Located in the tiered city of Junah, the Athenaeum of Barriers is one of the oldest of the athenaeums, dating back nearly four thousand years. It began life as a cabal of warders and eventually grew into a proper institution of learning when the cabal embarked on a successful coup of the Junah city government, with the Athenaeum of Barriers maintaining control of the city to this day, despite numerous attempts to take it back by the surrounding kingdom. The Athenaeum of Barriers is the only place on Aerb where the teaching of warding is authorized.
Junah is built on a hill next to the Alden Coast, and has five ‘tiers’ to it, each separated from the others by a tall wall with many points of entry. In the modern day, the bottom three ‘tiers’ are publicly accessible spaces where many of the introductory courses are taught, as well as containing the majority of housing for students, faculty, staff, and support systems. The top two tiers are devoted to more intensive and specialized study, including the athenaeum’s large, restricted-access library and the storage facility for warding-related entads that are loaned, rented, or leased by the athenaeum.
The athenaeum’s culture is largely conservative and its posture is defensive, even more so than the athenaeums generally are. The walls that separate Junah’s tiers are laced with wards that protect the city, and in particular, the upper two tiers, from a very wide variety of threats, and access points through the walls are typically keyed wards that restrict access to students and teachers with particular clearances and levels of learning. Because the athenaeum and its graduates are responsible for security all around Aerb, much of the teaching is defensively focused, not just in terms of how to construct wards and where to place them, but in terms of security-minded warding, preventing physical access through non-ward means, protecting potential targets, and to a lesser extent, thinking like an intruder or attacker; there are a number of students of Barriers who spend their years their learning how to construct locks and safes without picking up much in the way of being able to cast wards.
There are two smaller departments at Barriers which focus on unique aspects of the magic. The first is Arcane Properties, which focuses mainly on the magical spectrum and analysis of magical effects, often working in coordination with the Athenaeum of Speculation and Scrutiny to decipher the effects of entads, magical effects, or magical creatures. The second is Wardbreakers, which puts much of its effort and teaching into attempting to subvert wards, a disfavored but sometimes necessary occupation.