I need help with creating and building the lore, history, and settings for an Adventurer's Academy in my campaign. The name will be Hawk's Peak Academy, and I want it to be like ther Harvard or Oxford of wide-range adventuring/military school training, with an adjacent mage's college (think Harvard and MIT).
#How to Worldbuild an Adventurer's Academy
timid lance
lone sigil
Sounds like a huge undertaking. Why not just steal everything from Pathfinder? You could either put a school on the island, or use the magic school on the Northern end of the southern Continent.
idle bramble
So, to build a history, start with the founding. What advenuring group settled there? Why there? Is it a significant place? Near a megadungeon or old battlefield or ancient ruins or a gate system? Then outline three significant events in the history - maybe the founder dies, or vanishes. A feud over some aspect of the Academy happened (do they train evil adventurers?) An incursion or attempted assault might be a good third event. Do NOT overbuild your history. You want to be able to fit adventure backgrounds in as needed. Then build today’s situation. Are they still a “school” for young adventurers? Or just a place for finding jobs? Do they provide access to adventure sites? Are there rifts in the upper political layers? What old problems linger?
timid lance
Well, for backstory:
The guys who founded the Academy were the descendants of the adventurers who sealed away the Olde Angry God Anh-Turati (the god the BBEG worships and is trying to resurrect), and they put the Academy there because, as a reward for their heroism, they were given the right to lay claim to the island. Which they did.
Generations of family later, it's now the premier school for young adventurers to learn the arts of swords and sorcery, but they also have some secret rifts in the upper echelons
A schism has occurred, with several of the founders' descendents being indoctrinated into a cult whose goal is to resurrect the Olde Angry God Anh-Turati, the one their ancestors sealed away almost eight-hundred years prior
Their founder died over 300 years ago and in his honor a Great Library was built, in which his personal library of magic tomes and history books were placed for the students to peruse, except for a few books that were missing, books that were written by monks of this "Pagan" monastery.
It was said that these books were hidden because they contained the keys to unlocking Anh-Turati's Tomb
And the map that would lead to the crypt itself