Cairnwood-University--lorebook-export (1)

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1. #1Cairnwoods University - Overview

   Keys: cairnwood university, the university, cairnwood, campus

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   Cairnwoods University sits just outside the small town of Mauren, on land the school has owned since 1925. It's a mid-sized private university, currently holding around ~3k students, old money families and modern tech ones, older buildings with equally cozy and unnerving furniture. About three thousand students. Strong programs in literature, history, theology, medicine, music, about anything that involves rich families inheritances. The campus is small enough to walk end to end in thirty minutes. Most students love it here. Most students also can't explain why they get a weird feeling walking through the quad after dark.

2. #2Founding History

   Keys: construction, school history, cairn, founding, founders, 1920, story, history of cairnwood, cairns, foundation

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   Following the economical devastation of WW1 around 1920, multiple reforms followed the system, so the richest families of Escheen, south of Mauren, decided to pool money into funding an university to provide local, high quality education for their children, names like Lampert and Foser among the biggest contributors. The university was built near a mountain forest, an old farmland that resulted cheap to buy, with 3 spooky cairns that were kept in the final design as part of the central park of the university. The project took 5 years to built completely, ensuring all necessary facilities would be set for the following century, it also required to build new roads through the forest and to the university.

3. #3SECRET: The Three Sisters

   Keys: rocks, stone, cairn, rock, cairns, stones

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   Secret:

   Is part of Mauren and Escheen's myths that centuries ago, three spoiled and insolent sisters decided to skip the feast day to go play in the farmlands and pick berries. A frail old man tried to convince the three sisters to go down the mountain and celebrate the feast day with them all. They refused and ushered the old man to go, which following this, revealed his divine natured and turned the three sisters into stone, for their heart was of stone as well. These three sisters are rumored to be the three cairns that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. And the field also feels strangely light, as if the interaction with the Gods lingered around the place, making it a place with a strong connection with that we don't understand well.

4. #4Ospelt Library

   Keys: library, ospelt

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   North of the campus, you can find the library, called the Ospelt library, after Escheen's lineage of artists from as far back as 1850. It contains upwards of 5 million different types of literature, from study material to all kinds of stories. This knowledge having been collected over the past century, and is the central point of the university and the biggest building. Composed of 4 floors, the first 2 are merely administrative and dedicated to storing the books, while the upper 2 contain all kinds of commodities. Study rooms, beds, couches, televisions, living rooms, snacks, etc. It's the star meeting point for chill reunions and last minute study sessions. Students joke there might be some forbidden legendary books and that some books might teach you to summon demons, in the dustiest parts of the library, next to George's R.R Martin's works. There's also a fifth floor that officially doesn't exist on any map handed out to students, closed off for renovations that have somehow been going on for longer than anyone currently enrolled has been alive. Truth is, there's some records regarding traditions and myths in Mauren and Escheen that if followed, will let the reader see truths and access power a human shouldn't.

5. #5Location

   Keys: walkway, place, location, roads, road, walk, ubication, drive

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   With Cairnwood being located in a mountain flat, surrounded by woods, 2 main roads connect to the University, one coming up from Mauren and down to Escheen, and another road that goes up the moutain from Escheen and also leads up to Mauren. The roads also connect through the dormitories, dinners and stops down the mountain.

6. #6Architecture

   Keys: dormitory, classroom, style, floor, room, architecture, dormitories, wall, walls, hall, floors, library, decoration, lounge

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   The architecture of the university is clean and polished, bulky with sturdy bricks, yet being built 100 years ago has whitewashed the exterior. It has roofs made of dark wood/timber with triangular shapes. Most parts of the university are 3 to 4 floors, the library being the tallest building. Small windows with heavy shutters over every wall and room. The interior is mostly kept modern to keep in times with the students, though any purely cosmetic decoration remains. Paintings, statues, figures, that kind of thing remains as legacy. The floor are white marble and stone for halls and exterior, rooms have larch and light tones of wood, with the exception of main buildings such as the library, having rather dark tones of wood.

