Not long after Orliane's declaration, and the undaunted stare she returned as Muur threatened to take up the mantle of the dreaded Red Inker, her teacher entered the room. Chatter quickly died down as he made his way to the dais and by the time he had taken a book from under his arm and laid it on a lectern in the dais’ center, the class was silent.
He was unlike any Elezen that Muur had seen before. Like the others, his frame was that of a human that had been stretched upward without care to add any girth to him in order to keep things proportional. But unlike them, he didn’t hold the same natural grace and litheness that was the not-elves’ lot. Instead he was rather rotund and sported quite the bushy and well groomed mustache.
If that had been all, he’d almost have looked like a sort of elven sultan. Some kind of bon-vivant that made full use of the Order’s largess and buffet. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all there was to him. His cheeks were drawn in and shallow, his back just crooked enough to be noticeable without affecting his height and if that hadn’t been enough to make him look the part of some sort of evil vizier, he’d also made sure to grow a goatee that matched his other piece of facial hair.
Scanning the room, his gaze paused on Muur for a moment, before dismissing her and narrowing at the sight of Orliane…’s paper. Thanks to where the two girls were seated, and his own height, he seemed to be able to catch a glimpse of the page– or at least see just how much black ink had been crammed onto it.
“Good morning students,” He intoned after turning his attention back to the room as a whole, “May the Twins bless this day.”
“And may their wisdom shine in us.” The entire class spoke the prayer as one, Muur included thanks to the memories of her apprenticeship telling her that to do otherwise would reflect extremely poorly on her, her teachers and Orliane's family once her affiliations were known.
Meanwhile the old lecturer only allowed a satisfied sniff before motioning for the homework to be brought to him, “Have your pages brought to the front. As ever, they'll be returned next class.”
The sound of parchment moving quickly filled the amphitheater as each row gathered their work and passed it down to the lower one. Eventually, every bit of homework was gathered at the lowest step of the classroom and the rotund elf moved to claim them.
Giving a small nod of thanks to the student that handed them over, he returned to his pulpit and laid them on the side, “I can only hope that you will prove yourselves more capable than when I requested an essay on the Heavens. Now, on to other matters…” Looking directly at the lizard wizard, his next words carried a fair bit of hostility, “Would you care to explain your presence in this hall of learning? It is one thing for Sellswords like yourself to be imbued of our thaumaturgical expertise. It is another entirely for one of your kind to so brazenly enter such a room.”
“Lady Olfane sent me this way.” Muur replied bluntly, sidestepping the insinuations entirely and just cutting to the heart of the matter. Hopefully she’d used the correct title for the matron, things had been such a roller-coaster that she didn’t actually know the rank of her benefactor.
His eyes flicked towards the matron's daughter. He regarded her for a moment, then sighed, “Bah, of course she did. Damnable busy body…” Grumbling under his breath, he flipped his tome open and stopped on a heavily illuminated page, "At least you've brought writing implements. So perhaps you really will learn something here, but! Do not expect any kindness from me in my class. I will treat you as if you've been attending my class since the very start.”
Muur blinked owlishly. Maybe it was her being used to how university professors rolled, maybe it was just how her brain worked, but… “Naturally, I’m just a guest, it’d be silly to upend your plans for the lesson just because I showed up unannounced.”
Besides, it was fun to piece things together from context clues.
Addressing her presence one last time via a considering hum, the Professor wasted no time in launching into his lecture. It was… quite nice honestly? He even used magitek projectors to illustrate his points!
Once he got them to work, that was. Quite the creative, if non-explicit swearing on that one.
In any case, between Gank’ma’s rather lean lessons on the subject and the man’s lecture, Muur managed to glean the basics of the Seven Hells: First, is that paradoxically, there were only six of them. Each corresponding to a single element.
Second, they functioned somewhat like Dante’s circles of hell. Just with them being all equal, and without being tied to one single sin. For example, in his writings Dante said that Greed would end with you being sent to the circle of the same name, but here a greedy thief and a con-man would end up in two different Hells despite both of them being governed by their greed.
As for the Hells themselves?
The Hell of Fire was where the aforementioned con-men were sentenced to. But it was also home to ‘those that judged others wrongly’, whatever that entailed, and to those that dealt in bribery. Interestingly, Muur learned that bribe takers and givers both found their way there. She could only imagine how many of Ul'dah's ‘police’ force would spend their eternity being charbroiled down there.
After allowing people to jolt down a few notes, the lecturer moved on to the Hell of Water by looking over some of the paper he would be (presumably) grading and asking a student to describe it succinctly. “But of course Professor Lâdoré! As everyone should know…” In spite of how she sounded like a mixture of a teacher’s pet and noblewoman deigning to impart her knowledge onto the lower masses, her brief overview was quite enlightening. People in that specific Hell were deceivers, charlatans, counterfeiters and most importantly; false prophets.
The description of the Hell of Ice was by far and away the most straightforward, although it still had some depth to the underlying rationale behind what would condemn you there. It was governed by the Twelves’ war goddess, so it fittingly contained cowards and deserters. She also seemed to hold strong opinions on romance– or was just a fan of the knightly variety, because adulterers somehow found their way there too. Muur called it knightly romance because it very much wasn’t an enforcement of monogamy: so long as everyone was informed and consenting it was kosher.
The fourth hell the class went over was the Hell of Lightning. Yet another student was asked to go over this one… which was probably a poor decision on the lecturer's part. Unlike the other girl, this one was thoroughly unprepared. Which was a feat because Muur struggled to imagine something more engaging to study on than a god named Rhalgr the Destroyer spiking lightning-infused meteorites at the sinners consigned to this Hell for vandalism, warmongering and being slumlords.
The last two Hells were given back to the first student, who positively preened under the attention and immediately took her chance to show off her knowledge. The Hell of Earth was a bit of a grab bag of sinners. Defilers of nature made sense, as Muur knew Earth aspected aether was related to plants and the health of the land beyond the obvious ‘soil and minerals’, so their presence made total sense.
…But the other three examples didn't really match with that, or each other for that matter. Liars, revisionists and thieves were all in the same boat– same garden? Unlike the other Hells, she just couldn’t get a grip on the underlying logic here. Something to look up as leisure reading later.
In contrast, the Hell of Wind was far more straightforward in terms of who it punished: Bandits of all types. Now, sure it treated pirates, air pirates and mountain bandits as worthy of separation. But that felt less like an actual distinction, and more a means to tie into the last category of sinners that was to be sent there, ‘Defilers of Air and Seas’. Probably a deeper root in how the Twins were the Traders and thus banditry was a form of defilement in and of itself in the eyes of the church.
All around, lots of notes being taken, in her usual diagram style of shorthand sentences and arrows to interconnect everything in a way she could pick back up on her train of thought at a quick glance. Since these were personal notes, she also just went with the latin alphabet rather than Eorzean, mixing up languages from her previous life and the current without a care. Whatever word most neatly conveyed the nuance she wanted was used and that was that.
It wasn’t like this was an academic paper to be published.