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In Averno, VA, there is a small, privately funded liberal arts college that appeared in the 70's. It appeared over the course of one summer. There are no regular majors, only The Departments. Which one do you belong to?

Which Department Are You?

If you were to be stuck on a deserted island with only one of these objects, which would you bring?

What element do you most relate to?

What was your favorite childhood pastime?

SHOW ME WHAT YOU HAVE

What is the Worst Way to Die?

Where Do We Go When We Die?

What World From Your Childhood Could You Get Lost In?

What childhood beliefs did you have that others mocked, didn't believe, or dismissed?

Which childhood character do you most relate to? 

What Supernatural Media Do YOU Like Best?

In what kind of area do you seem to work best in?

What Part of Nature Are You Most Drawn To?

If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?

Your Friend is in Trouble: What Do You Do? 

If You Were Offered One of These Gifts, Which Would You Take?

How Would Your Friends Describe You?

How Would You Describe Yourself?

Who Occupies Your Dreams?

What Occupies Your Nightmares?

What is Your Favorite Small Business in Averno?

What Are You Most Excited About About Your Studies at the New School?

Who is the Headmaster?

Why do YOU Think YOU Were Chosen by the New School?

Housed in the body of Averno’s Holy House of God Cathedral (built 1707-1709, abandoned in 1761), the Department of Lost Histories is a Dark Academia dream. White marble floors that echo with the click of high heels. Endless books in mahogany bookshelves that stretch to the ceiling. Upon first examination, it feels almost museum-like. But when you look closer, you see the cracks in the facade. Students tucked away on armchairs, chugging two-day-old black coffee from cups with lipstick marks. Dark circles under eyes. Piles of books left out from frenzied searches in the early morning. 
The students of the DLH are time travelers and detectives, historians and madmen. The truth is out there. There are stories that have never been heard. There are voices that have been forgotten. There are places still to be discovered. 
Armed with red wine and a working knowledge of Latin, near-encyclopedic knowledge of art history and an obsession with abnormal psychology, the Lost Historians slip between the cracks in human knowledge, digging into a past more mysterious than we could ever know.

Department of Lost Histories

House in the abandoned Cracker Corp factory, the Department of Dead Languages is notorious on campus. As soon as you walk through the front door (torn off its hinges long ago) and into the cavernous building, with its towering walls of broken window panes and hasty scrawls in indecipherable languages, you are transported to another time. 
Some believe the languages of the dead were never meant to be spoken. That to form the words of a long-dead tongue is to invite ghosts onto your lips. The halls echo with Latin, Greek, Akkadian, signs written in Coptic and Sumerian directing you to the room filled with plush couches that serves as a dorm room, the kitchen with outdated technology that catches fire nearly every day, and the study library that is populated at all hours of the night. When the DDL was established, the students began speaking another language as well. A stranger, wilder one. No one knows where it came from, or really how they learned. It feels as though it has always been there. 
No signs direct you to the rooms where the most ancient languages are spoken and cast. Bronchoscopy, haruspicy, daphnomancy and augury- the languages that require no words. Students climb the fire escape to watch the sky, translate the language of storms, leaving words behind in favor of the deeper forms of knowing. 
The students of the DDL know that the gods are always talking. You just have to know how to listen.

Department of Dead Languages

At the edge of the woods, there is a cottage. Vaguely threatening classical music drips from cracked windows. A few girls sit on the grass, arguing about cryptography, or serial killers, or the Eleusinian Mysteries. Someone watches from an upstairs window. 
From the front, the cottage doesn’t look like it could possibly house an entire department- or stay standing. Painted dark blue and white, it is too tall to be stable, and it teeters spectacularly to the left. If you walk around to the back, you notice that it seems to be swallowed by the forest, trees and deep red clay dirt and moss creeping across the windows. 
Inside, students sprawl across maroon velvet couches, watching Buzzfeed Unsolved, cutting out articles for their conspiracy boards, arguing about who the Zodiac killer is, and doing forensic research for strictly scientific reasons. Walking further into the building, the light dims, and a strange scent fills the air. Damp earth. Rust. Old water. There is always a disconcerting moment when the students realize they are underground, that the cottage winds its way down into the earth. The air is heavier down here. Lit by candles and torches, the students sleep in the underground maze, the roots of the cottage. 
It is here that they talk about the darker mysteries.

