THORVALD ADMINISTRATION CENTER: An imposing Mock-Gothic structure that faces onto Science Plaza from the east side. Thorvald Hall has a tall central tower, covered with Gothic decorations, as well as north and south wings. Through the center of the Hall is a large arched walkway which leads to the Old Campus Courtyard. Double doors inside the walkway lead to the wings and to the administrative offices higher in the tower. The side facing the Plaza features a long, steep set of stone and concrete steps leading up to the building. The steps at the top are 19th Cent stone slabs and are original construction. (This was the old, pre-Plaza entrance, about a dozen steps above the level of the carriage drive that led to the old Academie de Amerja.) There are two dozen or more additional steps, recent concrete manufacture, that were added when the Plaza was constructed. The Plaza level was excavated slightly below the original ground level to make the entrance to the University more imposing. Students can be found lounging around on the entrance steps at all hours of the day and it is a common hang-out for students visiting the Plaza.

Thorvald Hall is named for Otto Sigurd Thorvald, a mid-19th Cent Norwegian Industrialist. There is a statue of him just to one side of the entry way. (There is a more recent statue of Monique on the other side. "Twin Patrons of the University" they're called.) Thorvald's statue portrays a stern featured man, bald on top, with bifocals and a heavy northern coat. All that history records about him is that he was an incredibly wealthy industrialist with interests in machine factories and metal works. He had a daughter that he doted on excessively and he contributed funds to the Academie in her behalf. He died in some sort of "Industrial Accident" in the 1880's. (Conspiracy Scholars believe that Thorvald was influential in the Proto-Gladstein organization of the time. He was a heartless man who wanted to turn men into machines and even experimented in building "mechanical workers" for his factories. He is said to have either built, or paid to have built, the Gladsteins' first Difference Engine-style Babbage machine which was used for organizational records keeping. Parts of Thorvald's Engine are said to still be stored in the deep basements beneath the Hall. Unreliable rumors say that Otto Sigurd Thorvald was crushed to death by a Clockwork Doll he had built to replace his daughter who is said to have drowned in a "boating accident" while eloping with her Artist boyfriend.)

THE OLD COURTYARD: enclosed on four sides by Old Campus Halls, the Courtyard is about 50 yards long and 20 yards wide. It features flagstones and stone benches in the shade of sickly old trees and hedges. Either side is lined with Victorian era statues of Great Men of Letters. It has all of the charm of a prison exercise yard. The Courtyard is almost always in shadow thanks to the tall Gothic Halls that surround it. The straight breeze way from Thorvald Hall's arched walkway to the Old Union's open pass leads to strong, unpredictable gusts of wind squeezing their way through quite often. The moaning sound of these winds are said to be the anquished cries of Academie "inmates" of centuries past. Many students died on these flagstones in accidents, murders, and duels during the 19th Cent. Occultists are discouraged from lingering here by Campus Security or Sigma Om patrols, whichever get to them first. From the Courtyard, you can look into the basement level classrooms in the surrounding Halls. These basement level windows have heavy iron bars over them, to discourage after hours visitors or classroom disruptions.

THE OLD UNION: A huge, brooding structure at the east end of the Courtyard, opposite from Thorvald Hall. The Union features huge, barn-like doors of iron-bound wood that are almost always open. Inside is a huge, open area with marble floors and tables along the ways. The central area is left clear for through traffic. There is another set of doors on the opposite side, also open. The walls are covered with Victorian era tile mosaics of Educationally Inspirational topics. Critics have compared them to Stalinist era Industrial Heroic murals, with educational themes instead. The tiled mosaics are splotched with mildew. Pigeons have free reign in the open area, with doves roosting in the supports beneath the stained-glass skylight above. There are meeting rooms and small lecture halls in the Union above the Commons area. These are reserved for student organizations and special guest lectures. The halls and corridors above the Union are mazelike in design, with many rumored secret passages, hidden rooms, spy holes, etc. These stories MAY be apocryphal.

