This was a standard school-style building, with a rigorously symmetrical gate, an academic-looking architecture, badges that bore historical and classical sedimentation and excavation elements, as well as school members who wore exploration, curiosity, and a thirst for knowledge on their faces.
Rod presented his introduction letter, and the doorman immediately invited him in.
Upon entering, he faced a salon-style hall where each round table was filled with books, blueprints, and various oddly shaped tools. People dressed in the school's standard long robes sat in pairs or groups at the tables, conversing either gently or intensely.
They were genteel, polite, sometimes wildly unrestrained and sharply sarcastic, using pretentiously artistic vocabulary that made Rod, still a simpleton, unable to understand many words.
The doorman shouted, "Professor Bins, Professor Bins, the academy's collaborator has arrived—you can set off now."
