NEXUS CAMPUS TOWN
There are as many avenues of learning in the Nexus and inequalities between them as the districts of the sprawling city-state differ from one another, but most of its prestigious higher learning institutions gather in one place: the complicated and lively Nexus Campus Town. Workshops, investigation labs, student housing, shopping streets and entertainment centers fill the gaps between campuses and their lecture halls, archives, and department buildings, with newly risen technical schools across from ancient art academies meeting in shows of frankensteinian architecture repurposed by students for any amount of reasons.
Nearly every field of education and academic research has a notable presence in the district, including magical ones that offer alternatives to the insular atmosphere of the Citadel of Magic. Invariably high tuition fees and exploitative student loans allow the institutions of the Campus Town to maintain some of the most modern resources and equipment, and encourage the continued activity of highly experimental clubs and courses with dubious safety standards. All in all, the variety of schools lends itself to some pretty wacky stuff.
Student-organized events are a common occurrence, whether their goal is funding, recruitment, or simple entertainment, but district-wide events are organized by each of the biggest universities on a fixed rotation. Each institution contributes to law enforcement and security in some way, with management of these aspects also periodically rotating, not between the biggest institutions, but between those that train and possess the most pertinent assets to the tasks.
Mundane activities in the district are frequently broken up by minor incidents involving demons summoned at frat parties, overenthusiastic magical girls interrupting public disputes, susceptible sentai heroes fighting crime, and magical girls fighting sentai heroes, with students and staff for whatever reason often finding themselves tangled in convoluted magical plots along with these characters.
Albeit a hotly debated topic, the female dress code in much of the Campus Town’s faculties mandates skirts that end halfway down the thighs and shirt size limits that don’t quite accommodate bustier individuals.
Notable Residents
The Headmaster - A cloaked, cryptic young woman who serves as the Chief of the Nexus Campus Town, whose hands are perpetually stained with blood. She has been the sworn protector of the district for many years, and its de facto premier authority figure, despite being largely hands-off in the majority of its decisions. By default, she has a place in the directors' board of every university in the Campus Town, and tie-breaker rights in its communal administrative council.
Despite her mysteriousness, she speaks pleasantly to everyone, and occasionally sponsors or mentors a handful of students elected by standards only known to her. She is fond of advising people as much as her experience allows, but it seems that due to a reckless promise, she is obligated to speak vaguely of important information and not address it directly unless unavoidable or speaking to someone who is already in the know.
Strength: Amazing
Agility: Incredible
Durability: Amazing
Magic: Extremely HighThe Headmaster's magic allows her to animate and control any inanimate matter within the Nexus Campus Town, and magically reinforce it by one or two ranks, up to Heroic durability. This is a kind of instantaneous enchantment, which allows her to take control even of materials that are already imbued with magic, unless it is of at least Very High potency - and with the creator's consent, she can control even these things. Controlled matter can change shape in an instant, and when in need, she transforms the very brick and stone of the streets into giants primed for battle, and grants such things limited autonomy based on her purpose.
A powerful contract ensures that she cannot physically leave the boundaries of the Campus Town, but within it she is effectively immortal - she is not immune to injury, but endlessly recovers from conventional injuries in moments, and even if she were decapitated or reduced to ash, she would reappear somewhere in the district within an hour.
She can also magically project her senses anywhere in the Nexus Campus Town, and magically link any two passageways within it, allowing her to travel basically anywhere there in an instant provided there's a door or something similar to use. In order to attend meetings outside the Campus Town, the Headmaster creates a half-solid astral projection that she can control as her own body.
Instructor De La Fontaine - A popular professor from the Institute of Modern Magic Research, whose charm and availability for seemingly free consulting on her extensive knowledge in magic theory have made her beloved by students and colleagues alike. She doesn’t show up with the same hairstyle or eye color twice, and her honeyed, tranquil words have the reputation to compel people to open up about a great many deal of things.
Places of Interest
Library Island - In the middle of a lake occupying a small portion of the Campus Town is an island entirely occupied by a castle, which serves as an incredibly extensive modern library. Many people come here daily for some book or another, but most steer clear of the innumerable underground floors, where the bookcases grow taller and the curation of the library less reliable. But documents allegedly dating back to the earlier history of the Nexus lie in storage
somewhere in these labyrinthine depths, attracting adventurous historians and explorers willing to brave traps and other obstacles to rescue information valuable to many.
The Clocktower - A elaborately decorated clocktower where much of the administrative services of the Campus Town operate from, it also doubles as the residence of the Headmaster. The highest floors, where light passes dimly through obsidian windows, are always open to anyone who wishes to consult them, provided they can be found, and from the balconies over the great clock one can look over nearly everything in the district.
The Faculty of Robotics - A few highly angular buildings of smooth, unassuming construction make the front of this university. The expensive but plain reception halls and classrooms, however, conceal extensive underground installations laden with hangars and blast doors, where advanced machinery, electronics and computer science are put into practice to their utmost by the most eager of tinkerers. Of interest to many enterprises in the Nexus, a burgeoning cybernetic research scene has a home here, but members of the faculty have also created a lot of automated security, for the Campus Town in particular. And they’re working on giant mechs, of course.
The Institute of Modern Magic Research - Students of magic of all stripes and practices gather here, in a hybridized enclosure of buildings with aged lecture halls and shiny laboratories that hosts (at least on paper) open discussion and studious breakdown courses on wizardry, sorcery and theurgy. Its courses focus on distilling a myriad of traditions into unified theories, experimenting with the combination of wildly different schools, and integrating traditional magecraft with advanced technology tools and methods, such as app programming.
Seto Kaiba Achievement Center - Supposedly created after a brown-haired billionaire managed to have the entire board of education fired for refusing to include deck building as a graduate degree in one of the colleges. It is an after school center focused on teaching students study skills for higher education. In addition, the entire staff is required to be at least "a second rate duelest with a third rate deck." Naturally, the duel monsters club gets the funding priority, but somehow the center has some of the best facilities among the graduate prep schools.
Neighbors
The Nexus Campus Town has a long-running relationship and business arrangement with its closest notable geographical neighbor, the Citadel of Magic. Aside from a small amount of interchange borne of overlapping education fields - although officially, the management does not condone the Citadel's isolationism and cutthroat policies -, the university city regularly imports homunculi and summoned slaves as labor to maintain the grounds and experiment on, such as for medical studies (after all, who needs cadavers for dissection when you have a fully functioning tool that is a perfect 1:1 for the human body?).
It also seems plausible that the magical incidents that frequently trouble the Campus Town's public order spill over from the Citadel's more unruly parts, but its government disowns any association with these events.
Other than this, the Campus Town provides promising professionals straight out of training to many places in the Nexus, and receives funding to pursue advancements in primarily the areas of science and technology.
