Each Concordian School of Magic contains within its walls powerful sealed vaults. Not only do these form the foundations of the Schools design and act as a lodestone for more complex mana manipulation, but they also provide a secluded and secure location to store magical phenomena.
Partially managed by the Shardcircle, and partially by the elected headmasters of their Schools, Vaults can be used to hide away dangerous items or creatures that are beyond the Concord’s ability to destroy or have some other purpose. They can be used to study and understand new magical effects, or even as private collections of venal mages.
A vault exists wherever a School of Magic is constructed and currently one cannot exist without the other. Vaults require the skilled management of arcane experts found in Schools of Magic and Schools of Magic require the grounding presence of a vault or vault-like construction to begin their experimentation.
Powers of The Vaults
Seclusion
The Shardcircle may vote to ‘Entomb’ an item, creature, or other phenomena that can feasibly be transported by ox and cart, within one of the Vaults of its Schools of Magic. Doing so places the phenomena within the Vault, protected from the world (and the world protected from it). Provided the Vaults wards are kept empowered (See: The Arcline), the phenomena should remain contained.
Investigation
Staff of each School of Magic will experiment with and on the contained phenomena in their Vault during each season unless the current elected Headmaster instructs an Augry to halt investigations. The results of this investigation will be presented to the Shardcircle as a whole at the following Summit in written form. If there are any questions or needs for direction of upcoming study, they will be presented to the Headmaster of the Vault’s School of Magic.
Possession
While a phenomena is within the Vault of a School of Magic, it is the legal property of the Headmaster of that School of Magic, it is their responsibility to see it studied, secured, and perhaps utilised responsibly. If the phenomena would be responsible for any crimes, damage, or calamity, legal responsibility for those results would fall upon the Headmaster of that School.
In addition, the Headmaster can opt to ‘disentomb’ a phenomena from their Vault without Shardcircle approval. This is done by indicating that they wish to withdraw the item from their vault in the ‘additional notes’ section of their downtime form. If this is the case, the item will be made available to them in their character pack at the next Summit. They still require full Shardcircle approval through an ‘Entomb’ vote to return an item to a Vault. They may opt to withdraw a phenomena prior to its investigation that season.
Given the distance between Passage and the Schools of Magic, there are no other methods to withdraw items from Vaults.