The School
The School is a mysterious organization that uses powerful Psychics, and have also dabbled in experimentation with other areas of the Auric Spectrum. rt
Contents
Origins
Not much is known about when and how the School came into being, though Orloff believes it has existed for at least as long as DNA has been known about, if not longer. In truth, counting its previous incarnations, the School is at least more than 1,500 years old, with it existing in its modern incarnation since the late 18th Century.
Capabilities
The School doesn't consider itself a criminal organization, as opposed to Team Rocket or Galactic, and has members embedded deep in high-level goverment positions. Its main goal involves creating perfect Psychics, and as a result it has fully mastered genetic engineering, allowing them to create Psychics out of genetic templates obtained from Illusian Psychics and other groups considered worthy of note.
Given its long history, the School maintains an extensive archive of genetic material sourced from Aura-sensitive individuals going back centuries. They are known to be opposed to Team Iron, and have implanted Lucille Cain amongst their ranks as a sleeper agent.
School Batch Types
Testing-Line Schoolchildren
The most common batch of the School and the culmination of centuries of genetic research into Auric abilities, they are made from genetic templates, but are mostly meant to be tested to destruction, and can be lethally "liquidated" at any time if they prove inadequate, with genetic samples being harvested for further study. Schoolchildren are created with adolescent bodies in order to move to testing quickly, so despite having an apparent age between 6 to 14 on average upon "birth", they may be chronologically far younger. It should be noted that as they are created using a machine that uses the templates to form their bodies from the physical materials making up a human body, while Schoolchildren can be derived from particular people, they would not be considered true clones.
Due to a combination of diet shortcuts and alteration of their gut biota, they can have gastrointestinal issues that make gaining nutrition in general hard and stomaching Non-School meals such as the near-ubiquitous nutrient paste even harder, at least for the first few years of a given escapee's life. Some Schoolchildren are also purposely made with particular chemical imbalances in order to facilitate the development of a particular power, such as Schoolchildren with Electric-subtypes tending to have sodium deficiencies.
As they are not meant to survive to adulthood, if they manage to reach late puberty or adulthood anyway, unintended side effects are not uncommon, ranging from hormonal imbalances to early-onset cancer, compounded by the issues mentioned above. These maladies are referred to as "the Curse" by surviving Schoolkids. While Schoolchildren come from a variety of templates and therefore can look like just about any ethnicity or mixture of two or more, a very common shared trait tends to be dark hair and vivid purple eyes, the latter serving as a near-universal tell of their true nature.
In the early days, Schoolchildren were almost always solely addressed by their number, representing their order of production. Over time, the School's scientists started using alternate naming schemes alongside the number system, often derived from name sets that could be associated with numbers, such as those belonging to royalty and other world leaders. Around the 1950s, the School's scientists standardized their naming scheme to the Periodic Table of Elements, which has continued into the present day.
Schoolchildren further in the production line can have differing designations based on the year, as their designations follow the official element naming scheme used in the IUPAC. As a result, Schoolchildren produced during a specific year may not necessarily share designations from those of a later batch. For instance, in 2000, the 111th element in the table had yet to be given a true name; the 111th Schoolchild that year was designated as Unununium instead of Roentgenium. In 2021, the 118th schoolchild received the designation Oganesson, as the 118th element in the table had already been named.
Apart from an alias that they may use when dealing with non-School personnel, often derived from the element they're designated after, such as Nitrogen of the Phantom Class going by "Jen", Schoolchildren have no true name to start with.
Over the course of several centuries, the School has produced Schoolchildren in batches. There are normally approximately 118 children in a single School batch, otherwise known as a "Class", though in the past they've had fewer numbers which have necessitated different naming schemes. A few of these "classes" have been given names. While "classes" are normally comprised of Psychics with some classical Aurics, the Phantom Class was comprised of Obscurics, only to be liquidated once the School considered a Batch that served as a hard counter to their Psychics as a major liability.
The Freshman Class is the most recent batch created by the School.
Alumni, Schoolchildren who manage to survive to physical adulthood, get to have proper names, though they are still considered lesser by the Templars and the greater organization at large, and are not allowed a title.
Despite the nature of their creation, Schoolchildren are just as capable of experiencing the full spectrum of emotions as any other human.
Templars
Templars are similarly created from templates like their testing-line brethren, but are meant to be the School's main soldiers and enforcers, and so lack the rapid growth-related issues of their counterparts. They often tend to be derived from genetic samples taken from the more successful Alumni. Unlike testing-line Schoolchildren, they get to have names from the start, in tandem with some sort of title, serving to give them a greater sense of superiority while also dampening any chances of finding common cause with their fellow created Aurics. While considered a far greater asset than their testing-line brethren, Templars are still considered little more than tools by the School higher-ups, if higher quality ones. They share with other School creations a tendency for having dark hair combined with purple eyes.
According to Percy, Templars tend to be AB+ so that the commonly O- Schoolchildren can be used as blood donors in a pinch.
Yellow Eyes
A special batch of Schoolchildren somehow modified to have yellow eyes and have the ability to enter the Metaverse and use Personas, as well as summon Shadows and demons. They specialize in assassination via mental shutdowns.
Known Members
Leadership
Scientists
- Orlando Rosa (Formerly)
- James Patrick Yew (Formerly)
- Keegan Lazarus
- Alexis "Azala" Forsythe
- Cassander Circhester
- Edmund Powell (Deceased)
- Victor Moreau
Other
- Kahlia (test subject; escaped)
- Lucille Cain (sleeper agent)
- Allerdyce Pratchett (henchperson; murdered)
- Project Hekatonchires (Amalgam of murdered Schoolchildren; destroyed)
Known Genetic Creations
Individuals marked with a dagger (†) are deceased. Aliases stolen from another person are marked with double quotes ("").
Templars
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