Director of Studies' Office
Like his predecessor, Aulis Vorozheykin felt a vague distaste for the outdoor offices previously offered to Koldovstoretz directors. The yurts and cottages found in small clusters throughout the campus had fallen into too much of disrepair for his liking, and though it was penned on his to-do list to fix some of these elder buildings into more likeable and up-to-date figures, for now he was more comfortable where he had always been: in one of the underwater classrooms in the beneath-the-ground tunnels of Koldovstoretz, previously a place for divination and spellcasting, now converted into an office.
Though many of the underground classrooms were not particularly warm or clean, many being directly beneath the lake and thus prone to drippiness and/or dirt from the walls, floor, or ceiling, Aulis had spent the last decade turning his classroom into a divinatory safe haven, reinforcing the dirt walls with carefully laid bricks and making it one of the toastiest, handsomest, and most comfortable places on the Koldovstoretz campus. He pretended that it was his teaching that made students want to stay there, though he knew that during the colder winter months, it was the enchanted fire in the fireplace - Gubraithian, enchanted to never go out even when the temperatures outdoors dipped well into the negative double digits (in Celsius, that is).
Though it was now the Director of Studies' office, as of February 2025, keen-eyed students could still notice traces of the room's original and decade-long purpose as a classroom for spellwork and divination. Bundles of herbs - field eryngo, St. John's wort, and four-leaf clover, just to name a few - as well as bundles of birch sticks hung from the archway in the center of the classroom, and several Soviet-era kerosene lanterns dangled from the ceiling, each giving off a warm glow that aided the fire in keeping the entire classroom very well-lit so long as the Director wanted it to be so. Various enchanted paintings of former Vedmak and Vedma decorated the walls, many that would shout out advice to the students during class - some helpful, some... less than. The floor was littered with a sight that was not particularly common in many Koldovstoretz classrooms: a host of small tables and chairs, mismatched and mostly hand-carved, a collection that had been built up over the years of teaching.
A large booth in one corner shields Aulis's desk from the view of the rest of the room, including from the portraits on the walls. Those who come around the open section towards the back, which faces the fireplace for warmth, will find a large wooden table cluttered with just about everything a divination teacher could ever want: multiple crystal balls of different shapes and sizes, various candlesticks and crystals, more herbs, several different tarot decks of which at least one is usually shuffled and ready, and even more on a few shelves behind the Director's cushioned chair. A stool, smaller and less comfortable, sits opposite across the desk, ready for one student and one student only to come visit the Vedmak-turned-Director - for a prophecy, for a question, for some advice, for a solution, or just for some company, though if he provides well on the latter, only his students can tell.Only one visitor is allowed in the Director's office at a time, but if you would like to attend in a group, please owl the Director about either coming in a group or creating a separate thread with the Director. Please ensure the previous visitor to the office has left and the office has been marked "Open" before you RP yourself entering. The office will be marked as "Closed" when there is a visitor within to assist with this, and no new visitors shall be accepted until the office is once again marked open.
This office thread is for brief interactions and IC questions for Koldovstoretz students only. For longer interactions with the Director of Studies at Koldovstoretz, or if you are not a student at Koldovstoretz, please owl me to request a thread.
When you enter this thread, you can find Director Vorozheykin either 1) sitting in his hidden booth desk working with one of his divinatory tools mentioned above, 2) tending the Gubrathian fire in the fireplace, or 3) talking to one of the magical portraits on the wall (please keep the portrait vague as these are not specified yet). Upon entering the thread, you are welcome to god-mode which of these the Director is doing and join him based on what your character would most prefer to do. If you would like to do something else with the Director and would like to god-mode him doing something else, please owl me for permission before stating so. With that being said, please keep this within reason. You will not find the Director tap-dancing upon the top of the tables. He only does that when all of the students are asleep.Office hours are currently CLOSED for everyone except Raphael Jourdain.
