Academics covers the standard curriculum of the Middle Ages: the trivium of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic and the quadrivum of arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy. Anyone who attends university learns the lore of the world divided into these two catagories. Any character who acquired Acatemics within the last 300 years must choose the trivium or the quadrivium as an initial field of expertise (and can acquire the other one later). Only vampires who were created before the rise of medieval universities or thoroughly self-taught individuals escape this requirement. Any other categories seem strange at best (and actively suspicious at worst) to conventionally educated people.
Your character must know Latin, requiring Linguistics 1, to acquire the second dot in Academics.
• Novice: You know rudimentary Latin and the most fundamental authorities in your field of expertise.
•• Practiced: You can construct solid arguments, and you know some of the important commentaries in each area your expertise covers.
••• Competent: You can make a living instructing others. You know some Greek and possibly other languages in addition to Latin, and your own commentaries and glosses earn the respect of your peers.
•••• Expert: Lay people admire your mind, but they may feel you’ve neglected the rest of your life for the sake of learning. You can confidentally advise potentates on important matters.
••••• Master: Any library on the subjects in which you specialize seems inadequate without your works.
- Possessed by: Court Officials, Monks, Priests, Scribes, Tutors.
- Specialties: Instruction, Quoting Text, Research.
- Fields of Expertise: Trivium, Quadrivium