THE GREEN: beyond the Old Union is a football-field sized green covered with grass and lined by trees. The Old Library stands to the Southside past the Union. On the North is the old Field House and Natatorium. The Field House is used for physical education classes, but the Natatorium has been closed for repairs/demolitions for years. The empty concrete-lined pool is a favorite spot for unsanctioned Rave parties and was once said to have been lined with hot pink fuzzy deep-pile carpet, used as an "Orgy-Pit" for '60's eras Love-Ins. (This may just be Academic mythology, or fondly remembered history.)

THE OLD DORMITORIES Two old dormitories face each other across the eastend of the Green. Students were/are packed four to a suite here, with small sleeping rooms with racked bunks, a shared studyroom, and a bathroom with Turn of the Century plumbing. Single and double rooms were tucked into the spaces under the dormitory eaves or contained in garrets sticking out up at regular intervals along the tiled roofs. Many of these had or have their own private stairwells and/or lifts. (The Bronson Greywood Suite, a notoriously haunted private suite is one of these. Bronson Greywood was once the site of student experimentations in Invocations and was the scene of a ghastly multiple murder in the distant past. There have been Possessions, Hauntings, and Disappearances associated with the rooms, as well as reports of students who had gone missing decades earlier, suddenly showing up ready for long-forgotten classes in modern times. None of these stories are confirmed and the Administration tries to discourage such talk. Bronson Greywood is not in use. At present.) The suites are individually named, with brass nameplaques commemorating the wealthy donors who donated to the Academie/University for the honor.

THE OLD STADIUM The southend of the Green houses the Old Stadium. A sunken amphitheatre with wooden benches set into turf-walls, brick containing walls, and underground facilities rooms, the Old Stadium used to be a hub of the campus, the site of soccer games, open air theatrical productions, debates, speeches, rallies, and lectures. Since the construction of the new Sports Center, the Old Stadium has fallen into disrepair and disuse. The once closely manicured field is now overgrown with weeds and spotted by bare patches of dirt. Only the Rugby team uses the field, and that's mostly for intramural games and practices. The bleachers and facilities rooms are monopolized by drugpushers and users, and rough couples making out.

The Old Campus, once the entire Academie de Amerja, is now used primarily for Social Sciences classes, classical languages & History, Philosophy, and some core Lit courses. Most departments would prefer to use the more modern facilities in the newer Halls. The Tridents are firmly ensconced in the Old Campus buildings, (except for Thorvald Hall, which belongs to administration) as are some Hermetic operatives. Just to the south of the Old Library is the newly constructed Comparative Cultures Center, where multicultural performances and events are held. Cultural exhibits and artifacts are also on rotating display there.

BRIGGS HALL AND THE SCIENCES/ENGINEERING CAMPUS Constructed along the southend of Sciences Barrio and extending toward Traboc, the Sciences/Engineering Campus is the best funded and most extensive of the DU "mini-campuses". It is also the most imposingly impersonal and functional. Most of this Campus has been built since Monique took power, with several sections having been demolished and rennovated again in just the past two decades. The buildings are functional, almost featureless brick and concrete squares with regularly set windows. The campus streets and walkways are laid out in a rigidly uncompromising grid pattern. Mercilessly landscaped little yards dot the campus along with hedges pruned into clever geometrical shapes and the occasional piece of abstract sculpture. (Some of these pieces are rumored to actually be functioning components in outlandish Weird Science contraptions or power grids.)

The "New Library" on this campus is actually the oldest of its buildings, having been constructed during the 1930's. It essentially obsolete and is supplemented by a modern Engineering Library and a Computer Sciences Resource Center.

Briggs Hall is named for Dr. Madison Briggs, an English mathematician and physicist "famous" to a limited circle of admirerers and disciples. Dr. Briggs is said to have been THE Gladstein organizer who turned the Cell from a collection of Explotative Industrialists & Mad Tinkerers into a modern, scientifically pragmatic institution. Briggs is famous for his pioneering work in wireless communications. Conspiracy Theorists believe that Dr. Briggs stold Tesla technology and ideas from many other collegues and used them to build "Death Rays" and more importantly, designed the initial blueprints for the mind-altering Microwave broadcast technology that became the notorious Mind-Control Satellites that Gladsteins are said to control. Briggs was a thin, bookish man for most of his life, pudging out significantly in later years to become a smiling, chubby avuncular figure who was often photographed with the young Monique in the last years of his life.

