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Basgiath War College · Riders Quadrant

Basgiath War College

Basgiath War College is an elite military college carved into the side of Basgiath mountain in Navarre, and it is where the Riders Quadrant does its killing. Open a point on the map to read what happens there, who trains there and why it matters.

Broken stone arches in a pine valley at dusk.
The college is cut into the mountain. What is left of the older stone still stands in the trees.

Campus Map

Select any marked location for its record. The map covers the four quadrants, the Parapet, the Gauntlet, the Vale and the flight field.

The short answers

Location
Basgiath mountain, city of Basgiath, Kingdom of Navarre
Quadrants
Riders, Scribes, Healers, Infantry
Study
Three years for every Navarrian officer
Entrance
A written test and an agility test
Parapet
About 18 inches wide, 200 feet aboveground
Candidates lost on the Parapet
Around 15 percent
Gauntlet
Taken in autumn, about two months in. Failure is fatal
Graduation rate
Roughly a quarter of Riders cadets

Four quadrants, one college

Every candidate takes the same entrance exam, and the result sorts them. Most students are conscripted, some volunteer, and some arrive as punishment. Fail the exam and you go to the Infantry Quadrant.

The Scribes Quadrant is the scholarly and archival branch. Professor Markham teaches Battle Brief there, Jesinia Neilwart serves as a scribe, and the Archives belong to the Scribes. Violet Sorrengail was trained to be a scribe before she crossed into the Riders Quadrant.

The Healers Quadrant handles medicine, including Nolon, an eighty-four-year-old rider with a mender signet. The Riders Quadrant is the one that bonds dragons, and the only one where Threshing decides whether you continue at all.

The Parapet and the Gauntlet

The Parapet is the first filter: a stone bridge about eighteen inches wide and two hundred feet aboveground, connecting the main building to the Riders Quadrant citadel. The stones are uneven and held with mortar. Around fifteen percent of candidates die crossing it.

The Gauntlet comes later, in autumn, after roughly two months. It is the test that stands between a cadet and Presentation, and failing it is fatal. Two days after Presentation comes Threshing.

Families hear very little during the first year. Contact is restricted for first-years only, and if a student dies, parents may retrieve the body and effects or let the college handle burial and the burning of effects.

The first year, in order

Conscription Day, mid-July

Candidates arrive and take the entrance exam. Riders candidates cross the Parapet to become cadets.

The Gauntlet, autumn

Roughly two months in. The test before Presentation. Those who do not pass die.

Presentation Day

The last formal step before the valley. Two days later, Threshing.

Threshing, October 1

First-years enter the valley. A dragon bonds with them, ignores them, or kills them. Cadets who are not chosen may repeat the year.

Service

Graduation falls on July 10. Reunification Day is July 1. Surviving graduation does not mean surviving service.

