Nocturnal house
Those who find themselves in Nocturnal are often destined for greatness. A burning ambition drives Nocturnal students, not unlike a Lunar’s thirst for knowledge. The students of Nocturnal are resourceful, cunning, and determined. Make a friend in a Nocturnal, and you have a powerful ally at your side. While not always overtly friendly, these students have a strong sense of fraternity that make them excellent companions. Make an enemy of a Nocturnal, and you’ll have more than a few regrets.
Resourcefulness, Cunning, Ambition, Determination, Fraternity, Cleverness
Common Room
In the castle’s highest tower lies the observatory that houses the Nocturnal common room. The architecture is known for the strange mixture of Nouveau and Roman style, but its most prominent feature is the central room. The domed ceiling opens to reveal the night sky, allowing students use of the giant telescope to study the stars; some students have even discovered new celestial bodies.
Zodiac constellations encircle the main room over arches that lead to a hallway circling the central telescope room. Two doors lead to smaller, side sitting rooms that are more furnished than the main hub, as well as to the dorms just beyond the seating areas. Nebula like clouds float and collide up in the dome, forming constellations, shapes, and stars. Much like the night sky, the common room is mostly void, partially stars.
House Portrait
A mare of astounding beauty, Nox was a member of an elite social club, mostly filled with artists. She became muse to many stallions, all willing to paint her in exchange for a bit of her time. Little is known about her time before the club, but Nox herself is still alive, though very very old.
Because of all the stallions that painted her, there are several different portraits of her scattered around the castle. They regularly visit to gossip, and often grant favors to ponies if they tell Nox any dirty laundry they know of.
Most ponies are never quite sure which version of her lets them into the common room, but the artistic ponies usually challenge themselves to spot the differences and guess the painting that particular version of Nox comes from. The painting that guards the nocturnal common room is a complex wall mural, with a background that gives way to an entrance to the tower.
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Due to an incident with a gossip ring in 1864, the library Nox has been removed from the wall and tossed into storage.
Uniforms
Incoming students are provided with a dress shirt, a house specific tie, a grey blazer, a black house specific robe, and an optional dark grey skirt. Uniforms are required on campus, with dress code being more relaxed on weekends when classes are not in session. Students can pick up the uniform package in Feverfew Village.
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Additionally, students are given an enchanted house quill, journal, scarves,and saddlebag combination for their use during their academic career. Journals and quills are enchanted to be durable, and to never stray too far from their saddlebags, to ensure that students don’t lose their hard work. When released from their saddlebag, quills hover alongside students- ready to take notes as needed.
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Nocturnal robes are purple, with a scattering of stars and constellations projected across them much like the night sky. These stars twinkle, and move across the surface of the fabric over the course of the year to match the positions of the constellations. The feathers for the quills are taken from Nightstalkers, and have the unfortunate tendency to become invisible when placed in environments of heightened stress and anxiety. Needless to say, this has proven to be a problem during finals week. Due to this, the school has begun to phase out the use of true Nightstalker feathers, and instead are beginning to replace them with transfigured Lunar Hawk feathers.