The Institute

The Institute is the proving ground of the Golds, a network of schools spread across the planets, moons, and asteroids of the Solar System. There, Gold youths between sixteen and eighteen are tested, ranked, and forged into the next generation of the Society's political and military leaders. Admission turns on grueling entrance examinations, and graduates emerge with apprenticeships to the most powerful patrons in the system.

The campus on Mars has welcoming halls cut into the walls of the Valles Marineris outside the capital city of Agea, with its main grounds lying in a vast terraformed valley farther along the canyon. Each incoming class is drafted into twelve houses named for the Roman gods, from Mars and Minerva to Pluto, and seated beneath golden letters in a marble dining hall on their first night.