To Chancellor Alastric Emmannulas Noens pel Colophon the Grey, XVIIth Gryphonhorn Magus, Th.M. M.Ex. O.S. Esq.
In Re: CDLXXIIIrd Disciplinary Council
Chancellor,
Thank you for your letter, and for allowing me the opportunity to share my thoughts in advance of the council proceedings. As you know well, I am usually quite loath to involve myself in administrative matters such as these, and I hope that the length and swiftness of my present appeal may further testify to the depth and urgency of my feelings regarding this case.
You are as aware as I am of the extremely high academic standards to which Aletheia University holds every one of our students. It is with this in mind that I must stress, with no exaggeration whatsoever, that Lilias Calbach is without question the most gifted pyromancer I have ever had the honor of teaching throughout my entire career.
I freely acknowledge that I was skeptical when Professor Yeboah first urged me to admit Miss Calbach to the College of Elemental Magick on a Special Commendation Scholarship. What could a young adult with no prior thaumaturgical study, indeed no clear prior academic background whatsoever, possibly contribute to Aletheia University? And yet, as the Professor described Miss Calbach’s performance in the practical interview she had conducted, I too felt my curiosity piqued. Using only her own intuition, along with a badly-singed copy of Kaen’s The Appearance of the Blaze that had somehow found its way into a city library, this young woman had seemingly taught herself the fundamentals of pyromancy completely independently over the course of a few months, attaining a degree of control on par with a typical incoming elemental-track student, and a level of raw power far beyond one. When Professor Yeboah asked how she had been able to accomplish this, Miss Calbach apparently responded that “you just need to ask the fire how it’s feeling.” Seeing the Professor’s insistence, I decided to trust in her judgment, and granted the scholarship as requested.
With departmental affairs keeping me busy, it was quite some time before I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Calbach myself, but when she enrolled in my graduate-level Infernal Dynamics course during her fourth semester at Aletheia, I quickly found that she was every bit the prodigy Professor Yeboah had told me of. Her methods were unorthodox, to be sure, but her innate genius, combined with the grounding in thaumaturgical basics she had received since her matriculation, put her head and shoulders above the rest of my students. Her questions were deeply insightful; her assignments demonstrated novel pyromantic techniques, often more elegant and effective than anything I had seen before; her visits to my office hours were as much a learning experience for me as for her.
When a Captain Edworth Hark of the Helios City Watch came to speak with me, aware that the University was not under his jurisdiction, but humbly requesting any information I might have about a young woman matching Miss Calbach’s description, I admit it gave me pause. However, I resolved that whatever this young woman had been through before arriving at our gates, Aletheia University should be her chance for a clean slate. From all my conversations with her, I could see that she was a pure-hearted girl with no wicked intent in her soul, merely a deep and abiding love for the element of Fire. As educators, I believe it is our duty to nurture and guide that passion.
During past faculty retreats, I have occasionally brought up my concerns about the state of the modern Elemental Studies curriculum in primary thaumaturgical education. The elemental magick we drum into young minds today is calcified and joyless, leading students down wrong turns and dead ends at every opportunity, and leaving them unprepared for deeper inquiry into the elements. I fear that in the quest to turn knowledge into something that can be measured precisely and replicated uniformly, our educational system has lost track of what makes things worth knowing in the first place. After meeting Lilias Calbach, it is more clear to me than ever just how right I was. While she is undeniably possessed of an incredible natural aptitude, I am certain that it is because of, not in spite of, her lack of a conventional thaumaturgical background, that she has been able to attain such heights of elemental mastery. I believe that we have a great deal to learn from her, and that the light of her flame may be the guiding star that sets elemental education back on its proper course. She is a once-in-a-generation talent, and a credit to this institution.
Having visited what remains of the Library Wing to personally offer my deepest apologies, I am very much aware of the scale of the damage caused by Miss Calbach’s Independent Research Project. Despite this, I remain firmly convinced that with the proper support and guidance, she has the potential to revolutionize the field of pyromancy, if not the field of Elemental Magick as a whole. To drive her from our door would be an unconscionable disservice to her, to ourselves, and to the entire next generation of elemental mages.
Please, Alastric… give the girl a chance, won’t you?
Your dear friend,
Professor Cascarim Andreyevich Tarkovsky the Red, Th.M. O.P., Senior Chair, College of Elemental Magick