In the 1600‘s, the United Kingdom realised there were too many witches and wizards. We have records of witch reports all the way back to 451BC and have never been treated kindly. When they were again discovered in the early 1500‘s they were promptly executed.

As time went on, they found that both genders had equal ability to use this, ‘magic’, not only that but the number had got to the point where executing all of them would be ridiculous. Especially as most of them were the younger generation and had obviously committed no crimes. So, when the Protestant Christians were finally convinced that their magic was not the work of the devil, they decided to protect and raise these witches and wizards.

No doubt planning on using them in coming wars. King Charles II restored the English, Irish and Scottish monarchies and brought unity to the United Kingdom again, this was called ‘The Restoration’. However, that was not the only thing he brought unity too, it was also the people. He created a law that protected witches and wizards on two conditions. The first being that they register with the King’s Magic Control Regiment, or the MCR. The second being that they abide by the laws of the normal people and are only able to use magic with permission from a King’s official.

The minimum punishment for breaking this law was twenty years of prison time (life expectancy in the 1600‘s was 35 years, which has risen dramatically since magicians became prominent). Thanks to this set of rules anyone who was a magic user signed up, there was no disadvantage and going against the King was treason, no one went against this rule. As time passed, however, people realised the potential of magic, some went mad with power while others felt like they should not have to follow the rules of someone who was not magically gifted themselves, so they did not register with the MCR. They were famous for being brutal, evil and downright scary. These magicians became known as ‘rogues’.

Our story begins in 1838, Queen Victoria had just been appointed as the Queen one year ago. It revolves around the city of Bath. One of the larger cities in the South of England in the county of Somerset.

It has had its fair share of ups and downs, only recently being able to recover from the outbreak of Cholera. Bath is known, very fittingly for its bath’s. It became an even bigger and more notable city when magicians came into the picture as they could add special soaps and potions to speed up magic recovery.

The class system is still very apparent with an immense gap between nobility and the common people, this was the same throughout Britain, throughout the world in fact. Some commoners were lucky enough to give birth to a magician. This meant at least their child would have a good life, as magicians were given very special treatment. Mostly due to the fact that King Charles II found out their war potential and even made a whole new regiment of his ‘New Model Army’ called Magicians (on top of foot soldiers and horse soldiers).

Now almost every country have incorporated magicians into their army, those who did not, got annihilated and conquered immediately. Anyway, back to Bath, there is a Magicians Institute in every major city. They all had almost the same name: Magicians Institute of -location-. So, as you can guess it is the Magicians Institute of Bath. Or MI Bath, for short. We join a class of first years at the end of their first week of school. The date is the 20th of September 1838.