Marnor

Marnor is a great master of the Archon and its teacher of arcana, one of the school's most important subjects, in the campaign Mürekkep ve Çelik ("Ink and Steel"). He set the second thesis of the mage Castor and was one of the three masters who judged it.¹²³

Teacher

Marnor's theoretical examination requires the student to keep a glass bulb lit with arcane power while answering hard questions; if the light goes out or the questions defeat him, he fails. Castor scored ninety-nine, while the mage Aypol Morks barely passed. Marnor and the Archon's chief archivist are both influential masters who publish academic work. When he had to leave the school for a day with the masters Nihal and Finolgar, he asked Castor to teach his morning class on the difference between arcane and divine magic.⁴⁵²⁶

The second thesis Marnor gave Castor, a simpler but tedious task that required travel, became Castor's encyclopedia of arcane foci, a study of the foci that casters use and how they relate to their owners and their ways of casting. Castor presented it in Elvish for a guest examiner and claimed to have spoken with a priest, paladins, druids, rangers, a sorcerer and, with a lord's leave, a warlock held in prison, besides many wizards. Horus Maxwell found the subject useful and wished to make a book of it.¹⁷⁸⁹¹⁰

The mastery examination

Marnor would not look over Castor's thesis before the board, as was proper, and asked why so successful a student chose so dangerous a path; he explained that masters such as Yotun and Nocklin wait before attempting the great mastery because of its danger, and said that his own mastery examination had been the most terrible day of his life. He advised Castor to serve the chief archivist in return for scrolls of spells beyond his power, without saying which spells he would need. He explained that the examination is held not at the Archon but in Olmo, the sunken city beneath it, because water carries magic poorly and keeps any accident from reaching the school. When Castor told him of an agreement leaving his works after death to Starsong, Marnor was upset and suggested he write under another name.^1112131415

The chief archivist, a separate master who manages the scrolls from a glass room overlooking every shelf of an archive of more than a million books, later gave Castor a Polymorph scroll free from the school's funds and a Water Breathing scroll in return for the signed debt document of Castor's friend Luke. For two of Castor's books he gave three inks, and he said that in his youth he had loved reading the works of an elven evoker named Tenduri Stormborn.^1617181920

Friends and politics

Marnor counts Loren Opsus, the emperor's chief mage, as a close friend, a gifted but showy mage who made Castor's hat and staff. He had met the emperor only briefly and spoke mostly with his advisers. He disliked the news that the emperor had taken witch hunters into his retinue, and Castor said he had heard that the high priest Yozan opposed it too.²¹²²²³

After the uprising at the Archon, Marnor told Castor that he was not offended but disappointed. Politics was not their business, he said: even if the Empire fell, mages would carry on their art, and they should not burn themselves for a short-term cause. He foresaw that the affair would harm Castor's career outside the school and urged him back to academic work.²⁴²⁵

The board

On the board for Castor's theses, chaired by Horus Maxwell with the Starseeker Imralis Silvarel of Starsong, Marnor seemed cool after the first presentation and displeased or thoughtful after the second. Before the examination Castor went to bid him farewell; Marnor said he trusted his work but was not sure he had enough experience, and hoped he would become the youngest master. He went down to Olmo with the examining party, looking about as though for the first time.^262728293031

When Castor returned and laid the written terms of his agreement before them, the masters judged it in the Archon's interest. Marnor congratulated him, proud that he would be the youngest master, and sighed for patience when Castor at once asked about applying for the great mastery. One of Marnor's apprentices, not yet a master himself, teaches an arcana class.^32333435