What each place is for

Established The Parapet Nobody trains on the Parapet. It is the entry test, taken once, by first-year candidates who have already passed the written and agility examinations. The Parapet is the college's first filter and the first place a cadet learns that the Riders Quadrant does not negotiate. It also explains why the first-year intake is smaller than the list of names that arrives at the gate.
Established The Gauntlet First-year rider cadets, who are timed and ranked against one another on the course during the weeks leading up to it. It is the last gate before the dragons. Everything the quadrant has taught in the first two months is compressed into one run, and the cost of failure is the same as the cost of failure at Threshing.
Established The Vale Cadets enter only when the college brings them in, first to be looked over at Presentation and then again on October 1 for Threshing. Dragons decide everything else that happens there. It is the reason Basgiath exists where it does. The college is built against the mountain because the hatching grounds are on the other side of it, and the Vale is the one place on the map where humans are guests.
Established The Flight Field Riders and their dragons, once a cadet is bonded and cleared to fly. It is the divide between being a cadet and being a rider. Until a cadet has a dragon to bring here, the field is just a piece of ground they are not part of yet.
Established Riders Quadrant Rider cadets, in black leathers cut so that blood shows less. First-years share quarters and are led by squad leaders, section leaders and wingleaders drawn mostly from the third year. This is the quadrant Threshing belongs to. Every rule that shapes October 1, from the wing structure to the Codex, is set inside these walls.
Established The Courtyard The whole quadrant assembles here. This is where a cadet learns which wing, section and squad they belong to, and where the college addresses everyone at once. It is the public square of the quadrant, and the place where private grief becomes public information. When riders die, the courtyard is where the rest of them find out.
Established The Dragon Rotunda Everyone passing between instruction, meals and quarters. It is a thoroughfare rather than a classroom, and it is the first interior a new cadet sees. The rotunda is the hinge of the citadel. It is also the clearest statement of what Basgiath thinks of dragons, since the building is named for them before a cadet has met one.
Established The Dormitory Cadets sleep here and nowhere else, which means the dormitory is where the violence of the quadrant follows them when the training day ends. The move from a shared room to a private one is the only material reward the quadrant gives for bonding, and it is the most visible sign that a cadet has become a rider.
Established The Academic Wing Cadets of the Riders Quadrant, who sit written instruction between physical training, and the professors who deliver it. Battle Brief is where riders learn what the war actually looks like, and it is the academic half of a training regime that otherwise measures people by whether they survive the physical half.
Established The Gathering Hall Cadets eat and gather here in squad and section groups. The room is sized to the hierarchy of the quadrant rather than to individuals. The pillars are how the college summarises dragonkind, and they are the first place a cadet sees the six colours treated as equal and permanent.
Established Scribe Quadrant Scribe cadets, who are not conscripted into combat training. Professor Markham teaches Battle Brief from this quadrant, and Jesinia Neilwart is one of its scribes. Violet Sorrengail trained her whole life to be a scribe before her mother forced her into the Riders Quadrant, which makes this the branch she was built for and the one that could have kept her alive without a dragon.
Established The Archives Scribes work here. Riders are visitors at best, and the records they are allowed to see are not the records that matter. The Archives hold the version of Navarrian history that the leadership chose to keep, which makes them both the best place to learn the truth and the hardest place to reach it. Specifics of the restricted sections are not yet established.
Established Healers Quadrant Healer cadets, and the riders who work with them. Nolon, an eighty-four-year-old rider with a mending signet, and Winifred, a healer-quadrant header, are both associated with it. It is the quiet counterweight to the Riders Quadrant. The college spends cadets at a rate that would be impossible without a medical branch built into the same mountain.
Established Infantry Quadrant Infantry cadets, who train as soldiers rather than as riders and who are the reason the college can field an army at all. It is where the people who failed the tests end up, and the existence of the quadrant is the reason the Parapet can be described as a choice rather than a sentence.
Established The Bell Tower Nobody trains in the tower. It marks time for the whole college, and its bells carry across the fields below the gate. It is the one piece of Basgiath that reaches everyone equally, cadet and general alike, which is more than can be said for any other building on the map.
Established The Iakobos River Nobody trains in the water. Cadets cross and follow it, and the ground beside it is one of the few places on the campus where riders can meet away from the quadrant walls. It is the natural border of the campus. Everything the college controls sits on one side of it, and the valley the dragons keep sits on the other.

What the college is protecting

Spoilers: Iron Flame

This section contains material from later in the series.

The wards that shield Navarre are powered by dragons, and the wardstone truth is the reason the college guards its Archives so closely. The restricted sections matter because the official history taught inside these walls is not the whole history.

The Archives are held by the Scribes Quadrant. Specifics of the restricted material are not established in reachable sources, so treat any confident account of them with suspicion.

Sources

Questions people actually ask

Basgiath is the military academy of Navarre, built into the side of Basgiath mountain, where officers for the four quadrants are trained over three years. It is both an honour and a death sentence, and only a minority of cadets graduate.

Riders, Scribes, Healers and Infantry. The Riders Quadrant has its own citadel, the Scribes Quadrant keeps the Archives, the Healers Quadrant handles medicine and the Infantry Quadrant forms the bulk of the army.

A narrow stone bridge roughly eighteen inches wide and two hundred feet above the ground, connecting the main building to the Riders Quadrant citadel. Every rider candidate must cross it, and roughly fifteen percent of candidates die doing so.

The trial that comes before Threshing, taken in the autumn after about two months of training. Cadets who do not pass it die, and the survivors go on to Presentation Day and then Threshing two days later.

Everyone takes an entrance exam with a written paper and an agility test. Most students are conscripted, some volunteer and some arrive as punishment. Rider candidates then face the Parapet, and the quadrant is the one most cadets do not choose freely.

Three years for all Navarrian officers, whichever quadrant they are in. Family contact is restricted during the first year only, and graduation falls in July.

The Vale is the valley behind Basgiath where the dragons live, and it holds their hatching grounds. Dragons are fiercely protective of it, and humans are not welcome there outside the days the college brings them in.

1 further answer is held back because it gives away a plot point. Raise your spoiler setting in the header to read it.

Ready to be chosen?

Your dossier is waiting on the other side.

Cross the Parapet

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