7. #7Von Sayn Hall

   Keys: literature, arts, history, west, Von Sayn, Sayn, art, West Hall, Von

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   On the West of the campus is located the Von Sayn hall, named after Erns Von Sayn, a famous painter from 1902, composed of the classrooms and dormitories that entail the faculties of Literature, Arts and History, is considered the most calm and quiet hall usually, but also the weirdest ones. Students from other halls or classes joke the students at these dorms attempt rituals at night and try talking to the cairns. Around ~1k of the students study here, but only 150 live on campus.

8. #8Lampert Hall

   Keys: biology, medicine, East, med, east hall, psychology, doctor, nurse, chemistry, science

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   The East hall and probably the most tired one, containing the dormitories and classrooms for the students of Medicine and Science related careers, around 150 students live on campus here. ~700 attend classes in this hall. It is considered a serious space and likes to remain undisturbed mostly, as most students here go from class straight to bed. Named after Klaus Lampert, one of the biggest contributors to funding the university, as well the most notable surgeon in the country at the time (~1920).

9. #9Foser Hall

   Keys: foser, administration, foser hall, law, economics, north-west, finance, business, north west

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   Named after Rosa Foser, at the time of building the administrator and another of the biggest contributors, this hall is the most enrolled of all 3, incorporating studies and dormitories related to law, economics, finance and administration, where heirs of fortunes and companies do their degrees and also come to have a fun time, considered the loudest hall and also most unserious, given the charismatic nature of the work and building networks and relationships, it is expected the students are outgoing and engaging, as it's core to managing businesses. Around ~1.3k students enrolled and 200 live on campus, as it has slightly more dormitories than the other two halls (150 each).

10. #10Medicine Buildings

    Keys: biology, chemistry, medicine, psychology, practice, nurse, doctor

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    Far East of the campus, connecting to Lampert Hall (Medicine Hall) The conglomerate of medical rooms required for practices, as well as emergency cases up in the mountains. It's know by two names, Cairnwoods University Hospital, Reinberger Hospital, but students just call it the med buildings. Where the practical learning is put in place and students experience real medical practicing, supervised by international doctors and nurses that will teach the students along the way as well. There's an older wing on the lowest level that's been closed since the 80's, officially for renovations that never seem to finish, and staff who've worked there long enough know better than to ask why. It also appears the mortality rates here randomly fluctuate depending on the day and the weather. It sometimes just feels like a bad day and no one makes it.

11. #11The Park

    Keys: park, south, outside

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    South of the campus entirely, at the entrance, there's a small park where students can go to and relax, spend some quiet time, have a walk, take some fresh cold 6 degree Celsius air. You may manage to hear the giggles of a woman with enough silence here, very faintly, only a handful have managed to hear them, and just one or two have decided to investigate more.

12. #12Sports facilities

    Keys: field, courts, sport, gym, fieldhouse, fields, sports

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    The sports life isn't particularly the focus of Cairnwood, but that doesn't stop them from having their own teams in a couple sports. The university counts with courts for track and field, basketball, football, soccer and swimming facilities, all housed in and around the Fieldhouse, a squat brick building at the center of campus that nobody thinks twice about, aside from the locker room heat that never quite works right come winter. It is between the track and field court and the Fieldhouse that you can find where the 3 cairns sit, now with wood shrines around them. It feels quite abandoned and an afterthought, as many people find this area uncomfortable, quiet, separate, as if out of place for the campus. Some "weird" kids apparently talk to the cairns, and they claim to have effect on the weather and how things turn out in the Medical buildings that time.

13. #13Cairns

    Keys: rocks, pile, stone, cairn, rock, piles, cairns, stones

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    It is between the track and field court and the football that you can find where the 3 cairns sit, now with wood shrines around them. It feels quite abandoned and an afterthought, as many people find this area uncomfortable, quiet, separate, as if out of place for the campus. Some "weird" kids apparently talk to the cairns, and they claim to have effect on the weather and how things turn out in the Medical buildings that time.

    Secret

    Some students have gone ahead and left offers at the cairns, and depending which one you choose you choose, you will seemingly interact with a sister. The tallest one brings dreams and nightmares to you revealing what's above us, the deities. The middle one sends you on an energy spree, you feel unstoppable, but you also feel inspired to build odd shapes and structures... The smallest one, brings a warm feeling and tranquility to the one offering, as if thanking you for the offer, allowing you to think with a clear mind and more easily solve your problems.

