"The Draculas [...] had dealings with the Evil One. They learned his secrets in the Scholomance, amongst the mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the devil claims the tenth scholar as his due."
— Dracula
A fabled school for magicians from Romanian mythology, the Scholomance (also known as the School of the Dragon or the Solomonarie) has long captivated the minds of writers, even including Bram Stoker. It is generally believed to derive its name from the Biblical Solomon, but as time passed, the school became associated with evil magic, corruption, and even The Devil.
According to the legends, the Scholomance is an Academy of Evil and Wizarding School which is either located somewhere inside a mountain or deep underground. Classes of seven, ten, or thirteen students attend the Scholomance for a seven or nine year curriculum (each number varying depending on the particular telling of the myth) and learn how to perform all kinds of esoteric Dark Arts, which make them incredibly powerful. But there's always a price to be paid for knowledge, and according to many legends of the Scholomance, the price is that one student in each class doesn't quite make it out of the academy. In these legends, he or she is instead enslaved by the Devil and forced to control the weather by riding a dragon for all eternity.
Note: for the series of books from the 2020s set at the Scholomance and called that, see The Scholomance, and for the novel from 2012 also called 'The Scholomance', see here
. This page is for the original myth.
Tropes associated with the Scholomance
- Academy of Evil: Students go here to be trained by the Devil so they can cast powerful, evil magic. A place for good people it's not.
- Boarding School: In most versions of the legend, students can't go home for the night or even for vacations—they're stuck there until they die, graduate, or get taken by the Devil in payment for everyone's tuition.
- The Dark Arts: Students learn these at the Scholomance.
- Deadly Graduation: In most traditional versions of the legend, of all the students who survive to graduation, one doesn't make it out and is instead enslaved by the Devil forever.
- Dracula: The school's most famous (and infamous) graduate.
- Great Big Book of Everything: According to the myths, a graduation requirement is that the students must all record everything they know about humanity into a single book.
- Satan: Some myths have this guy teaching at the school, and of course he collects the soul of one of the students during graduation.
- Speaks Fluent Animal: One of the skills taught by the Scholomance is said to be learning the language of beasts.
- Weather Manipulation: Students at the Scholomance are taught this, and one unfortunate is forced by the Devil to do this for all eternity while riding a dragon.
- Wizarding School: It's a school for witches and wizards who want to learn evil magic.
Works incorporating the myth of the Scholomance:
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Folklore
- Book of the Land Beyond the Forest and Transylvanian Superstitions, written by the Scottish author Emily Gerard in the 1880s, codified many of the Scholomance tropes. These include the school's location, what's taught there, and the idea that a student is sacrificed to the Devil during graduation.
- The Magic Challenge, Volume 2: Satanism and Witchcraft by Jean-Baptiste Martin and Massimo Intravigne also documents details of the historical Scholomance myth, focusing particularly on the school's connection with dragons as well as how the students study for seven years to learn how to control the weather and to understand animal speech.
- Scholomance, According to the Folk Tradition of the Romanians by Moses Gaster in 1878 also codifies several of the Scholomance's tropes. In particular, the text notes that the students of the Scholomance live underground and are taught all manner of magic, especially weather spells. It also notes that the Devil keeps one of the students to ride around on a dragon and cast weather spells. This text additionally digs into the derivation of the Scholomance's name, noting how it was probably originally named after Solomon before becoming associated with demons.
Literature
- The Dark Artifices: In the spinoff book Lady Midnight, it is said that the Scholomance is used to train Shadowhunters. As in the original myth, the school is located underground within a mountain.
- Dracula: The eponymous vampire is said to have studied at the Scholomance and learned every conceivable branch of knowledge (including, in some tellings, the knowledge of how to become a vampire in the first place). Van Helsing also notes that, of those who study at the Scholomance, the Devil 'claims the tenth scholar as his due,' matching the original myth.
- Dracula the Undead (1997): This unauthorized sequel to Dracula features a character named Andre Kovacs who, wanting to learn more about Dracula, begins hunting down the Scholomance. This turns out not to be a particularly good idea, since the Scholomance is depicted as the Devil's school where—as per the myth—one student from each class is sacrificed to pay for the whole class's tuition.
- Anno Dracula: This alternative version of the Dracula story (which features Dracula defeating Van Helsing) also mentions Dracula studying at the Scholomance.
- Lord of Middle Air, by Michael Rowan, features a wizard who claims to have studied at the Scholomance multiple times since there was too much to learn in a single session.
- Pale Lights: The school is featured as the training grounds for the Watch, a company of elite god-killers that fight against the gods, devils, and soulless hollows prowling Vesper. It is later revealed that the school was built by Lucifer himself as his "summer palace", which the Watch merely took for themselves when they locked him away; the Lightbringer's reasons for allowing any of this to happen remain unknown.
- The Scholomance, the 2012 novel by R. Lee Smith, is set at the eponymous school and features one girl desperately trying to save her friend from being the tenth student who gets sacrificed by the demon teachers.
- The Scholomance, the 2020s trilogy by Naomi Novik, is also largely set at the eponymous school. As in the original myth, students die during graduation, resulting in one of the major plot points being the protagonist trying to find a way around that.
- Scholomance: The Devil's Academy is a LitRPG Hentai series of books about a student who winds up at the eponymous university. This story makes a few changes to the myth—for instance, all the students are female until the protagonist shows up—but it keeps the same basic idea that the Scholomance is an evil Wizarding School where devils (which, in this story, are explicitly Satanic as the Christian faith defines it) teach students how to do all kinds of dark arts.
- Vainqueur The Dragon: Victor's slide into Pragmatic Villainy gets him offered a place here. Vainqueur wouldn't have allowed him to leave for an entire school year, but fortunately, the school uses time dilation, so he completes his seven-year course in just a week, coming back with not only extensive knowledge of dark magic, but also a close relationship with a high-ranking demon queen, and a custom Soul Jar with extra features like raising people as intelligent undead with a secret backdoor that lets him control them.
- The Witch of Knightcharm: The protagonist, a student witch named Emily, is disgraced after being badly defeated by dark witches. She resolves to infiltrate and undermine their coven in order to redeem herself, only to learn that they're students of the Scholomance, which as per the myths is an underground school devoted to turning its pupils into the most powerful dark magicians to walk the Earth. By the time Emily learns about its inhumane lessons, she's already trapped there, and she has to figure out how to survive without being corrupted by the school's leaders.
Tabletop Games
- Ravenloft: The supplement 'Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft' introduces the Scholomance into the setting and stays mostly true to the original myths, including noting that each class can only be of ten students, that the classes are taught by demons, that the school is deep in the mountains, and that students are not allowed to set foot into sunlight until they finish their studies.
Video Games
- Myth II: Soulblighter features a faction of evil magicians called the Warlocks of Scholomance. They are said to draw their powers from the 'Dark Gods,' which matches the original myth's depiction of the Scholomance as being run by Satan.
- Warcraft:
- World of Warcraft: Beneath the Barov Estate on Caer Darrow, there is a winding labyrinth named Scholomance where necromancers train new recruits and perform horrific experiments on the living. Between the Second and Third Wars, the wealthy Barov family struck a deal with the then-fledgling Cult of the Damned — they would provide a place to train new acolytes, and the cult would give the family immortality. Of course, the cult upheld their end of the deal by murdering the family and raising them as undead.
- In quite the contrast to its home game, Hearthstone features Scholomance as the setting of the Scholomance Academy set, where it is a quirky and lighthearted Wizarding School very much in the style of Hogwarts. Headmaster Kel'Thuzad still trains necromancers in secret, however.