Director of Studies' Office
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French Sign: #388f59
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━sta 06|eva 08| str 00| wis 07| arc 04| acc 10━━━━━━ Dhampir | Lovely Creature ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Raphael Samuel Jourdain. The boy didn't quite know how he landed up in front of the director's office. He preferred to be alone and by himself. So why was he actively trying to interact with another human? Why was he willingly putting himself out of his comfort zone?
Perhaps it was because he was in a new environment. Maybe it was simply that he needed to figure out his way around the school so then he knew how to best avoid un-necessary interactions with others. But truth be told, he knew it was because he had to figure out how this whole magic thing was going to work with him. To begin with, he was technically a foreign student since while he lived in China he was French with a french citizenship. On top of that, while he was in fact learning mandarin, he still struggled with the language especially in sign.
He tried not to overthink it as he raised his hand to knock on the door. His other hand held a sheet of parchment and his quill. It was the most effective way he could think of communicating at the time. He waited a few seconds after he knocked before he pushed the door open. Had he been called in? He didn't know. But usually waiting a few seconds before entering seemed to work the best for him.
As he walked in his first glance went towards the herbs around the room. He could recognise some of them from afar. Four leaf clovers, field eryngo and St. John's wort. Though the others he would definitely have to get closer to be able to identify them. He then spotted where the director was. The director seemed to be having a conversation to the portraits. Well, that's what Raphael presumed anyways. He could see the director's mouth moving but couldn't figure out quite what he was saying.
Raphael picked up the quill he had with him and began to scribble a quick hello on the paper. He had decided on writing it in English, since it was the most commonly known language usually. Below that he also wrote hello in Mandarin though the character was rather shaky. He hoped it would be clear enough to comprehend though. He held the parchment up hoping the director could read it.
| INpc of Fawkes S. Chaos | If you are the master, be sometimes blind. If you are the servant, be sometimes deaf. |
Fawkes' shop |
Director of Studies' Office
AULIS VOROZHEYKIN.
KOLDOVSTORETZ. DIRECTOR OF STUDIES.
Russian. | English.
Spoken. | Thought.
Just a few days into what would hopefully be his first full year as the director of studies at the Koldovstoretz Conservatory, Aulis Vorozheykin was already quite tired. He had been the headmaster of the oft-wintry Russian school since February, of course, but actually starting a school year in this position was somehow much, much more exhausting than his past few years of doing so as a simple Art of Prophecy Vedmak. Obviously, he no longer taught the equivalent of Divination at Koldovstoretz, though you wouldn't know it by stepping into his office, which had of course once been his classroom - he'd grown familiar with the creaks of doors and the sounds of steps in the deep underground corridors outside, and so moving to a big fancy yurt for his business dealings and day-to-day Director duties had seemed wrong, somehow.
Plus, students were more likely to trust him if he stayed among them, waving hello between classes and pouring them the occasional cup of tea. But that reason, at least, he kept to himself.
It was also the first year Koldovstoretz would be accepting non-human students, something Aulis himself had fought to bring to the table, along with many of the other heads of the Eleven Schools. Hogwarts had set an example, yes, but they had been alone for far too long, and the white-haired Director was pleased that in his first few months here he had already managed to convince the board that the occasional werewolf or dhampir student wouldn't be too big of an issue. With a Seer at the helm of the school (as far as they knew), how could they not preach diversity? Of course, this had come with plenty of extra arrangements - blood pops now stocked in the Izba mess hall, the creation of a full-moon zone on the island in the middle of Bear Lake, and the like.
Little did Aulis know he was about to have more arrangements to make.
The director looked up at the sound of the knock, soft and gentle, as if the creator of the sound was nervous. Likely one of his new students, then, as Aulis had grown accustomed to the first-years' shaky raps upon his door over the past few months. "Come through," he called out in Russian, then repeating it in his (admittedly quite basic) Mandarin, the other of Koldovstoretz's two official languages and a tongue which Aulis had been trying (and mostly failing) to teach himself since his appointment as a professor several years back. Sure enough, after a few beats, a young student pushed the door open and came in; blonde and pale much like Aulis himself, the boy came quietly across the room to him. To ease the youth's nerves, Aulis turned to one of the portraits of a former Vedma of the Art of Prophecy, offering the buxom redheaded woman in the magical painting a smile. "They just get younger every year, don't they, Madame Jonienė?"
