College of Shaping Magics

The College of Shaping Magics was a great college of arcane magic in interior Faerûn that fell to ruin in the mid-12 century DR.

Geography
The College stood in a small valley south of Volkumburgh Vale, high in the Thunder Peaks, situated on a wide natural ledge opposite the College of Rune Magics.

Climbing up the trails leading to the valley from Volkumburgh Vale were a path of stairs carved into the cliff, wide and enchanted to allow wheeled vehicles such as wagons to be pulled up them as if they were smooth inclined planes.

Near the landing of those stairs were a runestick, which when touched would teleport someone to a runestick near the College of Rune Magic. On the next landing stood the flying box, which would transport one up to a plateau. This opened to a natural chasm, in length and with  tall rock walls. The chasm was unnaturally dark and misty, with distances being magically distorted, leaving it to feel like a chasm by those who traveled through it.

At its end the chasm turned into a deep plunge, requiring travelers to cross a bridge to finally reach the college gatehouse. This bridge consisted of fifteen floating shields that each were in diameter and had  of space between them.

Exterior
The entrance to this college was a castle-like gatehouse, measuring wide and with an oaken double door that was  and wizard locked. The door could easily be opened from the inside, but from the outside there was not enough room to force it open. And crevices within the gatehouse's exterior walls were home to black widows.

East of the gatehouse was a tower (#8 on map) and to the west of it, across a  gap, was a  tall tower (#5 on map). In the northeastern part of the area was the shaping shop of Valmous (#9 on the map), surrounding a cliff face.

Southeast of the first tower was a doorway that opened into a hidden chamber, masked by illusion from a runestick embedded in a slab of mortared stone to look like a cliff face.

The Hidden Chamber
(Labeled #10 on the map) This was a circular area with a high ceiling and eight doors, each of them identical to the hidden entrance door and evenly spaced about it, though only two opened to actual rooms. Each of the doors would wizard lock upon closing, after which a powerful illusion would make those inside think for two minutes that the room as a whole would was spinning and throwing them against the walls. The complicated illusion in the room also made it so that any time a door was opened, it would appear as though a of sand poured into the room from the ceiling.

Careful examination of the doors could discern which were the correct ones to open. Behind one of the two doors (#12 on the map) was a room where the Shapers stored their failures in magic item creation. Such as an invisible +1 broad sword, leather armor that was as protective as chainmail but weighed as much as a suit of plate mail, and a Tenser's floating disk that had no height limit and would wander away if not consciously controlled.

Activities
This college was centered around a discipline of arcane magic it referred to as shaping magic, with students referred to as shapers. This discipline of magic could best be described as ritualistic means, involving mana, of creating constructs and enchanting items. With practitioners capable of even creating artifacts.

Their workshops were composites of various artisan professions, featuring tools used in alchemy, blacksmithing, carpentry, gem fashioning, metallurgy, and weaving among others. Shapers were expected to have some knowledge of each of these trades, though they often hired others to perform tasks that were menial or beyond their expertise.

Magic Practices
Some of the rituals that this college taught were used to construct the most common forms of golem &mdash; clay, flesh, iron, and stone. Though they also taught a ritual for creating a unique form of golem, known as rag and string golems. Additionally, they taught spells that would neutralize golems, activate golems, or bind uncontrolled golems to their command.

Students of this College were also skilled in determining if people were under the effect of an enchantment and of detecting the presence of conjured or summoned creatures.

Every ritual and spell taught by the College was documented in the Tome of Shaping Secrets.

History
Sometime in the mid-12 DR, the College of Shaping Magics was tasked by King Proster Obarskyr of Cormyr with designing a new variant of stone golems to help expedite his ambitious building projects after a student at the school by the name of Valmous promised he could construct something to rival the Statues-That-Walk of Mulhorand. These projects included such things as bridges, castles, harbors, hospitals, and schools. To this end he used an enchanted carving knife to carve the firsto f his awtawmatawns out of a cliff-face near the College.

Later, while in the final stages of constructing his golem a spell backfired for Valmous. This caused a horned devil known as Rotbite to be summoned on to the Prime Material plane, who quickly went and possessed his inert golem. It then proceeded to slaughter all the residents of the College, who were unprepared for such an attack. Only Valmous himself survived, managing to escape while in a gravely injured state to the nearby College of Rune Magics. As he escaped, the Awtawmatawn pounded much of the structure into rubble, though a number of structures remained intact.

After the Awtamatawn was destroyed its pieces were scattered. Valmous would go on to hide one of its legs within the ruins of the College. The lower section he hid within a tower (#5 on map), placing it at the bottom of a pit hidden by an illusionary floor. The upper section he placed within a hidden chamber, enchanting the shard to summon a basilisk upon being touched. Near the shard a runestick was set into the floor, which would open a portal to a matching runestick on the rim of a crater in the side of Mount Drakkor Rouge.

Over the two centuries that followed their destruction, the nature behind the College's destruction would ultimately go unknown and the residents of the village Volkumburgh would loot its ruins for valuables to either keep or sell. Many even considering it a right of passage to loot something sellable from the ruins.

In the month of Uktar, 1358 DR, some time before the Feast of the Moon, a group of adventurers from Suzail would arrive at the College, seeking out the scattered remains of the fabled Awtawmatawn on behalf of Amelior Amanitas.

Those adventurers found that most walls of the College were in a state of rubble, that the villagers of Volkumburgh had looted most of the ruin's valuables, and that wights and zombies roamed the ruins. In the ruins of Valmous's shaping shop they found his enchanted carving knife stuck, still stuck in the cliff face where he had carved out the Awtawmatawn long ago.

Appearances

 * Adventures
 * The Shattered Statue