I enjoyed this! I think that if this is a deleted scene from a novel it might be a very interesting story indeed. I really enjoy how, like with your bard, you go into the politics of education ;p

There's an interesting reason for that. They were both originally attempts to make sense of a game world. For the bard it was to make the game world make sense to me. For this one it was originally back story to help explain a ruleset I was trying to devise for a CRPG. But then I get distracted by the story and started removing some of the more blatant game elements in order to make the story flow better. Turns out, just adhering to the rules gave it continuity without having to explain those rules. This bit of explanation was still in there because I guess I felt it necessary to over-explain why everyone was where they were...

I may have just given too many suggestions

Nope. Thanks for the suggestions!

I was beginning to think that the upvotes I was getting were just speculative votes as I wasn't getting any feedback of any sort, just votes (not counting the bot parade).

Also, thanks for the encouragement!