"You hardly look older than a fourth-year yourself, young one," the portrait retorted snappily, turning back to shuffling her cards.
Aulis turned then to the blond boy, who had pushed a scrap of parchment towards him without saying a word. Unusual, certainly, but Aulis had dealt with stranger things. He picked up the parchment, noticing two words scrawled there, one in English and one in Mandarin - both versions of greetings, if he was correct on the latter. "Hello to you as well," he said in his thickly accented English, glancing back up to the student as if unsure exactly what to do with the paper in his long-fingered hands. "You prefer English to Russian. I see. Is your first time here? How can Director help you, uchenik*?" (*young student, masculine) And then he pushed the paper back towards the student, in case the child preferred writing to speaking. Again, Aulis had certainly seen stranger things.
Plus, students were more likely to trust him if he stayed among them, waving hello between classes and pouring them the occasional cup of tea. But that reason, at least, he kept to himself.
It was also the first year Koldovstoretz would be accepting non-human students, something Aulis himself had fought to bring to the table, along with many of the other heads of the Eleven Schools. Hogwarts had set an example, yes, but they had been alone for far too long, and the white-haired Director was pleased that in his first few months here he had already managed to convince the board that the occasional werewolf or dhampir student wouldn't be too big of an issue. With a Seer at the helm of the school (as far as they knew), how could they not preach diversity? Of course, this had come with plenty of extra arrangements - blood pops now stocked in the Izba mess hall, the creation of a full-moon zone on the island in the middle of Bear Lake, and the like.
Little did Aulis know he was about to have more arrangements to make.
The director looked up at the sound of the knock, soft and gentle, as if the creator of the sound was nervous. Likely one of his new students, then, as Aulis had grown accustomed to the first-years' shaky raps upon his door over the past few months. "Come through," he called out in Russian, then repeating it in his (admittedly quite basic) Mandarin, the other of Koldovstoretz's two official languages and a tongue which Aulis had been trying (and mostly failing) to teach himself since his appointment as a professor several years back. Sure enough, after a few beats, a young student pushed the door open and came in; blonde and pale much like Aulis himself, the boy came quietly across the room to him. To ease the youth's nerves, Aulis turned to one of the portraits of a former Vedma of the Art of Prophecy, offering the buxom redheaded woman in the magical painting a smile. "They just get younger every year, don't they, Madame Jonienė?"
"You hardly look older than a fourth-year yourself, young one," the portrait retorted snappily, turning back to shuffling her cards.
Aulis turned then to the blond boy, who had pushed a scrap of parchment towards him without saying a word. Unusual, certainly, but Aulis had dealt with stranger things. He picked up the parchment, noticing two words scrawled there, one in English and one in Mandarin - both versions of greetings, if he was correct on the latter. "Hello to you as well," he said in his thickly accented English, glancing back up to the student as if unsure exactly what to do with the paper in his long-fingered hands. "You prefer English to Russian. I see. Is your first time here? How can Director help you, uchenik*?" (*young student, masculine) And then he pushed the paper back towards the student, in case the child preferred writing to speaking. Again, Aulis had certainly seen stranger things.
|| DATE. early Sept. 2025 | LOCATION. Aulis's office, Bear Lake, RUS | OUTFIT. see banner | WORD COUNT. 768/200 ||
|| KEEN EYE | PERFECTIONIST II | CHARMER | NONVERBAL MAGIC | WANDLESS MAGIC | LEGILIMENS | OCCLUMENS ||
@Raphael Jourdain
|| KEEN EYE | PERFECTIONIST II | CHARMER | NONVERBAL MAGIC | WANDLESS MAGIC | LEGILIMENS | OCCLUMENS ||
@Raphael Jourdain
Director of Studies' Office
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French Sign: #388f59
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━sta 06|eva 08| str 00| wis 07| arc 04| acc 10━━━━━━ Dhampir | Lovely Creature ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Raphael made sure to pay close attention to what the director was saying. He did his best to make out what was being said, granted he was still getting used to lip reading but he was able to decipher most of what was said. Thankfully, the director spoke in English. Raphael knew he would have struggled if the director picked mandarin or god forbid, russian. The boy had yet to even begin to learn the language let alone learn how to lip read it. He took the parchment back from the man and held his quill to it again.