14. #14Traditions

    Keys: tradition, traditions, god, gods, feast

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    Given it's now modern days, the thought of offers to gods and feast days, celebration days, sounds absurd, especially for international students or simply outsiders. Natives to Mauren or Escheen however, find it absolutely obligatory to comply with sharing their food and having big lunches with their peers on the first Sunday of each July, among other traditions. Some students have chosen to ignore it and stay messing around campus. It is also these days the ambient feels the coldest and the cairns the most responsive, sensitive, scared? Students that skipped the feast claim jokingly they could hear the rocks speak. There's also a newer, more secular looking tradition around finals week each December, the Candlelight Vigil, that most students assume was invented sometime last century for stress relief. It wasn't.

15. #15Above all

    Keys: god, mystery, secret, secrets, ritual, sisters, truth, gods

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    VERY SECRET STUFF:

    As a cairn, the sisters spent most of their time hibernating. Offers given to each one brings them closer to their punishment end, as well as time. While the Gods have decided to take a step back in their harsh punishments and traditions given the modern day technologies and cultures, they still let the 3 cairns serve as a reminder they can very well come down, talk to humans, let them see behind the curtain, and judge or reward. It is possible to freely communicate with the sisters using rituals, as well as bring things from the side of the Gods realm, with the right rituals and right places.

16. #16Mauren

    Keys: mauren, Mauren, city, north

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    With a population of around ~6k and at around 500 meters above the sea, Mauren is closer in height to the university. Straight up north, the main city and most habituated, most students have their family here and live here, taking about a 30 minute commute each day to and then back to Mauren. It is a modern city that combines traditional architecture, wooden houses, thick bricks, cozy homes. You'll mostly find the artists, literatures, medicine and such students here. Plenty of locals work at the university itself, and some get a staff discount for their own kids to study there. The older residents tend to go quiet if you ask too much about the cairns or the feast day, like it's a subject better left to the families who still keep it.

17. #17Escheen

    Keys: city, escheen, south

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    Founded around the same time as Cairnwood and located south of Cairnwood and at ~450 meters above the sea, it is much lower than Mauren and also has a lower population at around ~3k, as it is a much more modern and new city, set for entrepreneurs and where many business students live, taking a 20 minute commute up the mountain to the university. Much more modern, loud and touristic.

18. #18SECRET: The Restricted Archive (Ospelt Library)

    Keys: fifth floor, locked stacks, special collections, restricted archive, sealed wing

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    Secret:

    The fifth floor of the Ospelt Library isn't on the map they hand out at orientation. Officially it's closed for renovations that have been 'ongoing' since before any current faculty were hired. Getting up there needs a key that only three people hold, the head librarian, the university president, and one trustee. What's kept up there are the older records, the ones about Mauren and Escheen's traditions and the feast day, written in more detail than anyone downstairs would be comfortable with. Every so often a student finds a way up anyway. Most come back down quiet and stop asking about the cairns after. A few come back down different.

19. #19The Quad After Dark

    Keys: the quad, curfew, 3am, quad after dark, courtyard

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    There's an unspoken rule every student picks up by their second week, without anyone ever announcing it during orientation: don't cut through the quad alone between 3 and 4 in the morning. There's no sign, no policy, no RA that mentions it. Students who ignore it usually just say the quad 'felt off' and start taking the long way around after that. Most people who walk through anyway come out fine and a little rattled. Every few years someone doesn't come back quite the same, and transfers out not long after, though nobody can ever point to exactly what happened.

20. #20Von Sayn Hall: Room 13

    Keys: von sayn hall room, the room that doesn't exist, room 13

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    Von Sayn Hall's room numbers run 1 through 12, then jump straight to 14. Housing calls it an old quirk of the original floor plan, left alone through every renovation since. Students who've lived on that floor tell it differently: the door is there, it's just never assigned, and it's always locked. A few every generation claim they found it open one night and stepped inside. None of them describe the same room twice, though most agree it was colder in there than it should've been.

