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About Us
Our school, our story, and our values.
Our school
Halcyon Comprehensive is a state secondary school in Sussex, part of the Trust. Like many schools, we have too many children who need help and too few adults with time to give it. We have some of the hardest-working staff in the county, a front office run on military lines, and, since one ordinary Tuesday, a teacher from the Red Vale.
Mr. Gorzug arrived by portal, unannounced, during the morning rush. He was expecting a battlefield. He was issued a timetable, a fluorescent duty vest and Year 8C, and has been with us ever since.
Our history
“Before the breach, Halcyon had been failing in the ordinary human manner. Not dramatically. No towers fell. No banners burned. The science block remained mostly attached to the rest of the building, which was considered progress by several inspection criteria.”
“For several hours, Halcyon became what it had always secretly been, a defended place … The school held. Not cleanly. But it held.”
Mr. Gorzug's own account, from the prologue to The Required Qualifications
Our values
Strength is for protection
“If you misuse it, I will remember your face.” Mr. Gorzug, to a Year 10 pupil, on his first morning.
No striking of the smaller ones
Followed, in the same incident, by a straightened tie, a firm nod, and two words: “Do better.”
Walk
“I am walking.” “You are travelling unlawfully.” Corridor expectations, as explained on the last Wednesday of term.
A guide for new parents
- The Red Vale
- Mr. Gorzug's homeland, where a person's place is known by what they do, and family bears witness to the promises you make.
- The Doom Plain
- Where Mr. Gorzug was meant to land. It is not the staff car park, as he observed on arrival.
- The portal
- A green-white wound in the air, with a noise like wet canvas dragged across the teeth of the world. It has a habit of reopening.
- The Thorn Court
- An old-world enemy. Not, in most terms, as dangerous as the evidence portal.
- The Trust
- Supplies oversight, pressure, and phrases that sound like solutions if you don't stand too close to the children.
- The box spirit
- The photocopier. Mr. Gorzug's name for it is more accurate than ours.
- Wall patrol
- Corridor duty, correctly understood.
- A cold border dispute
- The staffroom fridge.