The director's first question was simple. Well it was more of a statement rather than a question but Raphael couldn't really tell the tone indicator from just observing the lip movements. From what he had been told, the voice typically went slightly higher towards the end of a question statement. Not sure how true that was but he decided to take his siblings words on it. He wrote out an answer for the first question.
You prefer English to Russian. Yes, English is preferrable. I do not yet understand Russian. Seemed easy enough, considering the director spoke in English, that meant he did not have to write the sentence again in mandarin. Raphael was thankful for that. He didn't want to subject more people to his atrocious writing of the mandarin characters.
The next question was also an easy on to answer. Is your first time here? Yes, it is my first time here. My name is Raphael Samuel Jourdain. I'm a first year student. He wrote his name, the slight flourish on the capitals a habit he picked up years ago from watching his older sister write. Was it necessary? No. But it felt nice to do it anyways.
Finally to answer the last part of his questions. How can Director help you o0- Raphael couldn't catch the last part. It wasn't a word he knew or if he did know it he couldn't read it. But no matter, he got the jist of the question down. He paused for a second. This was the hardest to answer. How could the director help him?
There were a lot of things he needed help in that was a given. From learning how to say spells to actually learning russian. But Raphael had never been good at asking for help... then again, perhaps him being here already was a start in the right direction. So he wrote on the paper. I am deaf and by proxy, mute. I require help in learning how to verbalize spells.... He took a breathe before handing the parchment back over to the Director to read.
| INpc of Fawkes S. Chaos | If you are the master, be sometimes blind. If you are the servant, be sometimes deaf. |
Fawkes' shop |
Director of Studies' Office
AULIS VOROZHEYKIN.
KOLDOVSTORETZ. DIRECTOR OF STUDIES.
Russian. | English.
Spoken. | Thought.
Sure enough, the young child took from him the parchment and began to scribble upon it again. Perhaps he was mute; there had been a student or two during Aulis's time at Koldovstoretz (both as a professor and as a teenage scholar himself) who had been unable to speak since birth, and they had mostly communicated through Russian sign language, of which Aulis still knew just a smidgen. Mostly the one-handed alphabet, as well as some curse words, though he wouldn't be saying - er, signing - those last ones around a student.
A loud crash behind him caused Aulis to flinch slightly, and the Director whirled over one shoulder while the boy was still writing; one of the paintings behind his chair, another former Vedmak of the Art of Prophecy who had famously specialised in tasseography, had apparently fallen asleep and toppled off his stool into one of the many piles of fine china teacups surrounding him. Luckily, the teacups were, well, painted, and thus very hard to break, but the sound had still seemed real, and very ear-piercing. Aulis gave the enchanted artwork a gentle smile. "We must set an alarm for you, Sir Chaykov," he teased in Russian before turning back to the boy... who hadn't even looked up from his parchment, let alone reacted to the clattering noise.
Ah. The young fellow is deaf.
Aulis's suspicions were confirmed when the parchment scrap was pushed back over the table to him a few moments later, and he read the young boy's answers, nodding slowly. There weren't any other deaf students at Koldovstoretz at the moment, at least as far as he knew - but, again, it wasn't an entirely foreign concept. The biggest issue was, as the child (Raphael, apparently) had written, teaching them to cast spells, which were already difficult spoken and even harder wandlessly. The Director took a moment to think, rubbing two of his fingers together, before pursing his lips and turning back to the boy. "I assume you know to read lips," he said, this time in English once more, attempting to speak slowly and clearly as he had once learned to do with other Deaf students in his own time here as a child. "Your journey will not be easy but other Deaf students in past have done well. Is good luck we have excellent Languages instructor; can help you with Basic Language Programme. I enroll you now in Russian sign language, will make communicating very much easier."
