University of Ubrekt

The historic, urban university located in the Seat of the Ubrekt is a specialist in classical scholarship and the civic arts. The University is based out of a number of beautiful pre-Alexandrian civic building and Demi-Pantheon temples. It is a university of antiquity, evolving from the already refined Academy Ubrekti, a long tradition of oral teaching and debate invented in the Ubrekti Empire. It is the preeminent school for history, philosophy, law, and classic arts like sculpture, poetry, painting, and theater. It is also famous for it bardic college, the Academy of Arts Dramatic, which focuses on performing arts like theater, debate, and spoken poetry. Unlike most universities, it is not a Church-founded institution, and has a small but deserved reputation for producing heretical thought.

History

This is one of only two pre-Alexandrian universities of the mainland, and was founded to replicate the success of its predecessor the University of Hakan. Unlike its eastern cousin, which focuses on the scholarly studies of the arcane, this university focused on civic skills and performing arts, two elements important in their already prevalent Academy Ubrekti. The church, like much of Ubrekt, backed the Lady of Peace and opposed Alexandria, and the university was explicitly targeted by Steros Merroand as a home of seditious thought after the Ascension. Despite early persecutions, the university was simply too powerful and well-established to fall, and the university rose to prominence as the ideal teaching model during the foundations of the other Alexandrian Universities. Over the years, the university has acquired massive volumes of written texts and cartloads of statues and art pieces, and accumulated the resources to build the most amazing libraries and galleries of the world.

Curriculum

Unlike its predecessor in Hakan, this University was not focused on magical research, but instead on civic skills. The Ubrekti Empire developed extensive legal codes, and applied them throughout its massive empire by institutionalizing the study of law and governance in the Academy Ubrekti to train an army of bureaucrats. The successful among these accumulated large collections of documents and texts from across the empire. These traditions remained integral to the Ubrekti capital despite the collapse of the Empire, and the University has always reflected these ideals. This University also has had access to some of the most historic private art and history collections of the world, which along with its own collections, gives it an unprecedented number of rare, classic works, limited print books, and masterpiece art.

Notable Places

• The Academy of Arts Dramatic is based out of a temple in the historic district of the city that once served Tallia and Lyssia. This beautiful complex houses multiple theaters and studios, but is most famous for the Trajan Coliseum, an architectural marvel in a Glass-Steel dome where performances traditionally must reflect the weather at the time.
• The Mychee Archive, a massive storage facility commissioned by Hadrian Ubrekti to house the knowledge of the lands he conquered. This warehouse-like structure is filled with an enormous collections of written works on history, philosophy, and religion, many from pre-Alexandrian times.
• Arellus' Palace is a small, urban castle of a long-dead family line acquired by the University to house its modest magical academy. The building is rumored to be haunted by the ghost of one of the family patriarchs, and also houses a significant family tomb that attaches to a large, poorly mapped catacomb system that, in places, date back to the advent of the Ubrekti Empire. Wild tales of secret societies made up of prominent Ubrekti nobles and their dark rituals is common rumor fodder for the rumor mill among the lower-class Hakani laborers and locals.