BUSINESS CAMPUS The Business and Economics Campus is a cluster of modern buildings a block or so away from the northeast end of Science Plaza. It is the closest part of the University to the busy tourist neighborhood of Sunken Barrio. These buildings are mostly of 50's design, but were heavily rennovated and added to during the 1980's.

The block or two between the B&E Campus and the Old Campus is home to Greek Row and a densely populated section of student apartments, dotted by pizza parlors, beer gardens, and all night video shops. Sigma Om and Sigma Epsilon have the two largest houses, with triple digit occupancy, along the Row, but there are many other smaller Greek houses each with a couple of dozen or so members. All of these Houses are lavish brick-walled mansions with columns and terraces and other signs of conspicuous luxury.

The Gordian Lodge, an extremely exclusive and very low-profile student organization also has its house here. The Gordian Lodge is DU's equivalent of the notorious Skull & Crossbones club. Quislings to be find their first entry to the world of secret global domination in the Lodge.

East of the Greek Houses is the new Sports Center, with physical education facilities, the new soccer Stadium, the Colosseum, and a new Natatorium with an Olympic-sized pool. The Sports Center has its own block of Dorms and lots of nearby hotels for visiting teams and parents.

ZEFILLI HALL OF FINE ARTS: faces the west end of Science Plaza and is the front of the Fine Arts Campus. The Arts Complex includes several smaller nearby Halls with work studios and classrooms, as well as the University Exhibition Hall, where student artworks are exhibited to the public. The Alabaster Auditorium, a triumph of design and acoustics, is located about a block away from the Plaza at the end of a broad deadend avenue with bright globe streetlamps and lots of benches along the walkways.

The Cinema de Vivisection is a privately owned operation, but it is right across the street from the rear exits to the Auditorium and is surrounded by coffeeshops and artsy theme-bars.

The Music and Theatre Departments maintain separate Halls, but they are part of th Zefilli Campus area. The Arts Campus is also thronged by art shops, private studios, a couple of private Conservatories for advanced study (though more and better of these can be found in Flowers Barrio), and galleries. The most prestigious studio/apartments can be found in a row of 20's era cottages that were built initially as an "Artists' Colony" about half a mile from the Academie de Amerja. Very pricey and full of history, as well as priceless artworks left by previous tenants, these cottages have identical layouts. The bottom floor is a workshop/exhibition area open to the public. (students come in to watch famous local artists display or produce their works) Upstairs is a single, fairly large studio with a small separate sleeping room and bath. There are no kitchens since all food preparation was originally done in a shared cafeteria, long since demolished and replaced. Pizza and gourmet specialty shops will deliver to these cottages at any hour of the night, however (by order of Constance D'Aubainne, who sets up her Dionysian Cell cronies with the choicest cottages.).

The Delta Eps and Alphas have their Houses next to the cottage/studio rows, on a small hill overlooking the Arts Campus. Their Houses are brooding and dark, seeming to crouch like vultures over the campus. Many students find this very inspiring. Rigor has been known to stand for hours staring up at the grim buildings whispering "The Horror! The Horror!" over and over with rapt delight.

The Deltas and Alphas patrol their turf in squads, known in whispers by other students as "The Goth Police". They are the enforcers of Angst Fashion and try to keep things appropriately gloomy. They HATE tie-dyes with a passion and will do TERRIBLE things to neo-Hippies, if they can get away with it.

OTHER PLACES IN SCIENCE BARRIO: There are vocational & technical schools throughout the Barrio, some affiliated with the University, most not. These are much less expensive than DU. There are also a couple of tiny private two-year institutions that help prepare students for the University. Language Academies are common. Some of these are fly by night, unaccredited "renegade" operations that will hire Burger off the streets of Sunken Barrio to teach their own native languages to willing, paying students at the academies, no teaching experience required or even asked for. There are also numerous Cram schools and clandestine note selling, paper-ghosting operations floating around the Barrio. One such operation runs out of "The Bookmobile", a bandit business that sells class notes, forged papers, stolen tests and the services of "veteran researchers" at cut rate costs. Bookmobile thugs have been known to roll students for their textbooks and their notes.

