone by the time reinforcements arrived and the demon was destroyed: even the graduates of the Heptagram, greatest sorcerors of the Age, are but shadows of those trained at the Versino. Ragara Bhagwei was, as a Versino graduate himself, tasked with forming a new school of sorcery. Blaming Mnemon for loss of the old school, he was relieved that she was banned from participation in the effort... to this day, the Princess is barred from entering the walls of the Heptagram, and though she is known to make a form of pilgrimage on occasion to the Versino’s ruins, the spirits around the Isle of Voices are not particularly inclined to let her through.
