The Pact Ball

Join us for an evening of masked dancing, atmospheric music and lighting, and feasting, set within the magical halls of the Collegium Arcanum and the historic building of Maison Dieu.

Choose your companion wisely, and remember their name.

The favour of the Dead, and the reply of your soul, are requested in your finest formal attire for attendance at this All Hallows Ball.

Join us at the All Hallows Ball where the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest.

By ancient custom, all who attend the All Hallows Ball are invited to remain masked until the stroke of midnight. Let every guest take heed, and forget not the name of the companion with whom they have come to the Ball.

For it is recorded in the oldest Statutes of the Collegium Arcanum that not every guest who enters beneath a mask shall be found inscribed upon the Black List of the College Register.

The Collegium Arcanum, known among its members simply as the Arcane College, has existed hidden beyond the ordinary world's universities through the centuries, and its whereabouts are never quite where a student expects them to be, even on the college's own official map. Despite the map being redrawn many times, the walls of the halls do not wish to follow its ground plan.

Within the college's halls, the study of the occult, dark arts, and the alchemical sciences is undertaken – dark material that has survived hidden in manuscripts, ancient monasteries, private occult libraries, and among those schools of magical learning that have remained practised throughout time beyond the institution itself.

For each new member, admission to the Arcane College begins with a ceremonial initiation. Before new students can enter into the halls of the college, they must be received according to ancient established customs, older than the statutes governing them. Initiates' names are entered onto the College Register under the magical authority of the Magisterium, and student oaths are witnessed with the college seal stamped beneath their names.

The College Initiation is followed by the celebration of the autumn term: the All Hallows Ball. On the Eve of All Hallows, the ancient halls of the college are kept open after hours, and the students of the college gather for an evening of masked dancing, feasting, masquerade, and those who dance will be joined by the majority — the dead.