Community Profile

Kohilo House, one of the four Houses of Aeolian University, is a creation of Terminus. The community is open to attendees of Terminus and members of Kohilo House.

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gently, steadily, the west wind blows, touching the ocean, rustling the trees, unconcerned with the tumult of wilder tempests

History: Although Aeolus well understood the unfettered spirit of Zephyrus, he entrusted one of the University’s four houses to his guidance, all the while anticipating that the responsibility would ground the great Wind. Instead, Zephyrus used his gentle breezes for persuasion, luring to Aeolia those graced with his own wanderer’s heart. Enticed from majestic, desolate mountains, from shores both wild and temperate, from islands lost in the eternal sea, students of the West come to the University of Aeolus. Windblown, they turn up at the University’s door – but not before they’ve dallied with the Pali winds of the Pacific, danced with the dust whirls of California, and ridden the wild Chinooks, the greatest of the snow-eaters, down the Rocky Mountains.

From the time of the Taotao Mona, Kohilos have fashioned their own trails, twisting and unexpected, by the radiance of the sun and the sheen of the moon. Students of the House have spent years migrating with the Absarokee and charting the ocean’s currents with the Tongan King, in time returning to the University wretchedly behind in classes, but with breathtaking tales to tell – of the astonishing cities of the Navajo, the Min Min lights of Australia revealed as particularly playful hinkypunks, the Animagus Kalamainu’u disguised as a lizard goddess. Kohilos have always excelled at that which interests them – and overlooked that which doesn’t. They flourish in Herbology, for example, their drifting journeys teaching them profound knowledge of plants, flowers, roots and herbs. Potions, too, appeals to them, with its many applications, but to Transfiguration they devote little time, unwilling to disturb the nature of living creatures. (After millennia of having their lessons met with such unwavering indifference, the University’s Transfiguration faculty have tried several times to discontinue the lessons, to no avail.)

Kohilos’ manifest independence, greater than a hunting bird on the wing, not only tries the University’s faculty but tests the Kohilo students themselves. Ever friendly, easily diverted, enduringly serene, Kohilos tend toward idealism – some might say naïveté – in always expecting serendipitous endings. Lamentably, generations of Kohilos have learned a deeply harsh lesson in inadvertent outcomes: The House is honor-bound to alleviate the continual turmoil in the Pacific Region after its experiments raised many of Polynesia’s islands from the depths of the seas (to the delight of South Seas navigators) and created the tumultuous Ring of Fire. (Fortuitously for Kohilo House, the University has not yet verified that the students have polished the very same spell for casting north of Australia, producing gnarly swells for those looking to exchange winds and a broom for a few hours of waves and a surfboard.) None of the Houses, though, can match the skill that a Kohilo student directs to that which catches her eye: a new dialect of Mermish, earth ready for spring planting or the movement of the great western herds.

Whether Kohilos follow a calling through to completion, or abandon it to study the movement of Micronesian traders or to visit the Menehune of the Hawaiian forests, Zephyrus’s tranquil legacy always guides his students’ journeys. (Kohilos accede to Zephyrus’s less celebrated roving as well; while their flirting knows no limit, none have had such infamous exploits as Iris, Podarge and Hyacinth.) Their individualism, hampered only by persuasion, delineates the house. Kohilos are boundless and free, wanderers of the world, spirits of the wind.

Dragon: The Antipodean Opaleye, the beautiful, placid valley-dweller of New Zealand.

House Colors: The purple of the majestic western mountains and the iridescent of the Antipodean Opaleye’s scales.

Tempest Cup Record: 207, which the University’s chancellors find distressingly low but seems to bother the Kohilos not at all. In fact, on the few occasions when Kohilo has won the Cup, the University’s faculty, Cup and Opaleyes in tow, generally have had to track the truant Kohilos to ocean waves and mountain peaks.

Notable Alumni: Tagaloa, who brought fire to the West; Paka’a, who commanded the winds of the sails; John Muir, who preserved the western wilderness; Maui, who stopped the sun; and Ansel Adams, who could never get his Muggle camera to color the pictures quite right.

Achievements: Waterproofing the canoes of Polynesia and the Pacific Northwest; developing Fizzing Whizbees from the Australian Billywig; planting the California redwoods; and a great honor, being invited to dance for rain with the Pueblos.

Unusual Fact: The noble mustangs of the West are descended from Bailus and Xanthus, the horses that Zephyrus sired for Achilles.

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For more information on Terminus, please contact help @ terminus2008.org, or see terminus2008. To chat with attendees of all Houses, please join terminuschat.

Members (25):

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