"The Slums" or the "October Houses" are a row of tenement-like student apartment buildings lining the eastern side of the 7th of October Highway. Only the poorest, most desperate students, former students, and aspiring students live here. They are just across the Highway from Four Points. The neighborhood is barely patrolled by anyone and frequently suffers from high crime incidents.

The division between the Barrios is very obvious. Four Points is the old Arabic Medina of the Edge. Buildings there look and often are Medieval Arabic in design, mixed with cheap new tenements and squalid brick structures. All of Sciences, even the worst neighborhoods, are Post-Monique construction and well maintained.

"Crossing the 7th" is slang for slipping into Four Points for sleazing or Baboon-Baiting, a dangerous student past time which involves teasing patrol baboons from moving cars. "Robbing the Cradle" is what Four Pointers call slipping into Sciences for burglary or other crimes.

Earthlings are the primary active Conspiracy in the Old Campus area and were knee deep in my RPG campaign, though often from behind the scenes. Monserrat is a Social Sciences instructor and teaches out of one of the Old Campus buildings. Panil and Dowden and a bunch of the Magic Circle people are on Old Campus turf as well. I figured that the Marlowe Reading Room would be in the Old Library. Earthlings/Tridents are also quite active on the Sciences Campus, but have to work quietly compared to the Gladsteins who are in the driver's seat on that Campus. Roger Chalk is the most influential of the Earthling/Tridents on the Sciences/Engineering Campus.

I figure that the Cut-Ups are still very active on Campus, but do not have a solid organizational presence because of their chaotic nature, and because the Sig Oms do not like that sort of person. Sig Oms routinely beat up "crazies" that they find lurking around on Campus. I see DU as being an intensely weird place strait-jacketed into a normal-seeming veneer. The Cut-Ups are there. They showed up all over the place in the campaign. They are the ones organizing bizarre parties in out of the way areas such as the Old Natatorium etc. They are strongest on the Arts Campus, but the Deths don't much like them. They're too upbeat about their weirdness. I figure that the Cut-Ups spend a lot of their time baiting the Deths and avoiding the Sig Oms.

Part of the Chaos related politics will come out in the next posting I do, which covers my version of the Counter-Culture wars of the 60's/'70's. Chaos Boys have been struggling against Control Freaks since they were the bomb-throwing Anarchists of the Academie, quoting Lewis Carroll while they lobbed home-made grenades at clockwork "Iron-men". Waves of Anarchy/Chaos, Weirdness Unbridled sweep the campus areas from time to time. The next wave is just building, even now...

The '60's were a turbulent, exuberant time for Al Amarjans as well as the rest of the world. D'Aubainne University had always had a strong, weird element. From the Anarchists and Bohemians of the 19th Cent Academie days to the Lost Generations of the Italian Occupation to the Beatnik coffeshop culture of the '50's, nonconformist radicals, and generally zany characters have been common staples on the campus. The '60's saw the rise of a much more aggressive and visible weird element. The Hippie Counter Culture came to the island with a vengeance! Tie-dyes were everywhere, love-ins and open air concerts were everyday events in Science Barrio, Acid was cheap and readily available, as were other, more exotic hallucinogens. Without any Al Amarjan involvement in nasty foreign wars, the island's Counter Culture rallied itself instead against the materialism and totalitarianism of the government. To the general public, the Counter Culture kids were like creatures from another world. They adopted the slang term " 'Martians" for themselves and their way of life, both to denote their nationality, their view of the Al Amarjan way of life, and to typlify their "out of this world" styles.

