Welcome, students and faculty, to the Salem Institute of Magic!
As the most respected and prestigious magical education centre in North America, we offer you a diverse range of subjects and extra-curricular activities if you are older than twelve years old on the first day of term. Will you join Amesbury, Stormalong, Frogmorton or Ichabod house at the entrance ceremony? Whichever house's honored halls you enter, your education will continue for eight years, when you will graduate following your final exams and enter the wizarding world as a bright, well-educated young witch or wizard with a glittering future ahead of you.
But something lurks under the respectable façade of this school.
Something secretive, spoken of only in whispers and rumour.
A secret society, known only as The Tarot, has started recruiting Salem Institute students to join its organisation. Voldemort's message carried across the sea even after his death, stirring some to believe that MAGIC IS MIGHT, and The Tarot is determined to make every young witch and wizard learn this, and to put Muggles in their rightful place beneath wand carriers. Whether or not they succeed depends upon you - our students - to decide whether you want to use your magic to oppress, or to create.
No canon characters, all originals welcome and applications to become ranking members of The Tarot are open.
A terrible loss befell the Salem Institute barely two months into the Fall semester. During the school's Halloween celebrations, a gang of students led by Reggie Black set fire to the haunted house that was part of the festivities. Several students died, among them Reggie Black and Ariana Abrego, and in the wake of the catastrophe, a number of professors (including Professor Russo) were too traumatized by the fire, and consequently resigned their posts for various reasons.
After a hasty re-hiring session, the teaching staff at the Salem Institute of Magic has just about been restored, but who knows if more professors will find themselves unable to continue. The professors and headmistress are trying their best for their students, and attempting to keep calm and carry on.
The Tarot's spokeswitch went on record as saying that this was the "single greatest tragedy in American wizarding history since the Salem Witch Trials".
Meanwhile, the Tarot have been scheming a coup. Their plan has already begun, but like the light tumbling of pebbles before a landslide, its effects won't be felt just yet.
This is War.
With the Tarot recruiting and gathering strength, war looms ever closer on the horizon. Former Aurors, Artemii Volkov, his sister Isidora, and Elijah Thorpe, plan a movement to take the Tarot down, even while from within the Tarot there are plans to remove Gertride Siddal as queen bee, and replace her with someone far more dangerous and unpredictable. With Sam Ichabod's loyalty compromised, he will have to work ever harder to make sure he can continue as a double agent, but how far he has to go may change him irreparably. The students at Salem continue their studies, for the most part unaware of the war gathering momentum around them. Some have already taken sides, while others want no part in the impending conflict.
There will be soldiers, martyrs, prophets, liars, victims, leaders, pariahs and messiahs... but only one victor.
Choose your side wisely.
