Hardin Academy: School of Forbidden Truth

In a remote, deserted land where the shadow falls earth dragon AntharasHidden in the northern mountains is a cave. Outside, there's nothing but bare rock and scorched earth. Inside, there's a school where they study exactly what the rest of Aden terrifies them into banning. Hardin Academy, and one of her mentors greets the guest with words that reek of heresy.

"My name is Orim, and I serve the great mage Hardin. I seek the truth—here, in this desolate land where the dark shadows of the dragon Antharas lie. If all that remains of the much-admired light is hypocrisy, then perhaps the truth truly lies in the darkness."

Orim of the Shadow

Escapee from the Tower

The academy was founded by a man who could have become a luminary of official magic, but spat on it. hardin - graduate Ivory Towers, but her ways disgusted him.

"I graduated from the Ivory Tower, but I had my doubts about the elitism there. This academy is open to everyone. However, I only teach magic to my students."

hardin

The Tower accepted only the gifted and noble—Hardin, however, accepted those it wouldn't have allowed in. His right-hand man, Master Kaspar, is one of those: "He accepts students like me, of humble birth, without any particular talent for magic." But Kaspar also drops something more disturbing—a guess that makes the academy no longer just a haven for the outcasts.

“And yet I still wonder: did the Master have another reason for leaving the Tower, other than the one he told us, the students... Perhaps he is growing in strength so that one day he can act against the Ivory Tower itself.”

Master Kaspar

Truth in the Darkness

They teach here what would get you burned at the stake in the human kingdom—black magic. But Orim presents it not as evil, but as a cold-blooded weapon.

"The power of darkness is neither good nor evil. No one judges whether a sharp blade is good or bad... It all depends on whose hands it's in. It can serve justice just as easily as it can do evil."

Orim of the Shadow

And it's not the wicked who come to him, but the disillusioned. Orim knows his students inside out:

"Usually, they're knights who trampled innocent peasants, or priests who burned innocents at the stake... Each has their own reason, but they all share one thing: anger at the hypocrisy of those who commit cruelty in the name of justice. They all want to prove that justice can be achieved through black magic."

Orim of the Shadow

This is the dark truth of the Academy. It is fueled not by a craving for evil, but by a revulsion for sanctimonious virtue—for the "light," in whose name they burn and trample. The price of entry is harsh: "You must turn away from the light and embrace the darkness, enduring the contempt and persecution of those around you." The same truth that the dark elves read in Shilen, - that they fear darkness only because they do not dare to look it in the face - here in the desert, the fugitives with broken faith repeat.

Enslaved Lich King

But the most outlandish thing about the Academy isn't the students or the instructors. The most outlandish thing is who teaches necromancy here. For Hardin didn't build this cave, he stole it.

"You'd better ask Sir Lich King Icarus himself about this cave—after all, he's the original master here. I'm second or third here... I met him while wandering after leaving my mentor, and I took the cave for myself after winning the contest. Before that, he kept his lair here—and, it seems, did a lot of evil."

hardin

Icarus is the Lich King, one of the greatest necromancers to ever walk the earth. And it was this lord of the undead that Hardin defeated in the competition and retained for himself. The students are petrified with horror at the sight of him—and for good reason.

"Icarus? All the students, including me, feared him. Maybe because he's undead, but he doesn't eat or sleep. And in magic—especially necromancy—he's clearly the most powerful in the entire land. He seems to walk freely, but they say he's in fact invisibly kept in check by Master Hardin himself. That's why he teaches us so much so kindly... And yet—this is just my hunch—even if he weren't bound, I think he'd still continue teaching us. Not because the undead harbor some special love... For another reason."

Master Kaspar

Consider what kind of man he is. Few in all of Aden would dare call Hardin a man; yet he holds the Lich King, the most powerful necromancer in the land, on an invisible chain, forcing the lord of death to teach commoners like a servant. And the Lich King obediently teaches—and, Kaspar senses, he would teach even without the chain, for some unknown purpose of his own. Anyone capable of harnessing the Lich King is hardly one to be taken literally. And in the bestiary of Aden, the name Icarus is also borne by the creature that was pursued through the Tablets of Vision. spy Hindemith — although rumor called that lich Akron.

Voice from the cube

Here they not only keep the dead in check—here they converse with the long-dead. Orim shows his student his greatest discovery.

"Look. I once found this in Cruma Tower—a cube of a mysterious substance. The mages of the ancient kingdom called them 'spirit vessels': they held the spirit of the deceased. This is how they preserved the knowledge and experience of great scholars and philosophers. This contains the spirit of the mage Aklantoth from the time of Elmoreden. Recently, he awakened from a thousand-year slumber. Faintly, but clearly... I hear him calling to me. He promised to teach me everything he knows if I free his spirit from the cube."

Orim of the Shadow

This is where the roots of the Academy extend - to the very the fallen empireThe mages of Elmoreden, it turns out, didn't release their sages into death, but sealed their spirits in cubes to eternally milk their knowledge. And one such vessel, recovered from Cruma Tower, whispers from the darkness a thousand years later, promising forbidden knowledge in exchange for freedom. The Hardin Academy collects knowledge from all sources it shouldn't be taken from: fugitive knights, the enslaved Lich King, and a dead imperial sorcerer in a casket.

Shadow of the Tower

Such is this school under the dragon's shadow—a distorted mirror of the Ivory Tower. There is light, nobility, and permitted knowledge; here is darkness, commoners, and forbidden knowledge. The Tower rejects all it does not understand; the Academy embraces all the Tower fears. And it is held by a man who came from the Tower, harbors a grudge against it, and perhaps forges in the desert the power to destroy it.

This is the entire concept of the Hardin Academy. It is built on a bold idea: that the light everyone is so proud of is a lie and hypocrisy, and the truth is hidden in the darkness, where no one dares to peer. That is why those betrayed by the light flock here: disillusioned knights, persecuted warlocks, even the dead voices of a fallen empire. Who founded it—a fugitive genius, a demon, or something else entirely—no one knows. All that is known is that in the remote mountains, under the dragon's shadow, a power quietly grows that will one day have to be named. For now, "truth lies in the darkness," and in this darkness they diligently study.