As he spoke, Aulis was jotting down the basics of what he was saying in English on the parchment so that the boy had notes of their conversation: Basic Language Programme, Russian sign language, speaking lessons. On that last point, he looked up to meet Raphael's eyes. "Biggest concern is speaking for casting spells. Languages instructor will help that too. In future, when you can cast with words and you are older, maybe I help you learn wandless magic. But very, very far future. First you learn in Basic programme." He returned to the parchment, sketching out a rudimentary map on its backside. "Here, is map of underground. Take door on left, go through classroom of Plant Care to door on other side, this will be Runic Language classroom. Vedma of Runic Language is also Vedma of Basic Language Programme. Tell them I send you, show them parchment." Quite satisfied with this solution, Aulis leaned back in his chair, though not before he handed the paper back to Raphael and gave him one of his brilliant, winning smiles. "Is good plan. You do well here."
A loud crash behind him caused Aulis to flinch slightly, and the Director whirled over one shoulder while the boy was still writing; one of the paintings behind his chair, another former Vedmak of the Art of Prophecy who had famously specialised in tasseography, had apparently fallen asleep and toppled off his stool into one of the many piles of fine china teacups surrounding him. Luckily, the teacups were, well, painted, and thus very hard to break, but the sound had still seemed real, and very ear-piercing. Aulis gave the enchanted artwork a gentle smile. "We must set an alarm for you, Sir Chaykov," he teased in Russian before turning back to the boy... who hadn't even looked up from his parchment, let alone reacted to the clattering noise.
Ah. The young fellow is deaf.
Aulis's suspicions were confirmed when the parchment scrap was pushed back over the table to him a few moments later, and he read the young boy's answers, nodding slowly. There weren't any other deaf students at Koldovstoretz at the moment, at least as far as he knew - but, again, it wasn't an entirely foreign concept. The biggest issue was, as the child (Raphael, apparently) had written, teaching them to cast spells, which were already difficult spoken and even harder wandlessly. The Director took a moment to think, rubbing two of his fingers together, before pursing his lips and turning back to the boy. "I assume you know to read lips," he said, this time in English once more, attempting to speak slowly and clearly as he had once learned to do with other Deaf students in his own time here as a child. "Your journey will not be easy but other Deaf students in past have done well. Is good luck we have excellent Languages instructor; can help you with Basic Language Programme. I enroll you now in Russian sign language, will make communicating very much easier."
As he spoke, Aulis was jotting down the basics of what he was saying in English on the parchment so that the boy had notes of their conversation: Basic Language Programme, Russian sign language, speaking lessons. On that last point, he looked up to meet Raphael's eyes. "Biggest concern is speaking for casting spells. Languages instructor will help that too. In future, when you can cast with words and you are older, maybe I help you learn wandless magic. But very, very far future. First you learn in Basic programme." He returned to the parchment, sketching out a rudimentary map on its backside. "Here, is map of underground. Take door on left, go through classroom of Plant Care to door on other side, this will be Runic Language classroom. Vedma of Runic Language is also Vedma of Basic Language Programme. Tell them I send you, show them parchment." Quite satisfied with this solution, Aulis leaned back in his chair, though not before he handed the paper back to Raphael and gave him one of his brilliant, winning smiles. "Is good plan. You do well here."
|| DATE. early Sept. 2025 | LOCATION. Aulis's office, Bear Lake, RUS | OUTFIT. see banner | WORD COUNT. 768/200 ||
|| KEEN EYE | PERFECTIONIST II | CHARMER | NONVERBAL MAGIC | WANDLESS MAGIC | LEGILIMENS | OCCLUMENS ||
@Raphael Jourdain
|| KEEN EYE | PERFECTIONIST II | CHARMER | NONVERBAL MAGIC | WANDLESS MAGIC | LEGILIMENS | OCCLUMENS ||
@Raphael Jourdain