Happy Friday!
It’s the first Friday of the month, and that means it’s time for a Worldbuilding post! Today, I’m sharing my working map of Olive Tree Academy!
Mind you, this is very much a work in progress, so please don’t judge! But it’ll give you, like it does me, a good idea of the layout of things as you read.
Olive Tree Academy exists inside a pocket dimension that its residents refer to as the “Bubble.” The Bubble itself is circular, about 5 kilometers across. The campus area sits at the very center, and is about 1 km in diameter. This map is the campus section only, not the full Bubble. (I do have a full Bubble map, but it’s even less finished than this, plus it would be lacking campus detail. I’ll share that one another day.)
The Map
Here’s the campus map:
So, let’s start our tour!
The Agora
The round, green area at the center of everything is called the Agora. It’s basically a huge lawn, home to grassy areas, flower beds, benches, and some small ponds. Not yet pictured here, there’s also an outdoor stage and one larger pond.
There are also many more walkways than are pictured here. These are just the main pathways, which are wide sidewalks. There are many smaller sidewalks and other paths in between, connecting these main sidewalks. These main walkways are the ones with olive trees growing alongside them, as described in the books.
You’ll also notice two large rings outside the Agora. The wider, inside one, is called the Carriage Path. This is the closest thing to an actual paved road anywhere in the Bubble (save for in and around the farms.) The Carriage Path is named for the carriages that move around it, propelled and steered by magick. Students can wait for a carriage to come by, tap it, and it’ll stop to let them get in. The carriages were very useful when the school was younger, and the Cardinal Buildings were essentially the only buildings on Campus. But, now that the campus is much larger, the carriages tend to save very little time or distance. The carriages are mostly only used these days by new students having fun trying them out.
The outer ring is the Footpath. This is a wide, packed-dirt path used for walking. The Footpath is, today, what the Carriage Path was long ago: a convenient roadway connecting most things on Campus. It runs between the spaces taken up by classroom buildings and housing, making it a convenient way for students to get to class. The main walkways that run through the Agora all connect with the Footpath, so it’s a handy part of the overall system. Some of the more athletic students use this as a jogging path, as well.
The round building in the very center is the Portal House. That’s where the main portal in and out of the Bubble is located, making it, essentially, the front door in and out of the Bubble.
The Cardinal Buildings
The four large buildings around the outside edge of the Agora are called, collectively, the Cardinal Buildings. They are, starting at the top of the map and working clockwise: The Student Building, the Admin Building, the Infirmary, and the Library.
The majority of the main floor of the Student Building is the Dining Hall, including an outside patio along the back and around the right side where students can eat outdoors with a view of the sports area and greenhouses. The upper floors of the Student Building include practice rooms for Magickal Arts students and study rooms for all students. The Student Building also includes a gym.
The ground floor of the Admin Building houses the Auditorium and the Ballroom. Upper floors include all of the school’s offices, including the Dean’s personal office. The Admin Building includes a high clock tower, visible from almost anywhere in the Campus area. It also includes several sub-basements, and is the home of more than a few of the school’s darker secrets.
The Infirmary is, basically, a hospital. There’s a fully operational emergency room and surgical suite, as well as patient wards and private rooms. A clinic area for non-emergency care also exists here, though that’s not something you’ll see on-page much, since students showing up for routine physical appointments isn’t exactly riveting storytelling! The infirmary also includes a few classrooms for healing classes. The Infirmary is staffed by two magically-trained medical doctors, as well as a staff of graduate students from the Magickal Healing track and several undergrad students doing internships for lower-level healing classes.
And finally, that brings us to the Library, arguably the most important building at Olive Tree Academy. The OTA Library has three main floors and several dedicated sections. The Library has all the “normal” books you’d find in a non-magickal library, as well as millions of books on magickal topics, including a large, separate room dedicated to books on vampires and a smaller “local history” type room filled with books, maps, and blueprints concerned with the Bubble itself. There are also numerous large and small study rooms and conference rooms throughout the Library’s main floors.
The Library also includes an additional section, referred to as the Old Wing. The Old Wing is off limits to most students. Professors and some grad students with special access can enter the Old Wing through password-restricted portals, which contains older materials as well as some very rare and valuable artifacts. Like the Admin Building, the Library houses many of OTA’s deepest secrets.
The Infirmary Garden
The space between the Library and the Infirmary is a large, enclosed garden called the Infirmary Garden. This is where all the healing herbs used by the Infirmary staff and healing classes are grown. Like the Infirmary itself, the Infirmary Garden is operated by a combination of permanent staff and student interns of varying levels. In the case of the garden, students doing internships here come both from the Magickal Arts tracks as well as the Botany tracks in the Academic department.
Classrooms and Other Departmental Areas
OTA has several divisions and departments, each with its own section of classroom buildings and other areas. The MAPA (Magickal Arts & Psychic Arts) classroom buildings, as well as the primary ones for the Academic department, are restricted to the space between the Carriage Path and the Footpath. The Botanical Studies and Cryptid Studies spaces are larger, accounting for the expansive gardens and large greenhouse of Botanical Studies and the dedicated buildings and outdoor pens required for housing the cryptid animals in Cryptid Studies.
In addition to the classroom and outdoor study areas, there’s a large sports complex. The door to the indoor gym inside the Student Building is nearby, but does require crossing the Carriage Path.
Later updates to this map will include the names and placement of specific buildings, and the walkways between them.
Student Housing
Student dorms and other housing also exist within the main Campus area. The “Apprentice” dorms, which is the name OTA uses for its undergraduate students, are all together, with MAPA and Academic students in separate clusters of four buildings each. The dorms for the Journeyman (the lower level graduate students, akin to Master degree students in a traditional college) students are in the same general section as the Apprentice dorms, separated by a wide lawn.
The Master students, which are the equivalent of Ph.D. candidates in a traditional University, have a separate housing area. Housing for the Master students consists of small apartments, rather than dorms. Housing for visitors is in the same area.
The entrance to the housing for the Vampire Transformation Track, or VTT, is also in the Master Student & Guest Housing area, including the housing for Apprentice and Journeyman VTT students. The VTT housing, however, is entirely underground, other than a small entry building.
Outside This Map
As I said at the beginning, the entirety of the bubble is much larger than just the inner Campus area. Outside what you can see on this map are wide expanses of natural areas, including a dense forest and a hilly/mountainous area. The housing for staff and faculty also sits outside the main Campus, as well as the many farms that produce much of the food for the residents of the Bubble. There’s also a body of saltwater along part of the outer edge, referred to as The Sea, though it’s the size of a medium-sized lake.
Thank You!
Thanks for taking this tour of the OTA Campus! I hope this map can help provide a convenient visual image as you read the books!
Speaking of the books, if you haven’t already, be sure to claim your copy of Fetch, the prequel short story to the OTA series, by subscribing to Sara’s Scribbles!
Thanks again! Talk soon,
