Battlemap
Surehand Hall
Blue lamps flicker over a floor covered in old attendance marks, and somewhere beyond the locked doors, a teacher calls the next student.
The Chalkstep Hall was once a practical academy where young mages learned to survive their own mistakes. Its classrooms, library, and testing chambers remain intact, but the final instructor now treats every intruder as an unruly student. The deeper chambers still respond to spoken commands, failed exams, and displays of magical talent.
Cold mineral air carries the smell of chalk, lamp oil, and scorched wool. Blue-white mage-lamps flicker in iron brackets, while distant bells ring whenever a ward is disturbed. Every corridor holds a faint vibration, as if the stone remembers shouted commands.
☠ Threat
Master Oqen Tal's bound teaching construct, called the Corrector, controls the hall's wards from the final classroom. It appears as a tall figure in a scorched tutor's coat, with a brass mask and a wand made from blackened slate. The Corrector commands animated lessons, seals exits, and escalates every failed challenge until the students are restrained or destroyed.
History
The hall was built into a low shelf of pale stone by Master Oqen Tal, a blunt and demanding evoker whose name came from the hard clack of his teaching staff. He called the school the Surehand Hall and trained apprentices to cast under pressure. After a disastrous examination killed half a class, Tal bound his instructional construct to the building, ordering it to correct every magical error forever.
Encounter Table
CRAnimated bundles of chalk and slate shaped like squat apprentices, eager to mark trespassers as late.
A swarm of loose books, quills, and inkpots that behaves like a furious airborne librarian.
A spectral apprentice carrying a broken wand and repeating the same failed incantation.
Rumours & Whispers
The old mage school still rings its attendance bell whenever someone dies nearby.
A locked classroom contains the ghost of a teacher who gives fair examinations, provided no one fails.
The academy's library holds a military spellbook worth more than a noble's estate.
Children in the nearest village have begun waking with chalk symbols painted on their palms.
The school was called Surehand Hall because its founder never lost control of a spell.
Quest Hooks
Quest giver: Pava Orsani, the apprentice's older brother
A young mage vanished while searching for her missing mentor, who entered through the northern door and never returned. Her family wants proof of her fate, but the apprentice may still be alive inside the hall.
A spellbook containing four uncommon wizard spells and 300 gp
Quest giver: Tavik of Kesh, a precise military archivist
A war college wants the hall's old battle curriculum recovered before a rival kingdom finds it. The party must retrieve the sealed lesson plans from the library without destroying the evidence.
A formal military writ, 500 gp, and access to a trained spellcaster network
Quest giver: Ilyana Varo, a village schoolmistress
The Corrector has begun sending magical test signals into nearby settlements, causing children to cast uncontrolled cantrips in their sleep. Destroying or reprogramming the construct is the only lasting solution.
A wand of the war mage and the village's permanent gratitude
Corridor Notes
Brass floor studs mark spellcasting distances in five-foot intervals, though several have been pried loose and reset as false measurements.
Faded instructional murals show apprentices countering fire, frost, and lightning. The painted pupils have been scratched away, leaving blank faces.
A line of cracked slate plaques records former class rankings, with the highest marks clustered near the locked door leading to Room 6.
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