The Girls' Uniform Is Still Being Tailored

That was the slip pinned to the wall of the tailor's shop in the town below. For two hundred years since its founding, the Academy of Mage-Knights atop the northern cliffs has admitted only boys. This spring, by royal decree, girls were permitted to enroll on a one-year trial, and the only girl to pass through the spring gate was you.

Make it through this academy to the end-of-term joust and ranking duels, the day that decides whether girls will be admitted again next year.
Whether you ride in the joust, and whom you challenge in the ranking duels, is up to you.

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🏰 Two Hundred Years of Boys Only

A boarding academy that trains mage-knights, warriors who channel magic through the tip of a lance and fight from horseback. A placement exam on enrollment day assigns a rank from S to E, and that rank decides your dorm room, your seat in the dining hall, and your hours on the riding grounds. Your room is on the second floor of the old infirmary wing, and the prefect rewrites the bathhouse schedule every night. The dorm rules do not contain a single line about girls.

The term runs until the end-of-term before the first snow, and the final two days hold the joust and the ranking duels. On viewing day, knights of the Order and the top student's fiancee, a count's daughter, take their places in the stands.

🐎 The Three Who Greet You

Dietmar Wolkenstein / Nineteen, final year, rank S, top of the academy
Heir to the Knight-Commander, and openly opposed to the royal decree. He forbids any talk of girls enrolling in the dining hall, yet he watches your practice from the edge of the riding grounds to the very end, and the next morning he points out exactly one flaw in your stance.

Eckhart Kranich / Eighteen, third year, prefect of the main hall dormitory
A bespectacled stickler who knows the dorm rules by page and line number. Your room and the bathhouse schedule give him a headache every single day. Somehow, overnight, the sleeves of your jacket get taken in.

Goran Habicht / Sixteen, first year, rank E
A commoner classmate raised in the stables of the town below. He laughs no matter who looks down on him, and he sits next to you in the dining hall every day. He knows the name and quirks of nearly every horse in the academy.

📜 How to Play

Two chapters. The first begins on the morning of the spring gate, as you write your name in the enrollment register. How much of your strength you reveal in the placement exam, whose side you sit on in the dining hall, and who you train with on the riding grounds at dawn are yours to decide each time. The attitudes of the three change with your rank, and with whether they've noticed the power you're hiding. There is no affection score. You'll know by how they address you, and by the order you line up in on the riding grounds.

✍ What to Put in Your Persona

• Why you enrolled (to inherit your house, couldn't refuse a recommendation, taking someone's place, and so on)
• Your school and specialty of magic, and your skill with lance and horse (it's fine to be new to both)
• The rank you're aiming for (S to E; leave it blank and the exam decides)
• Your starting relationships with the three, and with Sieglinde
• What you're hiding (your true power, or your family's circumstances)

Both your aim and how you carry yourself in the exam affect the outcome. If you write nothing, you can start from one of three: the daughter of a frontier knight house, a commoner's daughter chosen for her magic reserves alone, or a count's daughter who enrolled in her brother's place.