Despite their openly anti-Government stance and their blatant disrespect for authority in any form, the 'Martians were tolerated and left unmolested by the Peace Forces for one reason. Jean Christophe D'Aubainne, then in his twenties and a grad student of Art Design & Architecture on the Zefilli Campus, was the defacto leader of the movement. He was an active participant in the Counter Culture scene and was already being hailed as a wunderkind design guru by the Arts scene. He presided over many a 'Martian gathering, wearing his psychedelic clothes, round blue-lensed glasses, and long hair, smiling benignly and waving to the crowds with an Andy Warhol-like detachement. With him was his radical girl-friend Xue Soo. Xue Soo was a Chinese exchange student, a partial refugee from the Cultural Revolution, who wore black Maoist pajama-outfits, bangs, and psychedelic glasses. She harangued crowds for hours on end, exhorting them by megaphone to abandon materialism and live together in a kind of Marxist-Love Utopian lifestyle. The 'Martians turned Science Plaza into a tent city open air carnival. They painted the statue of Pallas Athena in psychedelic, day-glo colors and renamed the Plaza as "The Plaza of Love" or just "Love Plaza". The birth of Jean Christophe and Xue Soo's baby was a major event in the Barrio. The baby boy was officially named Michel-Yves D'Aubainne, but was he known as LoveChild by the 'Martians. There was even a quasi-Messianic belief that this baby would grow into an Aquarian Age Dictator of Love who would liberate his people from the corruption they saw growing around them every day.

The Peace Forces, lacking direct orders from Her Exaltedness, refrained from doing anything at all about the 'Martians, even though they mocked her relentlessly. The DBI infiltrated the 'Martian movement and kept operatives close by Jean Christophe's side at all times, but that was more to ensure his safety than to bring down the movement. The overall official response to the 'Martians was one of confusion and incomprehension. Other forces were less tolerant. More traditional students resented the "Occupation" of their campus by a bunch of "Freak Radicals" and opposition grew steadily. The Sigma Oms came out in the lead of a coalition of Greek Houses and other "concerned student groups" and began to hold counter-rallies. Fights broke out between the 'Martians and the Greeks with increasing regularity, until it became apparent that Sigma Om "Patrols" were waging a clandestine guerilla war against the 'Martians, stalking them through the streets and hitting them whenever they could find small, isolated groups. The 'Martians banded together for protection, swelling the population in the Plaza well beyond any practical limits. Finally, in 1970, a mob of several hundred Sigma Oms and sympathizers stormed the Plaza. A full-blown riot broke out with dozens of injuries and several deaths. The 'Martians were driven into surrounding buildings and the "defaced" statue, which had become a symbol of the 'Martian Way, was pulled down. Still, the Peace Forces made no move to intervene and stop the violence. There were repeated bloody clashes in the days that followed and Sigma Om "troops" eventually stormed the Thorvald Administration Center and "liberated" it from the 'Martians who had sought shelter there. Their passive resistence tactics were completely ineffectual against the unrestrained SOB's and when 'Martians belatedly tried to fight violence with violence, they lost even worse.

Outraged by what they saw as tacit Government support of the Sigma Om lead rioters, the 'Martian leaders decided to send a Freedom Bus full of their representatives to storm the Assembly and take their protests to Monique's doorstep, if need be. They painted an appropriated University Bus with flowers and peace slogans in Arabic and in 1971, the Freedom Bus departed on its historic mission. Xue Soo lead the contingent on the bus while Jean Christophe & LoveChild remained behind to keep Peace Force radicals from storming the mansion that the 'Martians were using as their base of operations in the crisis. The Bus rattled off, followed by a convoy of psychedelically painted cars full of chanting students. None of them were ever seen again. There was no official statement concerning the protestors or their fate from the Government. They just disappeared somewhere between the Edge and Freedom City. Speculation ran rampant, everything from they had made it and were being held in prison camps within Freedom City, to they had been slaughtered by nerve gas and dumped in the Med, as well as the more exotic Disintergration and UFO abduction theories. The Mystery Bus, as the public renamed it, became a favorite topic of speculation and public rumor for years afterwards. No one connected with the Government ever made a single statement concerning the Mystery Bus, or would even comment off the record about it. Officially, no such incident had ever taken place. Protests by angry parents and friends of the vanished students were put down with severe force by the Peace, while reports of such protests were suppressed by order of Her Exaltedness.

Violence between the 'Martians and the Sig Om led Greeks reached new levels, with several blocks of Science Barrio actually being burned down by the fires and several streets were blocked by manned barricades. Grief-stricken, Jean Christophe went personally to Freedom City to confront his mother about Xue Soo's whereabouts. He left Michel-Yves with his sisters. He was out of the public's eye for a full year. In that time, the Peace Forces swept Science Barrio, using tear gas and dogs to disperse the factions, tear down the barricades and generally restore order. "Anarchist Terrorists" and "Pro-Fascists Militants" were arrested from both sides. They were put on lengthy show trials that dragged on for years until the public lost all interest in them. Most were eventually released after serving light sentences, once the movements had died down.