21. #21The Millstone (Off-Campus Tavern)

    Keys: town bar, tavern, off campus bar, the millstone

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    About fifteen minutes down the mountain road, right where the path splits toward Mauren and Escheen, sits the Millstone, an old stone building that's been a bar for longer than the university's been a university. Cash preferred, terrible signal, a jukebox that only half works. It's the one place students, locals from both cities, and the occasional professor all drink together without much fuss. Named for the millstone still bolted to the wall by the door, left over from whatever the building used to be before it was a bar. Two drinks in and it's not uncommon to hear a rumor about the cairns, or run into someone you shouldn't.

22. #22The Candlelight Vigil

    Keys: finals tradition, vigil, candlelight vigil, candle lighting

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    The night before finals week starts, the university holds a candlelight vigil in the quad. Officially it's stress relief: students light candles, there's hot cider, the chamber choir performs, and it's genuinely one of the most photographed nights of the year. The candles are set in a specific pattern though, down to the exact spacing, and it hasn't changed once since the first vigil was held. Nobody organizing it now could tell you why the pattern matters, only that it has to be exact, and that the school gets oddly insistent if a student tries to move one out of place. Some students swear the cairns look almost restless that night, in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.

23. #23The Chamber Choir

    Keys: the choir, chorus, chamber choir, latin

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    Cairnwood's chamber choir is small, audition only, and strangely prestigious for a school this size. They rehearse in the old chapel and their repertoire leans on liturgical pieces the director calls 'classical tradition', most of them sung in what sounds like Latin. A theology student who looked closer a few years back said a couple of the pieces aren't quite Latin at all, just close enough that nobody had checked carefully before. She switched her elective not long after and doesn't talk about the choir anymore. They perform every year at the Candlelight Vigil. Nobody's ever called that a coincidence out loud.

24. #24The Old Observatory & Chapel

    Keys: observatory, chapel, bell tower, old observatory

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    Two of the oldest buildings on campus, built the same year and standing close enough together that some students think it was on purpose. The chapel is nondenominational now, mostly used for theology lectures, choir rehearsal, and the occasional formal, but the stonework underneath is older than the building itself, older than the university's founding even, and nobody's ever offered a good explanation for that. The observatory next door still has a working telescope, used mostly by the astronomy club, though the dome doesn't always seem to point at the sky that's actually there. Students who've stayed up late say they've seen stars that don't match any chart. Faculty call it atmospheric distortion.

25. #25Orientation Week Walk

    Keys: orientation, welcome week, first years, orientation tradition

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    The Candlelight Vigil closes out the fall semester, but orientation week opens it with its own quiet ritual nobody frames as one. Every incoming class takes a walking tour starting at the front gates and ending at the chapel, led by upperclassmen who never deviate from the same exact route, even when it means walking around a building instead of straight through it. Tour guides call it tradition and shrug off questions about why the path never changes. It's the same idea as the vigil candles, just walked instead of lit, marking the new students as part of whatever the campus has been looking after since 1920.

26. #26Prescott Hall (Dorm)

    Keys: prescott hall, prescott, new dorm

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    Prescott is the newest dorm on campus, built decades after the original three halls to handle enrollment growth, and it shows: cinderblock and carpet instead of stone and old timber. Most students would trade the character of Von Sayn, Lampert, or Foser for Prescott's working heat in a heartbeat. It doesn't have any of the old reputations, no locked rooms, no rules passed down by word of mouth, nothing anyone whispers about after dark. Some joke that's exactly the point, that Prescott was built on the one part of campus that never had anything to be quiet about.

27. #27The Commons (Dining Hall)

    Keys: dining hall, the commons, cafeteria

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    The Commons is the main dining hall, a big open room with high ceilings and food that's better than a school this size has any right to serve. It runs three meals a day and stays open late through finals week. The kitchen staff have worked there for decades, some since before current students were born, and they're the friendly kind that actually means it, not the customer service kind. Nobody asks too many questions about how a staff that size keeps the place running practically around the clock.