Department of Cults and Mysteries

The Department of Hidden Sequences is bright. Too bright. 
On top of the abandoned grain factory, there is a Birdcage. At least, that’s what the DHS students call it. A glass box, half rubix cube, half maze, with endlessly repeating geometric patterns that form the only code to navigating the Birdcage. On the weekend, the Birdcage is a strobe beacon, music pulsing loud enough that you hear it in the DCM Cottage across campus. Students from the other departments steer clear unless they have a guide- they all know that there is a specific madness that lives in those halls, a madness made of numbers that promise answers and shapes that pretend to govern life. 
Students play music at all hours of the day, experimenting with how different time signatures affect their thought patterns. They code video games and trip on acid, comparing notes about the patterns they see. They get into heated arguments about QRNGS and theories of reality, bible numerology and the predictability of the universe. 
From the double helix staircase to the fibonacci spiral that divides the dorms, the Department of Hidden Sequences is equal parts chaotic and measured. Its students are the same- cold and calculating, playful and mysterious. Sharp eyes and sharp words, trying to divine the secrets of the universe from the hidden patterns on the underside of the world.

Department of Hidden Sequences

The students of the Department of Higher Powers know there are older things in this world. Housed in a dome above the Holy House of God Cathedral, the students of the DHP are perpetually stuck halfway between this world and the next. From the antique surgical tools that hang on the wall to the jars of herbs that cover shelves that stretch to the ceiling, the DHP students are always reaching. From the ancient truths that sing inside our blood to the mysteries of what waits on the other side, there is a commonality found in accepting that we are not entirely in control. 
Students are witches and doctors, modern ascetics, dipping into the beyond with meditation and drugs, calling upon things that are too old to speak the languages of this world. 
Students burn incense as they compare notes on ancient religious texts, watching the ebb and flows of human belief. Paganism as the first religions to monotheism and the casting out of witches. The practice of herbalism- healer to witch to doctor. Speaking in tongues and consulting oracles. The wicked and divine, the sacred and profane, the students of the DHP want it all. 
And they’ll do anything to get it.

Department of Higher Powers

Leftover from the time that A New School was a farmstead, at the edge of campus sits a barn and a silo. At least, that’s what they used to be, before the DCD got ahold of them. 
The Barn now functions as a remodeled live-in studio. On the top floor, in the old hayloft, students sleep in hammocks made by the textile students. One half of the barn has been replaced entirely with glass, and sunlight streams in on the visual artists. The other half, outfitted with high-speed internet, coffee makers, and enough cushy armchairs to house a small army, is home to the writers. If you listen closely you can always hear someone talking about their new idea, swearing because someone pointed out a plot hole, or trying desperately to convince their friend to beta read their new piece. Haphazard stacks of books creep up the walls, and art covers every available surface. The Creation Kids believe vehemently in reckless, boundless, and fearless creation as the only way to survive. 
Outside in the silo, the other half of the department can usually be found working on homemade recipes for explosives, demolishing test crash dummies, developing new formulations for jet fuel, or just blowing up a car because they can. There is beauty in destruction, they have found, poetry in the finality of it all. 
Out back is a garden, tended to carefully (and ferociously protected when the destruction kids accidentally set things on fire). The creation kids grow pomegranates and jasmine, chamomile and mint- somehow, anything will grow in this sticky, honeyed Virginia dirt. 
But, come rain or shine, at 5:30 all of the students have tea together in the back field, covered in paint and ink, soot and dust, and watch golden hour hit the rolling hills that sink down to the castle.

Department of Creation and Destruction

If you walk straight to the center of campus and fist bump the statue of Abraham Lee, you’ll find yourself in the tunnels that run beneath all of the school. These tunnels are the domain of the DUE. No one has ever really been able to confirm that they do, in fact exist, however rumor has it that beneath the old campus there are tunnels that house the seventh department. 
Consisting solely on a diet of mountain dew, kraft and mac and cheese, no one knows how the students of DUE survive. They venture out at night in dark hoodies, armed with EMF readers, old-fashioned road maps, and a constant theme song of the “spooky scary skeletons” dubstep remix. If anyone could confirm that they exist, they would be voted “department with most crackhead energy”. 
You cannot declare a major in this department. If you’re chosen, you disappear into one of the unmarked doors in the backs of closets, trapdoors in abandoned classrooms, or from anywhere in the gym, as there are never any witnesses.
The DUE has one mission- to search for and obtain proof of the unexplainable. 
Notable alumni purportedly include Goatman and the Jersey Devil (back when he still had a mullet)

Department of Unconfirmed Existence (shhh...)

<p>Now that you've discovered just where you fit in this world, it's time to explore it!</p>

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Which Department Are You?

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Which Department Are You?

Now that you've determined your department, go check out the swag!

Averno Merch Store

Averno Instagram

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