Old Macridi E.7
Assembly Institute
Prophet–Blackjacket Training, Anticipation, and the Management of Unexpected Variables
Silver filigree traces precise geometric lines across the outer walls of a broad, utilitarian stone building several stories high. The structure is austere by Macridi standards, more fortress-school than civic hall, its narrow windows overlooking both the town and the distant Palakar Forest.
Inside, white-clad Prophets and dark-coated Blackjackets work in pairs.
At one table, a Blackjacket silently rearranges a merchant's traveling case before the Prophet beside him realizes what she intends to ask for. Across the room, another Prophet is being sharply corrected for attempting to direct a mock ambush after her assigned soldier has already ordered her behind cover.
A bell rings.
Every pair changes partners.
Then something small drops an acorn from the rafters onto an instructor's head.
No one looks up.
"Unscheduled variable," the instructor says. "Continue."
The Assembly Institute was established in Macridi so Prophets and Blackjackets could train together away from the cosmopolitan influences of Druma's larger cities. Its curriculum is built around a simple principle: protection and prosperity depend upon anticipating what another person will need before they need to ask.
Blackjackets study Prophets closely, learning to anticipate their employers' needs and commands as well as the likely decisions of rival Prophets. Prophets, in turn, are taught when judgment belongs to them and when matters of personal protection and combat should be left to trained soldiers of the Mercenary League.
The Institute is administered locally by Provost Caldris Venn (LN male human scholar), an exacting Kalistocrat who regards surprise not as an unavoidable condition but as evidence that someone failed to observe enough beforehand.
The isolation that originally made Macridi attractive for this training produced an unexpected complication: the Palakar Forest's capricious fey. Their pranks, interruptions, false alarms, stolen equipment, misleading noises, and sudden appearances have created so many unscripted disruptions that generations of instructors have grudgingly incorporated them into the Institute's teaching philosophy.
The Institute does not employ or direct the Palakar fey. Their interference is entirely their own.
When a prank remains harmless, instructors often treat it as an unexpected "learning opportunity." When the fey go too far, Macridi hires outside adventurers to resolve the problem rather than risk escalating the situation and damaging the town's long-standing accord with the forest.
This distinction matters. Macridi's relationship with the Palakar is conservative and practical: logging is limited, harvested trees are replanted, local fey sometimes work alongside laborers, and neither side benefits from turning irritation into open conflict.
Training & Professional Services
- Observation Exercise — 5 sp per participant
- Personal Security Consultation — 2 gp
- Commercial Rivalry Analysis — 2 gp
- Blackjacket Field Assessment — 1 gp
- Private Tactical Instruction — 3 gp per hour
- Prophet–Escort Coordination Drill — Available by arrangement
Institute Challenges
Challenge 1: A Lesson in Anticipation
An instructor invites the party to attempt one of the Institute's paired training exercises. One character plays the principal while another acts as protector, adviser, or observer. The instructor deliberately withholds information and introduces small complications to see whether the participants recognize a need before it becomes an order.
Characters describe how they approach the exercise. Other characters can Aid when their actions meaningfully support the attempt.
Read the Principal
The character watches posture, attention, hesitation, and changes in the room to anticipate what their assigned principal is likely to require next.
Know When Not to Lead
The character participates from the Prophet's side of the exercise, judging when to issue instructions and when to defer to the trained protector once a staged threat becomes tactical.
Challenge 2: The Broken Profit Model
Provost Venn shows the party a current Institute exercise built from real events around Macridi. Wooden markers represent logging camps, river traffic, hunting grounds, timber deliveries, and known fey territories. Black markers indicate recent disruptions.
The exercise has frustrated several senior students because every conventional explanation leaves something unanswered.
No rival merchant benefits consistently from what is happening.
Follow the Commerce
The character studies ownership, shipping, shortages, prices, and likely beneficiaries to determine whether the pattern represents ordinary commercial sabotage.
Follow the Land Instead
Rather than following money, the character ignores ownership entirely and considers waterways, root systems, animal movement, logging sites, and the physical geography of the forest.
If the party has already investigated corrupted hides at the Salty Bark Tannery, contaminated spring water at Sanctitude Saunas, or blighted timber at Best Fit Furnishings, reduce the Nature DC by 2.
Those discoveries provide exactly the kind of cross-disciplinary evidence the Institute's purely commercial models were missing.
The Fey Who Stopped Laughing
For years, a small Palakar fey called Tallowcap has been a familiar nuisance around the Institute. He steals briefing notes, swaps directional markers, imitates instructors from behind doors, hides Blackjacket gloves, and occasionally changes the labels on training equipment.
The Institute has never invited him.
The instructors have simply become very good at adapting.
Three days ago, the pranks stopped.
Tallowcap now refuses to approach the western windows and has barricaded himself inside an unused observation room. Provost Venn is less annoyed by the intrusion than concerned by the silence. Fey who have spent years tormenting the Institute do not suddenly become cautious without reason.
- Objective: Convince Tallowcap to explain what frightened him without escalating the situation or violating Macridi's accord with the Palakar fey.
- Approach: Characters might bargain with him using Diplomacy, entertain his sense of mischief with Performance, offer an appropriate gift, or invent another non-hostile approach. Direct threats are possible but risk worsening relations with him.
- What He Saw: Near the western timber line, Tallowcap watched animals flee from an apparently peaceful stretch of forest. Moments later, every nearby tree shuddered at once despite there being no wind.
- What He Heard: From somewhere beneath the ground came a sound he describes only as "a very big thing remembering how to move."
- Important Detail: Tallowcap insists the forest was not angry. It was afraid.
- Reward: Tallowcap gives the party three stolen Institute Anticipation Tokens. A character can expend one before a Perception, Survival, or initiative check to gain a +1 circumstance bonus. The Institute would very much like the tokens returned eventually.
The Institute should feel disciplined, peculiar, and distinctly Druman rather than generically bureaucratic. Its instructors are teaching an unusually intimate professional relationship: Blackjackets learn to understand a Prophet well enough to anticipate needs before receiving orders, while Prophets learn the equally difficult discipline of relinquishing control when their protectors know better.
The Palakar fey provide the comic counterpoint. The Institute carefully plans simulations, contingencies, and controlled exercises; the forest periodically throws a pinecone through the window and changes the lesson.
That arrangement has worked for years.
The unsettling development is not that the fey are causing trouble. It is that some of them suddenly are not.