A dejected and much chastized Jean Christophe eventually returned from Freedom City. He had no interest in renewing contact with his former 'Martian friends and plunged himself singlemindedly into the construction of his architectural masterpiece, the Terminal. He led a reclusive life even before moving into the completed Terminal and effectively disappeared from the radical political scene altogether. His son remained with his sisters and periodically with grandmother Monique.

Interestingly, one of the few militants from either side to be hanged for the disturbances and violence, Geordi Unno, a Sig Om brother, had shaved his eyebrows prior to leading his comrades into "Love Plaza" and was reportedly obssessively interested in "protecting" young minds from the "moral filth" that the 'Martians and their Artist friends represented. Among the Little Brothers that Unno was trying to "protect" was a juvenile Clyde Throckmorton, who had been drawn to the party atmosphere of the wide open campus. Conspiracy Theorists maintain that Geordi Unno is the earliest clearly identifiable Dominated minion of the Throckmorton Device. His mission, apparently, was to protect a young and impressionable Clyde from influences that his older self would have found repugnant in the extreme.

Michel-Yves "LoveChild" D'Aubainne grew into an athletic young man of striking personal beauty. It is said that his doting grandmother had the new Sports Center and the Science Dome built to highlight his athletic achievements when he reached college. Unfortunately, young Michel-Yves underwent a radical sex-change operation after a couple of years in the University. A horrible scandal ensued and Michel went on the run. Rumors state that he may have been the first subject of Nusbaum's experimental Proteus procedure, which led to a nearly disasterous falling out between her chief scientific advisor and the family. Nusbaum spent a year in virtual exile, travelling the world and consulting with his distant collegues before Monique cooled down enough to realize how essential he was and had him recalled.

Michel-Yves D'Aubainne was officially declared dead in 1989, the unfortunate victim of a drug overdose. A state funeral was held, but there was no public viewing of the body. The Science Dome is still officially known as the "Michel-Yves D'Aubainne Memorial Stadium", though no one calls it that. There is a little notice bronze plaque identifying it as such by one of the entrances and there is a space where a statue was going to be erected. The statue is still under wraps in one of the University art department studios, though it is not available for public display. There is much doubt that Michel-Yves is actually dead, though. His name is never mentioned in public statements and documentary evidence that he or his mother ever existed has been disappearing at a slow but steady rate over the years. There is no public acknowledgement of his existence by the D'Aubainne family, which has turned its attention to other, more immediate matters.

Word on the streets is that Michel-Yves is still around, living as a call-girl or exotic dancer going by the names of Michelle or Eve. There are rumors that she still has sporadic contact with her favorite aunt, Cheryl, and can sometimes be found at the Saturday night services at the temple. There is an open protection account for Michel-Yves D'Aubainne in the Golden Knights highest security files, leading to speculation that Constance has been contributing to protecting her nephew/niece. The more exotic rumors claim that "Michelle" can change her features at will, and this is why she has never been identified and captured by the DBI. Aging 'Martians and their younger kin claim that Michelle will return one day to lead a 'Martian-Hippie uprising that will truly liberate the island, that the LoveChild Revolution will still come. Such claims are considered demented by most Conspiracy scholars.

In interesting notes, any live performance of the Beatle's tune "Michelle" is banned in Science Barrio and a transvestite terrorist gang calling itself the Gun Molls has been active in the rougher neighborhoods along the Four Points/Science Barrio divisions. The Gun Molls use obsolete drum-fed tommy guns and dress in overdone femme fatale fashions. The purpose behind their apparently random attacks has not been determined, but the "Michelle Lives!" slogan they spray paint in their wake is all too clear to some in authority.

The 'Martians are gone, replace by new generations of punks, goths, and Chaos boys. The Sigma Oms rule the Barrio they took by force in the '70's. And the faded remnants of those heady days, the dizzy years during which a flourescent Athena ruled over the Love Plaza, are just part of Academic legend now. You can still be beaten up for saying "Groovy" in the wrong parts of Science Barrio though. bummer.