The city of Howitzer, capital of the nation of Fionne, was home to a nominally well-regarded magic academy simply called Docet Howitzer. It stood out in no particular way, but its students had no obvious deficiencies, at least. If you needed a mage for some unknown number and variety of tasks, such as in a caravan or to support a village, Docet Howitzer provided a plenitude of competent mages to fill the needs of the average request.
That is not to say that it was incapable of producing gems from its quarry, however. It was a meritocratic school that took in nearly anyone and allowed nearly anyone to stay so long as they achieved sufficient progress in their studies. This is how Durin, an orphan from the streets of Howitzer, came to study magic.
His birth parents are unknown. He was never accepted into an orphanage, nor was he ever fostered or adopted. Instead he lived as a street rat for the first eleven years of his life, scrounging for scraps among the degenerates of the city. But he was smart as a whip, having learned to read and write through observation. He stole books to study from, listened at schoolhouse windows, and even tricked a tutor into giving him lessons once. He was the most learned street rat to be found, but he earned that privilege in the most dubious ways.
Docet Howitzer allowed Durin to take the entrance exam on the recommendation of a local merchant who, realizing that this thieving child could read and write, saw an opportunity for charity that would also keep a criminal away from his shop. For the cost of a bath, some fresh clothes, and a decent meal, the most clever of the rats robbing him would have better things to do. The name of this merchant is lost to history, but his example sparked a charitable trend among the merchants of the world for a time. The idea that patronage could directly improve a ledger was, while not unknown, a rarely utilized concept at the time.
Durin walked into that exam room at the young age of eleven, three years younger than the next youngest applicant and five years younger than the median. This was a school for scholars with some base learning: advanced reading and writing, fundamentals of various sciences, the basics of argumentation and logical analysis, enough etiquette to avoid embarrassment. Durin, being both uneducated and exceptionally young, appeared to lack most of this.
Despite that, his grade on this exam was reported at 87%, having somehow correctly answered every question but with work scribbled at the edge of the page demonstrating how his reasoning was choppy, random, and incomplete. The examiners were befuddled by how he had managed to pass, let alone pass with one of the top grades.
At first it was assumed that he had cheated, but he was the first in the exam hall to hand in his papers, making it impossible for him to have copied someone else's work. Everyone was searched and monitored through the exam, so bringing outside materials would have been unlikely. What would he have brought in, anyways? The questions changed year to year and were mostly unique to the exam. It was troublesome to study for, let alone cheat for.
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No, Durin had taken his test legitimately, and his lack of learning barely held him back. If anything, his problem was that he was unused to the environment and the process. He had never taken a test before, after all, nor had he sat quietly in rows of desks like in a school. He only vaguely understood the rules based on the examiner's instructions.
They knew they had to put him through to the interview, at least. Three examiners asked him questions to gauge his personality, interest, and general suitability for further studies. They found that he had actually written all that extra work in the margins based on the wandering of his mind simply because he noticed that others around him were writing much more than just the answer. "The answers were usually pretty easy to think of, I just didn't know what it meant by 'showing my work,' you know? Thinking isn't really working, I don't think. You can't show thoughts, either. So I just scribbled some passing thoughts down."
The examiners were unsure whether he seemed just the right level of eccentric to grow into a genius researcher or just the right level of unhinged to blacklist from the grounds. They leaned more towards the prior option, in the end, and admitted him after hearing his answer to why he wanted to study at Docet Howitzer: "I get to learn things, sleep in a bed, and get three meals a day. I don't understand why anyone wouldn't join." It wasn't charity that moved them, exactly, although that did help. They mostly resonated with the idea that they would be happiest if all they had to do in life was eat, sleep and read.
Students at Docet Howitzer were granted a room in large dormitories near the campus, if they wished to take it. Durin obviously did, but students from local families often preferred to just live at home and continue receiving the support of their parents - usually in the form of meals and laundry. The dormitories were laid out as a stack of nearly identical floors: eight rooms led into a common area in the middle of the floor, a shared bathroom with toilets and showers was stationed to one side, and a small kitchen was stationed to the other. The common area had seating for relaxation; tables for eating, studying, and socializing; and a spiral staircase leading to the other floors, the exit on the ground level, and a rooftop area with outdoor relaxation available for three seasons of the year.
Durin thought all of that was incredible, luxury beyond anything he had ever experienced. But what he was most thrilled by was his tiny room: a bed for a single person, linens for said bed, a small empty bookshelf, and a writing desk with some cheap supplies. Durin was probably the least privileged student to be accepted at any academy on the continent, having shown up without a single personal item to decorate his provided room, but the room itself was incredible to him. He had a private space for the first time in his life.
To some extent, Durin agreed to take the exam on a whim. The merchant was paying, sure, but he didn't really care. It was something to do and he got some food and clothes out of it. But the further he got in the process - learning about the various benefits, seeing what he had to gain simply by reading books - the more he realized this was his ticket to a safe and comfortable life.