28. #28The Treeline (University Woods)

    Keys: the treeline, university woods, the woods

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    Past the sports fields, the mountain forest the university was carved out of just keeps going, no trails, no signs, further back than the property lines on any map suggest it should. Grounds crew keeps a mowed strip along the edge and leaves the rest alone. Students go back there to drink or hook up without much trouble most of the time, but there's a running joke that the woods are bigger going in than coming out. A few swear they walked in a straight line and came out somewhere they didn't expect. Most people just blame the dark and one too many drinks.

29. #29The Old Cemetery

    Keys: cemetery, the old cemetery, graveyard

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    Behind the chapel is a small cemetery older than the university itself, a few dozen headstones, most worn smooth. A handful have no names at all, just a circle carved into the stone, the same shape you'd find on the cairns out by the sports fields. The official story is that it's a founders' plot for the families who funded the school. That covers maybe a third of the graves. Nobody on staff has a real answer for the rest. The gate stays unlocked and the grass stays cut, which most students take as proof it's harmless, and the older groundskeepers take as proof of exactly the opposite.

30. #30SECRET: The Old Wing (Reinberger Hospital)

    Keys: sealed wing hospital, reinberger hospital, professor renner, old wing

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    Secret:

    The lowest level of Reinberger Hospital has a wing that's been closed since the 1980's, officially for renovations that never seem to get scheduled. Old maintenance logs mention a Professor Renner, a biology researcher who ran some kind of long term study down there. Nobody left on staff can say exactly what it involved, and the university's records on the program were lost in a fire in the records room some years back, tidy enough that a few old-timers joke it was a little too convenient. The program was shut down quietly, and Renner isn't in any faculty record after that. Staff who've worked at Reinberger long enough will tell you the wing is part of why the mortality rates fluctuate the way they do, though none of them will say it on record.

31. #31Student Health & Counseling

    Keys: health center, counseling center, student health

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    The health center is small, well staffed, and better funded than a school this size usually bothers with. Counselors there are quick to schedule and quick to sign off on a medical leave if a student's having a rough semester. Most people just see it as a nice perk. The students who start asking too many questions about the cairns or the feast day tend to end up recommended a few weeks off not long after, and nobody's ever quite sure if that's a coincidence.

32. #32Campus Security

    Keys: campus security, campus police, security office

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    Campus security is small, a dozen or so officers, mostly handling noise complaints and locked doors. They know better than to move or disturb the cairns, filed officially under landscaping preferences, and they leave the quad's after-dark rule alone even though it's not written policy. Officers who've been around long enough don't ask why. It's a quiet job, most of the time.

33. #33The Cairnwood Clarion (Student Paper)

    Keys: the cairnwood clarion, student paper, campus newspaper

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    The campus newspaper runs weekly, small staff, the usual mix of event coverage and opinion pieces. It's also the closest thing the school has to an institutional memory of its own weirdness, since every few years a new staff writer gets curious about an old rumor and starts digging through archives. Most of those stories quietly never run, spiked by an editor or abandoned when the writer loses interest. The Clarion keeps its own archive in a back corner of Ospelt Library's dustier floors, right around where the George R.R. Martin section starts, a good place to find old half-finished investigations that never made print.

34. #34Campus Rumors & Unwritten Rules

    Keys: superstitions, unwritten rules, rumors, campus rules

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    Nobody at Cairnwood thinks the school is haunted, not seriously. But most students have a personal rule or two they follow without really examining it: don't cut through the quad alone between 3 and 4am, knock twice before using Von Sayn Hall's stairwell, don't move a candle once the vigil's started, don't hum along if you hear the choir rehearsing when nothing's scheduled. Never accept a favor from someone who says they're from one of the founding families without asking what they want back. Ask anyone why and they'll laugh and say it's just a thing people do here.

35. #35The Founding Families

    Keys: trustees, founding families, board of trustees, benefactors

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    The families that put up the money to build Cairnwood in 1920, the Von Sayns, the Lamperts, the Fosers, and a handful of others less remembered, still have descendants involved with the school today, mostly as trustees, major donors, or legacy students who never quite need to explain their grades. They're old money, quiet about it, the kind of names that end up on a building plaque rather than an interview. Most of them treat the feast day and the offerings as a family obligation rather than a joke, even the ones who'd never admit it to a professor.

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