The Third Bureaucratic Academy of Baator

The Third Bureaucratic Academy of Baator is one of the main training grounds for the devilish ministers and bureaucrats who plague the morally lawful of the Material Planes. It is, for all intents and purposes, an academic sweatshop, for lack of a better term. It knows no rival in terms of the quality of the training offered, nor the professionalism of its celebrated lecturers and professors of "mortal" law. Fiendish students from across the entire Nine Hells come here to be trained relentlessly to the point of excellence in such disciplines as: accounting, finance, oration, law, torture, lying, etiquette and procedure, contract creation and negotiation, and many of the other skills devils of a higher station believe are necessary for the modern devil to exist in Baatorian society.

Strangely though, the addition of poetry and recitation to the curriculum has raised many an eyebrow... if a devil has an eyebrow that is. In any event, many of the older generation of devilish nobles are more than a little curious as to why such concepts are now required as part of a devil's training for the devilish bureaucracy. To those naysayers, the devilish academicians merely suggest that today's devil should be more skilled in such concepts so as to be better able to quote appropriate phrases or details of law in debate or when called to represent "clients" in many of the Infernal Courts of Hell. Each department of the Academy is headed by a particular baatezu noble who displays some specialised skill in his role for the greater Baatorian realm. For example, a senior erinyes is usually responsible for the training of young devils in the techniques and methods of "charming negotiation", while a pair of osyluths oversee the disciplining and adherence to Baatorian Laws among the young trainees. One of the oldest departments, the Torture Training Department, has been under the purview of a particularly vile (even for a fiend) kocrachon who will torture any of his students at the slightest provocation (and sometimes even without).

All devils who enter the Academy must accept the fact that they will sever all physical contact with the outside planes, from the moment their harrowing training courses begin, to the final day they take their oath and leave the Academy grounds forever. However, while physical contact is strictly not allowed, the average devilish student is kept up-to-date on the political happenings in both his own realm and those outside realms that currently interest the Lords of the Nine and the Dark Eight. A near-endless dispatch of reports, sector manifests, and political commentary greet the student upon the start of each and every new day of schooling.

Most reports and the like are penned by devils, and are usually fairly accurate observations of the current situations in many places upon the planes. However, it is often difficult to completely verify the accuracy of many of the reports that come in from more distant realms, and so usually, professors and senior lecturers will "ask" paelyrions not currently assigned to carry out duties for the Dark Eight, to come and discuss currents events and other particulars on the realms they frequent the most. The importance of all of this bombardment of information is to keep students aware of the processes that are necessary to maintain the everyday business of the Nine Hells. Some of the most senior staff in the Academy don't like to encourage outside apprenticeships (and not only because most of the apprentices end up dead because of some imagined slight toward their masters) with other devils who maintain certain functions and industries in the Hells because they believe that the students will learn more on the grounds of the Academy, drilled almost endlessly by ministers of their respective departments, and taskmasters who enforce a strict regiment of law and discipline. "Know your place" is the watchword among many of the lecturers and professors, and the words the students during their rare moments of off-time complain about the most. Often however, uttering such words will usually result in the perpetrating devil being carried away by servants acting on behalf of the senior osyluths in charge of campus discipline. Most are never seen again.

Much of the actual "school work" in the Academy courses takes place in bizarre classroom-like structures whereby the students are expected to sit around a raised central dais which the lecturer occupies when teaching the class. Bookkeeping, mock contract creation, negotiation, oration, and law appreciation are the first classes a devil student will take upon entering the Academy. The senior staff believe that the combination of these basic disciplines are the foundations to further learning and lead to the exploration of other related subjects.

In the Academy, more than in any other Baatezu training facility, competition between the various students is fierce. Not only that, but it is actively encouraged by the members of the faculty. Often, when disputes are raised, lecturers will corner the participants in an argument and gather the students around for a first-hand example of how the lessons they will learn will relate to their lives and positions in Baatezu society. An apparent contradiction to this promoted intense rivalry however is the fostering of strong student alumni networks among the various devils and other academies across the Nine Hells. Some outside the Academy suggest that this has more to do with the relatively low esteem many of the other devilish graduates of other academies hold for this school, and the exceptionally bloodless and pen-pushing devils who eventually graduate.

The Third Bureaucratic Academy of Baator is by far the smallest of all eight bureaucratic schools in the Nine Hells in physical size, though its cyclical student population is the largest. The Academy itself is positioned almost in the center of the festering pit that is Minauros, where it is completely enclosed and protected from the ravages of the outside world by high dark walls made almost entirely of dried mortal bones and the hardened stinking peat from the swamps outside. Its buildings are mostly low-rise affairs of more peat, bones, and clay blocks, although most have open ceilings to allow rapid winged transport to other areas of the academy by advespa messengers.

Strangely however, aside from the devil soldiers employed by the Discipline Department of the osyluths, very few fiendish guards or other security personnel are seen to be patrolling the academy grounds at any time of the day. Academy courses are taught every five hours, promptly with access to each classroom being denied to students immediately after the bell-ringing lemures - who wander the student apartment halls situated around the main buildings of the campus - have finished their duties by alerting students that classes are now in session.

Students are expected to study endless documentation during their off-schooling hours and engaging in debates and negotiation with fellow students whenever the opportunity presents itself. Lecturers and professors at the Academy are mostly aristocratic pit fiends and retired cornugon generals, but a fair number of retired baatezu judges and solicitors of note also spend their later years teaching occasional classes and keeping up on the revisions of the curriculum. Occasionally, students will be "privileged" by a visit from a high ranking pit fiend or other devilish high-up, and on two rare occasions, both the Ministers for Mortal Relations and Strategy in the Dark Eight have visited the Academy to chair a series of lectures based on their fields of expertise.

Graduates of the Academy usually head into select positions within the greater Baatorian Hierarchy, most of which have already been pre-determined for them based on their grades, skill, and the overall need for quality graduates in areas and departments across the Nine Hells. Those who graduate but are not assigned duties usually find themselves operating as private administrators or functioning in other minor roles in the hierarchy until such time as a position more qualified for their skills opens up. Most, if not all the baatezu now considered the nobility, began their careers in an academy much like this one.