I had a question from a reader recently about how professional training works in Albion. Today’s post is about apprenticing in general, and next week’s will talk about Healers and related professions in more detail.
Demographics
Roughly speaking, there are about 3000 people of a given age in Albion during the period when I’m writing. About 560 of those attend one of the Five Schools, or about 18% (Schola is the smallest of the Five Schools with 70 students in each year. Snap is the largest, with about 150).
About 50% of Albion’s population has enough magic to make the Pact and use various minor household charms and magical tools. They can keep milk sweet, make better salves for injuries, use keep-cool boxes or magical stoves, and use cleaning charms that can make thing easier and faster.
About 35% has stronger magic, enough to do a range of things, but with some meaningful limitations. These are not people who are going to be using magic all day as their core work, but might for specific tasks. Some kinds of crafting, a lot of agricultural magics, and so on fall in here.
Strong magic
That leaves about 15%, and basically everyone in this category goes to one of the Five Schools (plus some others). These people have strong magic, though that can involve raw power, ability to learn complex methods of doing magic, or other aspects (and people have different approaches). Almost all of my protagonists fall in this category.
Ferry doesn’t have strong magic, though she does develop skill with delicate ones as an adult. Elen has a lot of strength of capacity but not powerful oomph to make things go, etc. Thesan does have a fair bit of magical competence, but she doesn’t use anything obviously powerful most of the time.
Magical strength isn’t the only consideration for schooling – some people with weak magic but powerful families end up at Schola. Some with strong magic but no patronage don’t get an offer to any of the Schools (like Rufus). Over the course of the 1920s, a number of reforms take place to help improve this, specifically because of the chain effects of deaths in the Great War affecting specialists in a number of fields.
Education
Children in Albion (i.e. educated within the magical community) have a similar education to non-magical children of the period until they are 13. That includes local or village schools, learning at home with a governess or tutor, or other similar arrangements. Albion provides both correspondence options and travelling teachers for families in rural areas.
The Five Schools
The Five Schools in Albion specialise in different kinds and approaches to magic. Schola focuses most on magical theory and complex magical forms (or at least the foundations for learning more about them as an adult). Alethorpe focuses on crafting magics and practical ones, and Dunwich on those related to trade. Forvie deals with fishing, ocean magic, and coastal magics, including weather, and Snap is the home of those interested in agricultural magic.
Some children go to a tutoring house the autumn they’re 11, to begin to build connections with others of a similar background. The tutoring houses are most common for Schola, but some exist for the other schools. They allow for fostering, broadening skills and relationships beyond the immediate family, and allowing a wider range of adults to get a sense of the next generation.
Children who are going to one of the Five Schools begin there the September they are 13. All of the schools run for five years, until the June after someone turns 18. Most of these students then go on to apprentice.
Other options
Those not going to the Five Schools continue with their village education until 16, when they generally apprentice. In a few cases they may go into a line of work where there isn’t the same sort of formal apprenticeships (serving in the Army or Navy, going to work in the non-magical community and working their way up through positions, etc.)
Apprenticeships
Guilds have been a central part of Albion’s community and professional structure since well before the Pact. As was true in the non-magical community of the mediaeval period, guilds form a central point for confirming skills in specific crafts, managing contracts and negotiations, and handling conflicts related to the guild’s work. Albion also has a number of other groups that act like guilds in most ways.
Most apprenticeships, therefore, are mediated by guilds. Some have formal benchmarks for moving from apprentice to journeyman or journeywoman. We’ve seen mentions of this with the Alchemist’s Guild, the Apothecary Guild, the Talisman Maker’s Guild (such as in Elemental Truth), the Astronomer’s Guild, the Printer’s or Bookbinder’s Guild (as in Bound for Perdition). Weaving Hope has a bit more about how that works for the Weavers.
In these cases, the guild sets standards for who is accepted as an apprentice, what skills are required, and how to maintain those standards for goods, services, and training.
Some people also just go into the family business, get
Experiences of apprenticing
Within that context, individual can take on apprentices. There is usually a fee for this (though sometimes families will swap apprentices). Cassie, in On The Bias, has three apprentices under this arrangement, and Eda in Weaving Hope is responsible for four current apprentices, with assistance from her journeywomen and second. In both these cases, their families pay a fee, and the apprentice earns a progressive wage as they get more skill and can do more complex work.
In both these cases, the apprentices live out. That could be rooms near where they work or it could mean living with family if the family’s near enough a portal. Two of Eda’s apprentices are living with journeywomen in their homes, and helping with the work there.
Sometimes apprentices in this situation live elsewhere. Sometimes, as in Rufus in the extra The Size of the Bog, they get room and board. That’s usually more true when someone can offer immediate assistance outside of the skills they’re leaning as an apprentice. In Rufus’s case, he’s entirely able to offer the physical labour of taking care of livestock when he begins apprenticing.
Complex magic
Some specialities have more personal arrangements. Teaching someone Ritual magic, for example, involves a lot of close personal interaction, changes to how the apprentice master or mistress is doing their own work, and more.
Apprenticeships in magical specialities (Ritual, Materia, Alchemy, talisman making) tend to be more carefully negotiated as a result, because of the level of commitment required by all parties. And of course, specialists of a high level of skill don’t grow on trees: not all of them take apprentices, or have an apprentice routinely. Notable families usually begin the negotiations as soon as possible once it’s clear what speciality is desired.
These negotiations are a bit more like marriage agreements. They often include a fee, but also exchanges of other kind. You can think of them as building connections that the apprentice mistress or master expects will have benefits for decades down the road.
Of course, sometimes there are problems with this. Farran, in Seven Sisters (and in the upcoming Harmonic Progression), initially began with a talisman maker only to find that his magic was not a good fit with that. His apprentice master handled it badly, but the eventual outcome involved breaking the apprenticeship and Farran apprenticing elsewhere.
Civic need
Finally, some specialities are of such interest to the community as a whole that they make a point of casting a wide net – and making it possible for people without family connections or the money for fees to join them.
The Portal Keepers (see The Fossil Door as well as A Gentle Touch in the extra Three Tales of Gabe and Rathna) make a point of looking for people who might be able to learn their particularly nuanced skill. An established master or mistress of the guild interviews students with potential in their second or third year, and if they find someone with potential, hopefully negotiates for that person to give it a try.
In this case, the training is non-binding, they don’t want to keep people who don’t want to do that work. However, the early training is relevant to a number of other disciplines, so people who decide not to continue as a Portal Keeper generally have other good options.
Similarly, the Guard is open to a wide range of applicants, and while fees may be relevant, there are options for people who can’t pay them. In this case, as with the Healers we’ll talk about next blog post, apprentices do not immediately focus on work with a single apprentice master or mistress. Instead, there’s a period of learning general skills as a larger year group before picking a specialty.
Back next post with more details about the Healers!
