Baron's New VQU

Jebus said goodbye, and the party walked out of the lamp. The door opened into a classroom. Baron Von Queef was waiting at the front, relieved that they had finally arrived. New VQU stood around him as both school and statement: rebuilt, funded, politically strange, and still carrying the wounds of everything that had happened to the old institution. Nick immediately noticed the sunlight and dove for cover. Baron remembered too late, apologized, and closed the windows with a wave. It was a small moment, but it set the tone. This new order was powerful, improvised, and still learning how to take care of the people it had just recruited. Baron explained what he wanted. His mother had been gone. His other mother had been gone. His vampire father was dead, killed by his mother during the chaos that led to his own existence. He had inherited money, power, a university, and a broken age. What he did not have was the old authority of Emerus or the old continuity of the Centrum. He did not want to recreate either one exactly. The Centrum was gone. Emerus was gone. But Von Queef University still stood, and Baron wanted to use it to build something active: a team that could protect Witchborn, recruit allies, spread knowledge, investigate threats, and move where the school itself could not. Dhaz asked about academic departments. Astrid Ironhuff had already signed on for alchemy. Students were coming later. But the party's work would begin before lesson plans and classroom schedules. Baron framed the mission as scholarship with teeth. Jericha had inherited a broken age. New VQU would not simply watch it happen.