# Assistant Headmaster Christopher Larkvale

> DM-facing NPC writeup. Students only know the “public” bits unless you show them more.

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## Role

- **Title:** Assistant Headmaster for Discipline & Compliance  
- **Age:** early 40s  
- **Public Image:** The rules guy. Handles detentions, suspensions, parent meetings, and all the “By Order of Administration” notices.  
- **Real Job:** Primary liaison to **[[Avalon Factions#1.1 Root Oversight Committee ("The Array")|Root Oversight]]** ([[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]]), keeper of the Academy’s ugly secrets, and the man who signs off on anything that might look bad in a headline.

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## What Students Know

- He’s the one you get sent to when shit gets serious.  
- His office is where:
  - Phones get confiscated,
  - Parents get called,
  - Future prospects get “discussed” in ominous tones.
- He has a way of talking down to people that makes you feel like you’re six, even if you’re taller than him.
- Rumors:
  - He “used to be fun” before he went admin.
  - He spends more time talking to that weird Oversight projection than to actual students.
  - He has dirt on every teacher and will use it if they cross him.

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## What He Wants

### Surface Goals

- A **calm, orderly school** with minimal magical incidents.
- Good statistics:
  - Low injury rates,
  - High graduation rates,
  - No “Avalon Node Disaster” trending on spell-media.
- To keep **funders and parents** happy enough that nobody asks too many questions.

### Deeper Goals

- To stay indispensable to both:
  - The **Academy** (as the guy who keeps crises contained), and  
  - **Oversight** (as the man on the ground who can make their directives happen).  
- To **control the narrative** of what Avalon is:
  - “Prestigious, safe, well-managed,” not “that place where the leyline almost ate some kids.”

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## Methods & Tactics

- **Soft pressure first:**
  - “I’m disappointed,” “Think about your future,” “Let’s involve your parents.”
- **Procedural violence second:**
  - Detentions, disciplinary files, loss of privileges, quiet black marks on transcripts.
- Uses **bureaucracy as a weapon**:
  - “The forms say…” is how he wins arguments.
- Handles external actors (Oversight, law enforcement, parents) by:
  - Always having a **plausible story** ready.
  - Always having a **scapegoat** in mind if things get too hot.

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## Relationship to [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] & Oversight

- Officially: [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]]’s **trusted point of contact** at the Academy.
- Unofficially:
  - Resents being treated like a subordinate by a projection in his office.
  - Thinks Oversight overreacts and doesn’t understand “real school realities.”
- Still, he will absolutely:
  - Enforce Root lockdowns,
  - Argue for extra monitoring,
  - Sell the faculty on “temporary safety measures” that never quite get rolled back.

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## Relationship to the PCs

- **Initial view:**
  - They are high-risk, high-profile headaches.
  - “If you were just normal screwups, I’d suspend you. The problem is, you keep being in the room when the grid hiccups.”
- He does not like them, but he does see their potential PR value:
  - “Reforming delinquents into heroes” plays well if it works.

### How He Might Use Them

- As **examples**:
  - “Even after what happened in B2, we’re working with them. We believe in second chances.”
- As **unpaid labor**:
  - Safety committees,
  - Peer mentoring,
  - Helping staff monitor “at risk” zones—really just keeping them where he can see them.
- As **lightning rods**:
  - Dumping blame on them if he needs to deflect Oversight or angry parents:
    - “They were acting without permission.”
    - “We took swift disciplinary action.”

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## Secrets & Pressure Points (DM Only)

- He knows more about the B2 incident than he has admitted to the PCs:
  - [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] briefed him on the **Coherence patterns**.
  - He’s under pressure to keep any talk of “emergent minds in the Root” buried.
- He has **personal skeletons**:
  - A history of blurred boundaries with students *after* graduation – nothing officially proven, a couple of complaints quietly buried.
  - A strong incentive to keep his position, because if he falls, a lot of buried files might surface.

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## How to Play Larkvale

- **Voice:** Calm, patronizing, professional. Never yells; weaponizes disappointment.
- **Body language:** Neat, precise, uses folders and papers as shields; rarely out of a suit.
- **Key Lines:**
  - “You are not on trial. Yet.”
  - “Your feelings are valid. They are also irrelevant to the safety report.”
  - “You are very fortunate that we are handling this in-house.”
- **Pivot:** If the PCs ever do something undeniably heroic in public, he’ll try to spin it:
  - “This is what I’ve always seen in you” (lie),
  - “Let’s make sure people hear the *right* version of events.”