: You're right, it is interesting. From context I'd think
: it was a place. I'm thinking specifically of a school
: at the University of Covenant, a college for
: sorcerers. Mance, though it's usually used in
: reference to divination (cartomancy, oneiromancy,
: etc.) can also refer to any kind of magic
: (necromancer, pyromancer, etc.). We know that the
: warlock hero could have had a permanent chair at the
: University of Covenant, so I'd guess either the
: scholomance is there and he left looking for something
: big (like a runestone) or it's somewhere else and he
: went there hoping to find whatever he was looking for.
: It makes me think of the Black College (I think that's
: what they called it) in "The White Rose",
: where Bomanz the sorceror studied and then left in
: search of ultimate knowledge--specifically the
: knowledge of immortality, which he hoped to learn from
: (the) Lady. My feeling--and this is pure
: conjecture--is that the scholomance is Avatara U,
: where Alric and his buds used to go. Imagine the
: keggers at a place like that! The warlocks, then,
: would be people who wanted to be Avatara but just
: couldn't make the cut. Then again, there's some
: suggestion that the avatara are based in Madrigal, not
: Covenant... my head hurts. Again.
I've actually never seen "mance" used as a synonym for magic, *except* in a couple of sci-fi/fantasy books and the Myth tags (which, I assume, is where you're getting "pyromancer" from). It only comes up that way in "necromancy" (as far as I know) because almost all the old magicians who raised the dead were trying to do so in order to have them foretell the future, not to create zombies and such.
--SiliconDream
